Next the “Annunciation” on the left is, to my eyes, one of Botticelli’s most attractive works: No. 1303, just the Madonna and Child again, in a niche, with roses climbing behind them: the Madonna one of his youngest, and more placid and simple than most, with more than a hint of the Verrocchio type in her face. To the “School of Botticelli” this is sometimes attributed: it may be rightly. Its pendant is another “Madonna and Child,” No. 76, more like Lippo Lippi and very beautiful in its darker graver way.
The other wall has the “Fortitude,” the “Calumny,” and the two little “Judith and Holofernes” pictures. Upon the “Fortitude,” to which I have already alluded, it is well to look at Ruskin, who, however, was not aware that the artist intended any symbolic reference to the character and career of Piero de’ Medici. The criticism is in “Mornings in Florence” and it is followed by some fine pages on the “Judith”. The “Justice,” “Prudence,” and “Charity” of the Pollaiuolo brothers, belonging to the same series as the “Fortitude,” are also here; but after the “Fortitude” one does not look at them.
the Uffizi IV: Remaining Rooms
S. Zenobius—Piero della Francesca—Federigo da Montefeltro—Melozzo da Forli—The Tribuna—Raphael—Re-arrangement—The gems—The self-painted portraits—A northern room—Hugo van der Goes— Tommaso Portinari—The sympathetic Memling—Rubens riotous—Vittoria della Rovere—Baroccio—Honthorst—Giovanni the indiscreet—The Medusa—Medici miniatures—Hercules Seghers—The Sala di Niobe— Beautiful antiques.
Passing from the Sala di Botticelli through the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco and the first Tuscan rooms to the corridor, we come to the second Tuscan room, which is dominated by Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531), whose “Madonna and Child,” with “S. Francis and S. John the Evangelist”—No. 112—is certainly the favourite picture here, as it is, in reproduction, in so many homes; but, apart from the Child, I like far better the “S. Giacomo”—No. 1254—so sympathetic and rich in colour, which is reproduced in this volume. Another good Andrea is No. 93—a soft and misty apparition of Christ to the Magdalen. The Sodoma (1477-1549) on the easel—“S. Sebastian,” No. 1279—is very beautiful in its Leonardesque hues and romantic landscape, and the two Ridolfo Ghirlandaios (1483-1561) near it are interesting as representing, with much hard force, scenes in the story of S. Zenobius, of Florence, of whom we read in chapter II. In one he restores life to the dead child in the midst of a Florentine crowd; in the other his bier, passing the Baptistery, reanimates the dead tree. Giotto’s tower and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio are to be seen on the left. A very different picture is the Cosimo Rosselli, No. 1280 his, a comely “Madonna and Saints,” with a motherly thought in the treatment of the bodice.