Ghirlandaio gets a lash for every virtue of Giotto. Next--above, on
the left--we have the Presentation of the Virgin and on the right
her Marriage. The Presentation is considered by Mr. Davies to be
almost wholly the work of Ghirlandaio's assistants, while the youthful
Michelangelo himself has been credited with the half-naked figure on
the steps, although Mr. Davies gives it to Mainardi. Mainardi again
is probably the author of the companion scene. The remaining frescoes
are of less interest and much damaged; but in the window wall one
should notice the portraits of Giovanni Tornabuoni and Francesca di
Luca Pitti, his wife, kneeling, because this Giovanni was the donor
of the frescoes, and his sister Lucrezia was the wife of Piero de'
Medici and therefore the mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, while
Francesca Tornabuoni, the poor lady who died in childbirth, was the
daughter of that proud Florentine who began the Pitti palace but
ended his life in disgrace.

And so we leave this beautiful recess, where pure religious feeling
may perhaps be wanting but where the best spirit of the Renaissance
is to be found: everything making for harmony and pleasure; and on
returning to London the visitor should make a point of seeing the
Florentine girl by the same hand in our National Gallery, No. 1230,
for she is very typical of his genius.

On the entrance wall of the church is what must once have been a fine
Masaccio--"The Trinity"--but it is in very bad condition; while in
the Cappella Rucellai in the right transept is what purports to be
a Cimabue, very like the one in the Accademia, but with a rather
more matured Child in it. Vasari tells us that on its completion
this picture was carried in stately procession from the painter's
studio to the church, in great rejoicing and blowing of trumpets,
the populace being moved not only by religious ecstasy but by pride in
an artist who could make such a beautiful and spacious painting, the
largest then known. Vasari adds that when Cimabue was at work upon it,
Charles of Anjou, visiting Florence, was taken to his studio, to see
the wonderful painter, and a number of Florentines entering too, they
broke out into such rejoicings that the locality was known ever after
as Borgo Allegro, or Joyful Quarter. This would be about 1290. There
was a certain fitness in Cimabue painting this Madonna, for it is said
that he had his education in the convent which stood here before the
present church