of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. But while the earlier painters had striven with inadequate
powers to express the religious feeling that was in them, Botticelli's
skill matched his thought. His drawing of the angels in their Greek
dresses is very lovely, and one scarce knows in any picture a group
surpassing that of the three little ones upon the roof of the manger,
nor will you soon see a lovelier Virgin's face than hers. Botticelli
had great power of showing the expression in a face, and the movement
in a figure. Here the movements may seem overstrained, a fault which
grew upon him in his old age; the angel, with the two shepherds on
the right, has come skimming over the ground and points emphatically
at the Babe, and the angel in front embraces Savonarola with vehemence.
The artists of the early Renaissance had learnt with so much trouble
to draw figures in motion that their pleasure in their newly acquired
skill sometimes made them err by exaggeration as their predecessors
by stiffness.

The way in which Botticelli treated this subject of the Nativity of
Christ, is, as you see, very different from the way in which Hubert
van Eyck painted the Three Maries at the Sepulchre. We saw how the
latter pictured the event as actually taking place outside Jerusalem.
To Botticelli the Nativity of Christ was emblematic of a new and happier
life for people in Florence, with the Church regenerated and purified,
as Christ would have wished it to be. To him the Nativity was a symbol
of purity, so he painted the picture as a commentary on the event,
not as an illustration of the Biblical text.

The angels rejoice in heaven as the shepherds upon earth, the devils
flee away discomfited, and Savonarola and his companions obtain peace
after the tribulations of life. Such was the message of Botticelli
in the picture here reproduced.

CHAPTER VI

RAPHAEL

The original of our next picture is very small, only seven inches square,
yet I hope it will instantly appeal to you. The name of the artist,
Raphael, is perhaps the most familiar of all the names of the Old
Masters, mainly, it may be, because he was the painter of the Sistine
Madonna, the best known and best loved of Madonnas.

When Raphael drew and painted this picture of the 'Knight's Dream,'
about the year 1500, he was himself like a young knight, at the outset
of his short and brilliant career. As a boy he was handsome, gifted,
charming. His nature is said