On the right, as we approach the giant, is the Sala del Beato Angelico, containing a lovely array of Fra Angelico's smaller paintings. Were we to attempt to sum up Angelico's chief characteristics in one word, that word would be onestà, in its early mediaeval sense as Dante uses it in the Vita Nuova, signifying not merely purity or chastity, as it came later to mean, but the outward manifestation of spiritual beauty,–the honestas of which Aquinas speaks. A supreme expression of this may be found in the Paradise of his Last Judgment (266), the mystical dance of saints and Angels in the celestial garden that blossoms under the rays of the Sun of Divine Love, and on all the faces of the blessed beneath the Queen of Mercy on the Judge's right. The Hell is, naturally, almost a failure. In many of the small scenes from the lives of Christ and His Mother, of which there are several complete series here, some of the heads are absolute miracles of expression; notice, for instance, the Judas receiving the thirty pieces of silver, and all the faces in the Betrayal (237), and, above all perhaps, the Peter in the Entry into Jerusalem (252), on every line of whose face seems written: "Lord, why can I not follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake." The Deposition from the Cross (246), contemplated by St. Dominic, the Beata Villana and St. Catherine of Alexandria, appears to be an earlier work of Angelico's. Here, also, are three great Madonnas painted by the Friar as altar pieces for convent churches; the Madonna and Child surrounded by Angels and saints, while Cosmas and Damian, the patrons of the Medici, kneel at her feet (281), was executed in 1438 for the high altar of San Marco, and, though now terribly injured, was originally one of his best pictures; the Madonna and Child, with two Angels and six saints, Peter Martyr, Cosmas and Damian, Francis, Antony of Padua, and Louis of Toulouse (265), was painted for the convent of the Osservanza near Mugello,–hence the group of Franciscans on the left; the third (227), in which Cosmas and Damian stand with St. Dominic on the right of the Madonna, and St. Francis with Lawrence and John the Divine on her left, is an inferior work from his hand.
Also in this room are four delicious little panels by Lippo Lippi (264 and 263), representing the Annunciation divided into two compartments, St. Antony Abbot and the Baptist; two Monks of the Vallombrosa, by Perugino (241, 242), almost worthy of Raphael; and two charming scenes of mediaeval university life, the School of Albertus Magnus (231) and the School of St. Thomas Aquinas (247). These two latter appear to be by some pupil of Fra Angelico, and may possibly be very early works of Benozzo Gozzoli. In the first, Albert is lecturing to an audience, partly lay and partly clerical, amongst whom is St. Thomas, then a youthful novice but already distinguished by the halo and the sun upon his breast; in the second, Thomas himself is now holding the professorial chair, surrounded by pupils listening or taking notes, while Dominicans throng the cloisters behind. On his right sits the King of France; below his seat the discomforted Averrhoes humbly places himself on the lowest step, between the heretics–William of St. Amour and Sabellius.
From the left of the David's tribune, we turn into three rooms containing masterpieces of the Quattrocento (with a few later works), and appropriately named after Botticelli and Perugino.
