—Browning.
SAN MINIATO AL MONTE, FLORENCE.
The weeks sped rapidly on; midwinter had come and gone, and four months had been numbered since Mrs. Douglas had brought Malcom, Margery, Barbara, and Bettina to Italy.
Although social pleasures and duties had multiplied, yet study had never been given up. A steady advance had been made in knowledge of the history of Florence, and of her many legends and traditions. They had not forgotten or passed by the sculptured treasures of the city, but had learned something of Donatello, her first great sculptor; of Lorenzo Ghiberti, who wrought those exquisite gates of bronze for Dante's "Il mio bel San Giovanni" that Michael Angelo declared to be fit for the gates of Paradise; and of Brunelleschi, the architect of her great Duomo.
Through all had gone on their study of the Florentine painters. After much patient work given to pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they were now quite revelling in the beauty of those of the sixteenth century, or the High Renaissance. This was all the more interesting since they had seen how one after another the early difficulties had been overcome; how each great master succeeding Cimabue had added his contribution of thought and endeavor until artists knew all the laws that govern the art of representation; and how finally, the method of oil-painting having been introduced, they then had a fitting medium with which to express their knowledge and artistic endeavor.
They had read about Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest masters, so famous for his portrayal of subtile emotion, and were wonderfully interested in his life and work; had been to the Academy to see the Baptism of Christ, painted by his master, Andrea Verrocchio, and were very positive that the angel on the left, who holds Christ's garment, was painted by young Leonardo. They had studied his unfinished Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi—his only authentic work in Florence—and had wished much that they could see his other and greater pictures. Mr. Sumner had told them that in the early summer they would probably go to Milan, and there see the famous Last Supper and Study for the Head of Christ, and that perhaps later they might visit Paris and there find his Mona Lisa and other works.
They had been much interested in the many examples of Fra Bartolommeo's painting that are in San Marco—where he, as well as Fra Angelico, had been a monk;—in the Academy, and in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries; and had learned to recognize the peculiarities of his grouping of figures, and their abstract, devotional faces, his treatment of draperies, and the dear little angels, with their musical instruments, that are so often sitting at the feet of his madonnas.
They were fascinated by Andrea del Sarto, whom they followed all over the city wherever they could find either his frescoes or easel pictures. His color especially enchanted them, after they had looked at so many darkened and faded pictures. The story of his unquenchable love for his faithless wife, and how he painted her face into all his pictures, either as madonna or saint, played upon their romantic feelings. Margery learned Browning's poem about them, and often quoted from it. They were never tired of looking at his Holy Families and Madonnas in the galleries, but especially loved to go to the S.S. Annunziata and linger in the court, surrounded by glass colonnades, where are so many of his frescoes.