of that agitation of spirit the
signs of which become increasingly perceptible in Botticelli's work from
about this time until the end. The great altar-piece at San Marco with
its _predelle_, commissioned by the Arte della Seta in 1488 and finished
in 1490, with the incomparable ring of dancing and quiring angels
encircling the crowned Virgin in the upper sky, is the last of
Botticelli's altar-pieces on a great scale. To nearly the same date
probably belongs his deeply felt and beautifully preserved small
painting of the "Last Communion of St Jerome" belonging to the Marchese
Farinola.

In 1490 Botticelli was called to take part with other artists in a
consultation as to the completion of the facade of the Duomo, and to
bear a share with Alessio Baldovinetti and others in the mosaic
decorations of the chapel of San Zenobio in the same church. The death
of Lorenzo Il Magnifico in 1492, and the accession to chief power of his
worthless son Piero, soon plunged Florence into political troubles, to
which were by and by added the profound spiritual agitation consequent
upon the preaching and influence of Savonarola. Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco
de' Medici, who with his brother Giovanni was in a position of political
rivalry against their cousin Piero, continued his patronage of
Botticelli; and it was for him, apparently chiefly between the years
1492 and 1495, that the master undertook to execute a set of drawings in
illustration of Dante on a far more elaborate and ambitious plan than
the little designs for the engraver which had been interrupted in 1481.
Eighty-five of these drawings are in the famous manuscript acquired for
the Berlin museum at the sale of the Hamilton Palace collection in 1882,
and eleven more in the Vatican library at Rome. The series is one of the
most interesting that has been preserved by any ancient master;
revealing an intimate knowledge of and profound sympathy with the text;
full of Botticelli's characteristic poetic yearning and vehemence of
expression, his half-childish intensity of vision; exquisite in
lightness of touch and in swaying, rhythmical grace of linear
composition and design. These gifts were less suited on the whole to the
illustration of the Hell than of the later parts of the poem, and in the
fiercer episodes there is often some puerility and inadequacy of
invention. Throughout the Hell and Purgatory Botticelli maintains a
careful adherence to the text, illustrating the several progre