was begun. But I should add that of Cimabue we know
practically nothing, and that most of Vasari's statements have been
confuted, while the painter of the S. Maria Novella Madonna is held
by some authorities to be Duccio of Siena. So where are we?

The little chapel next the choir on the right is that of Filippo
Strozzi the elder who was one of the witnesses of the Pazzi outrage in
the Duomo in 1478. This was the Filippo Strozzi who began the Strozzi
palace in 1489, father of the Filippo Strozzi who married Lorenzo
de' Medici's noble grand-daughter Clarice and came to a tragic end
under Cosimo I. Old Filippo's tomb here was designed by Benedetto da
Maiano, who made the famous Franciscan pulpit in S. Croce, and was
Ghirlandaio's friend and the Strozzi palace's first architect. The
beautiful circular relief of the Virgin and Child, with a border of
roses and flying worshipping angels all about it, behind the altar, is
Benedetto's too, and very lovely and human are both Mother and Child.

The frescoes in this chapel, by Filippino Lippi, are interesting,
particularly that one on the left, depicting the Resuscitation of
Drusiana by S. John the Evangelist, at Rome, in which the group of
women and children on the right, with the little dog, is full of
life and most naturally done. Above (but almost impossible to see)
is S. John in his cauldron of boiling oil between Roman soldiers and
the denouncing Emperor, under the banner S.P.Q.R.--a work in which
Roman local colour completely excludes religious feeling. Opposite,
below, we see S. Philip exorcising a dragon, a very florid scene,
and, above, a painfully spirited and realistic representation of the
Crucifixion. The sweetness of the figures of Charity and Faith in
monochrome and gold helps, with Benedetto's tondo, to engentle the air.

We then come again to the Choir, with Ghirlandaio's urbane Florentine
pageant in the guise of sacred history, and pass on to the next chapel,
the Cappella Gondi, where that crucifix in wood is to be seen which
Brunelleschi carved as a lesson to Donatello, who received it like
the gentleman he was. I have told the story in Chapter XV.

The left transept ends in the chapel of the Strozzi family, of which
Filippo was the head in his day, and here we find Andrea Orcagna and
his brother's fresco of Heaven, the Last Judgment and Hell. It was
the two Orcagnas who, according to Vasari, had covered the Choir with
those scenes in the life of the Virgi