On the opposite wall are four Botticellian pictures. The Magnificat (1267 bis)–Sandro's most famous and familiar tondo–in which the Madonna rather sadly writes the Magnificat, while Angels cluster round to crown their Queen, to offer ink and book, or look into the thing that she has written, while the Dove hovers above her, is full of the haunting charm, the elusive mystery, the vague yearning, which makes the fascination of Botticelli to-day. She already seems to be anticipating the Passion of that Child–so unmistakably divine–who is guiding her hand. The Madonna of the Pomegranate (1289) is a somewhat similar, but less beautiful tondo; the Angel faces, who are said to be idealised portraits of the Medicean children, have partially lost their angelic look. The Fortitude (1299) is one of Sandro's earliest paintings, and its authenticity has been questioned; she seems to be dreading, almost shrinking from some great battle at hand, of which no man can foretell the end. The Annunciation (1316) is rather Botticellian in conception; but the colouring and execution generally do not suggest the master himself. Antonio Pollaiuolo's Prudence (1306) is a harsh companion to Sandro's Fortitude. The tondo (1291) of the Holy Family, by Luca Signorelli, is one of his best works in this kind; the colouring is less heavy than is usual with him, and the Child is more divine. Of the two carefully finished Annunciations by Lorenzo di Credi (1314, 1160), the latter is the earlier and finer. Fra Filippo's little Madonna of the Sea (1307), with her happy boy-like Angel attendants, is one of the monk's most attractive and characteristic works; perhaps the best of all his smaller pictures. And we have left to the last Fra Angelico's divinest dream of the Coronation of the Madonna in the Empyrean Heaven of Heavens (1290), amidst exultant throngs of Saints and Angels absorbed in the Beatific Vision of Paradise. It is the pictorial equivalent of Bernard's most ardent sermons on the Assumption of Mary and of the mystic musings of John of Damascus. Here are "the Angel choirs of Angelico, with the flames on their white foreheads waving brighter as they move, and the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of many suns upon a sounding sea, listening in the pauses of alternate song, for the prolonging of the trumpet blast, and the answering of psaltery and cymbal, throughout the endless deep, and from all the star shores of heaven."[31]
Sala di maestri diversi Italiani.
In the small room which opens out of the Tribune, on the opposite side to these three Tuscan rooms, are two perfect little gems of more northern Italian painting. Mantegna's Madonna of the Quarries (1025), apart from its nobility of conception and grand austerity of sentiment, is a positive marvel of minute drawing with the point of the pennello. Every detail in the landscape, with the winding road up to the city on the hill, the field labourers in the meadow, the shepherds and travellers, on the left, and the stone-cutterss among the caverns on the right, preparing stone for the sculptors and architects of Florence and Rome, is elaborately rendered with exquisite delicacy and finish. It was painted at Rome in 1488, while Mantegna was working on his frescoes (now destroyed) for Pope Innocent VIII. in a chapel of the Vatican. The other is a little Madonna and Child with two Angels playing musical instruments, by Correggio (1002), a most exquisite little picture in an almost perfect state of preservation, formerly ascribed to Titian, but entirely characteristic of Correggio's earliest period when he was influenced by Mantegna and the Ferrarese.
Beyond are the Dutch, Flemish, German, and French pictures which do not come into our present scope–though they include several excellent works as, notably, a little Madonna by Hans Memlinc and two Apostles by Albert Dürer. The cabinet of the gems contains some of the treasures left by the Medicean Grand Dukes, including work by Cellini and Giovanni da Bologna.
Scuola Veneta.
Crossing the short southern corridor, with some noteworthy ancient sculptury, we pass down the long western corridor. Out of this open first the two rooms devoted to the Venetian school. In the first, to seek the best only, are Titian's portraits of Francesco Maria della Rovere, third Duke of Urbino, and Eleonora Gonzaga, his duchess (605 and 599), painted in 1537. A triptych by Mantegna (1111)–the Adoration of the Kings, between the Circumcision and the Ascension–is one of the earlier works of the great Paduan master; the face of the Divine Child in the Circumcision is marvellously painted. The Madonna by the Lake by Giovanni Bellini (631), also called the Allegory of the Tree of Life, is an exceedingly beautiful picture, one of Bellini's later works. Titian's Flora (626), an early work of the master, charming in its way, has been damaged and rather overpraised. In the second room, are three works by Giorgione; the Judgment of Solomon and the Ordeal of Moses (630 and 621), with their fantastic costumes and poetically conceived landscapes, are very youthful works indeed; the portrait of a Knight of Malta (622) is more mature, and one of the noblest of Venetian portraits. Florence thus possesses more authentic works of this wonderful, almost mythical, Venetian than does Venice herself. Here, too, is usually–except when it is in request elsewhere for the copyist–Titian's Madonna and Child with the boy John Baptist, and the old Antony Abbot, leaning on his staff and watching the flower play (633)–the most beautiful of Titian's early Giorgionesque Madonnas.
VENUS
By Sandro Botticelli
Sala di Lorenzo Monaco.