zi posing as Flora,
again diffusing Venetian light. On the other side of the door we find,
for the first time in Florence, Murillo, who has two groups of the
Madonna and Child on this wall, the better being No. 63, which is both
sweet and masterly. In No. 56 the Child becomes a pretty Spanish boy
playing with a rosary, and in both He has a faint nimbus instead of
the halo to which we are accustomed. On the same wall is another fine
Andrea, who is most lavishly represented in this gallery, No. 58,
a Deposition, all gentle melancholy rather than grief. The kneeling
girl is very beautiful.

Finally there are Van Dyck's very charming portrait of Charles
I of England and Henrietta, a most deft and distinguished work,
and Raphael's famous portrait of Leo X with two companions: rather
dingy, and too like three persons set for the camera, but powerful and
deeply interesting to us, because here we see the first Medici pope,
Leo X, Lorenzo de' Medici's son Giovanni, who gave Michelangelo the
commission for the Medici tombs and the new Sacristy of S. Lorenzo;
and in the young man on the Pope's right hand we see none other
than Giulio, natural son of Giuliano de' Medici, Lorenzo's brother,
who afterwards became Pope as Clement VII. It was he who laid siege
to Florence when Michelangelo was called upon to fortify it; and it
was during his pontificate that Henry VIII threw off the shackles
of Rome and became the Defender of the Faith. Himself a bastard,
Giulio became the father of the base-born Alessandro of Urbino,
first Duke of Florence, who, after procuring the death of Ippolito
and living a life of horrible excess, was himself murdered by his
cousin Lorenzino in order to rid Florence of her worst tyrant. In
his portrait Leo X has an illuminated missal and a magnifying glass,
as indication of his scholarly tastes. That he was also a good liver
his form and features testify.

Of this picture an interesting story is told. After the battle of
Pavia, in 1525, Clement VII wishing to be friendly with the Marquis
of Gonzaga, a powerful ally of the Emperor Charles V, asked him what
he could do for him, and Gonzaga expressed a wish for the portrait
of Leo X, then in the Medici palace. Clement complied, but wishing
to retain at any rate a semblance of the original, directed that the
picture should be copied, and Andrea del Sarto was chosen for that
task. The copy turned out to be so close that Gonzaga never obtained
the original at all.