In the Sala prima del Botticelli is Sandro's famous Primavera, the Allegory of Spring or the Kingdom of Venus (80). Inspired in part by Poliziano's stanze in honour of Giuliano dei Medici and his Bella Simonetta, Botticelli nevertheless has given to his strange–not altogether decipherable–allegory, a vague mysterious poetry far beyond anything that Messer Angelo could have suggested to him. Through this weirdly coloured garden of the Queen of Love, in "the light that never was on sea or land," blind Cupid darts upon his little wings, shooting, apparently at random, a flame-tipped arrow which will surely pierce the heart of the central maiden of those three, who, in their thin clinging white raiment, personify the Graces. The eyes of Simonetta–for it is clearly she–rest for a moment in the dance upon the stalwart Hermes, an idealised Giuliano, who has turned away carelessly from the scene. Flora, "pranked and pied for birth," advances from our right, scattering flowers rapidly as she approaches; while behind her a wanton Zephyr, borne on his strong wings, breaks through the wood to clasp Fertility, from whose mouth the flowers are starting. Venus herself, the mistress of nature, for whom and by whom all these things are done, stands somewhat sadly apart in the centre of the picture; this is only one more of the numberless springs that have passed over her since she first rose from the sea, and she is somewhat weary of it all:–
"Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli
Adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus
Summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti
Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum."[47]
This was one of the pictures painted for Lorenzo the Magnificent. Botticelli's other picture in this room, the large Coronation of the Madonna (73) with its predella (74), was commissioned by the Arte di Por Sta. Maria, the Guild of Silk-merchants, for an altar in San Marco; the ring of festive Angels, encircling their King and Queen, is in one of the master's most characteristic moods. On either side of the Primavera are two early works by Lippo Lippi; Madonna adoring the Divine Child in a rocky landscape, with the little St. John and an old hermit (79), and the Nativity (82), with Angels and shepherds, Jerome, Magdalene and Hilarion. Other important pictures in this room are Andrea del Sarto's Four Saints (76), one of his latest works painted for the monks of Vallombrosa in 1528; Andrea Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (71), in which the two Angels were possibly painted by Verrocchio's great pupil, Leonardo, in his youth; Masaccio's Madonna and Child watched over by St. Anne (70), an early and damaged work, the only authentic easel picture of his in Florence. The three small predella pictures (72), the Nativity, the martyrdom of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, St. Anthony of Padua finding a stone in the place of the dead miser's heart, by Francesco Pesellino, 1422-1457, the pupil of Lippo Lippi, are fine examples of a painter who normally only worked on this small scale and whose works are very rare indeed. Francesco Granacci, who painted the Assumption (68), is chiefly interesting as having been Michelangelo's friend and fellow pupil under Ghirlandaio.
The Sala del Perugino takes its name from three works of that master which it contains; the great Vallombrosa Assumption (57), signed and dated 1500, one of the painter's finest altar pieces, with a very characteristic St. Michael–the Archangel who was by tradition the genius of the Assumption, as Gabriel had been of the Annunciation; the Deposition from the Cross (56); and the Agony in the Garden (53). But the gem of the whole room is Lippo Lippi's Coronation of the Madonna (62), one of the masterpieces of the early Florentine school, which he commenced for the nuns of Sant' Ambrogio in 1441. The throngs of boys and girls, bearing lilies and playing at being Angels, are altogether delightful, and the two little orphans, that are being petted by the pretty Florentine lady on our right, are characteristic of Fra Filippo's never failing sympathy with child life. On the left two admirably characterised monks are patronised by St. Ambrose, and in the right corner the jolly Carmelite himself, under the wing of the Baptist, is welcomed by a little Angel with the scroll, Is perfecit opus. It will be observed that "poor brother Lippo" has dressed himself with greater care for his celestial visit, than he announced his intention of doing in Robert Browning's poem:–
"Well, all these
Secured at their devotion, up shall come
Out of a corner when you least expect,
As one by a dark stair into a great light,
Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!–
Mazed, motionless and moon-struck–I'm the man!
Back I shrink–what is this I see and hear?
I, caught up with my monk's things by mistake,
My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,
I, in this presence, this pure company!
Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?
Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing
Forward, puts out a soft palm–'Not so fast!'
Addresses the celestial presence, 'Nay–
'He made you and devised you, after all,
'Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw–
'His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?
'We come to brother Lippo for all that,
'Iste perfecit opus!'"
Fra Filippo's Madonna and Child, with Sts. Cosmas and Damian, Francis and Antony, painted for the Medicean chapel in Santa Croce (55), is an earlier and less characteristic work. Over the door is St. Vincent preaching, by Fra Bartolommeo (58), originally painted to go over the entrance to the sacristy in San Marco–a striking representation of a Dominican preacher of repentance and renovation, conceived in the spirit of Savonarola, but terribly "restored." The Trinità (63) is one of Mariotto Albertinelli's best works, but sadly damaged. The two child Angels (61) by Andrea del Sarto, originally belonged to his picture of the Four Saints, in the last room; the Crucifixion, with the wonderful figure of the Magdalene at the foot of the Cross (65), ascribed to Luca Signorelli, does not appear to be from the master's own hand; Ghirlandaio's predella (67), with scenes from the lives of Sts. Dionysius, Clement, Dominic, and Thomas Aquinas, belongs to a great picture which we shall see presently.