ghastly violence; it was evidently painted while the artist was under the influence of the Pollajuoli.

PLATE VI.—THE ANNUNCIATION. (From the panel in the Uffizi)

This interesting picture is probably only in part the work of Botticelli. It seems to have been produced in his workshop about 1490 for the monks of Cestello. It is less harmonious and convincing in colour than Sandro's masterpieces, but is redeemed by the living movement expressed in the figure of Gabriel, which is usually regarded as his work. This figure is related to two others of his angels, one in the Ambrosiana tondo, the other in the predella of the "Coronation."

PLATE VI.—THE ANNUNCIATION.

There are two other masterpieces which belong to this division of Sandro's work, but they are neither of them in Florence. The beautiful, but sadly mutilated fresco of Giovanna (Albizzi) Tornabuoni, with Venus and the Graces, long hidden under coats of whitewash in a villa near Fiesole, was discovered in 1873 by Dr. Lemmi, then its owner, and carefully cleaned and removed. In 1882 it was acquired by the French government. In spite of the blank patches, and the great cracks which break its surface, this remains one of the most gracious and captivating of Sandro's works. It has the joyousness of flower-like colour, the breadth and simplicity of treatment, and withal the virginal quality which, in his best moments, were characteristic of the artist. The masterly contrast between the flowing moving lines and strange symbolic faces of the four visitors, and the upright demure girl with the kerchief on her head who receives them is very striking. The second fresco, of Giovanna's husband, Lorenzo, introduced into the company of the Liberal Arts and Philosophy, is less interesting. A third fell to pieces immediately after discovery. All were painted about the year 1486, probably a little later than the "Venus."

The remaining picture of this group is the so-called "Mars and Venus" in our own National Gallery, a long panel designed to stand above a doorway, and probably painted about the same time as the more famous "Spring." As in the case of that picture, its subject has been a matter of much ingenious conjecture. Some commentators see in the two figures portrait studies of Giuliano dei Medici, and of Simonetta Vespucci, and conceive that the sleeping Giuliano is dreaming of his lady, formerly clad in all the panoply of Pallas, but now disarmed by laughing loves. It is obvious, however, that the armour belongs to the man who lies asleep leaning upon some of it. The little satyrs with their roguish baby faces, curly goats' flanks, and budding horns, who play with the warrior's lance and helm, blow the conch in his ear, and wriggle through his breastplate, seem to have been suggested by a passage in Lucian describing the marriage of Alexander. But the subject of the picture need not now detain us, nor need the long outstretched figure of the dreaming warrior; its charm is in the exquisitely realised youthful grace of the lady in her long white robe, leaning upon a crimson cushion with the dark grove of laurels behind her. She is of the same spiritual family as the Graces, and the central figure of Venus in the "Spring." She may indeed be Simonetta, perhaps Simonetta already deceased, of whom her lover dreams; but, whatever her name, her face and figure, and from her the whole picture, is radiant with that singleness and intensity of artistic conception, which gives to some of Sandro's pictures the power of suggesting a sort of immortality of life. And they have a surcharge of meaning, an enigmatic quality like that of life itself, which is seen in no other pictures of the time with the exception of Leonardo's—and in Sandro's the enigma suggests no sinister solution. His women are creations of passionate love and human intimacy, but withal they have an abiding quality which only a very reverent and chaste lover, a lover not unlike Pico della Mirandola, could have adored and chosen. The date of this picture is quite uncertain. The lady's face is curiously related to the faces in the Lemmi fresco described above.

[1] Though his contemporaries were beginning to use the new medium of oil for their easel paintings, Botticelli adhered to tempera, or distemper, in which yolk of egg was generally the vehicle employed. Nearly all his pictures, except, of course, his frescoes, are upon wood. The "Pallas and the Centaur," "Venus," and "Nativity" of 1500, are however on prepared canvas.

[2] There are two separate portraits by Sandro which are full of character and interest: the portrait of a youth in our National Gallery, and of a man holding a medal in the Florence Academy. Other portraits, such as those of Giuliano dei Medici at Berlin and Bergamo, and of Simonetta, may have come from his workshop, but are not now numbered among the master's own works.

III

We must turn to the principal pictures in Botticelli's other, and as I think, inferior manner, indicating first, however, the links which exist between the two groups.

The first of these is the "Calumny," painted to the description given in Alberti's Treatise on Painting of a picture by Apelles. It is a comparatively small panel, 2 feet by 3, containing ten figures, and an elaborate background of sculptured marble arches, literally covered with friezes and bas-reliefs. It belongs to Sandro's later years, and is marred by a busy and somewhat theatrical violence. One can hardly look without laughing at the helpless boyish figure of Innocence, with crossed ankles and folded hands, dragged along dancingly by the ladylike Calumny; and unfortunately, these form the central motive. Their poses mar a little the detached nude figure of Truth, standing on the extreme left with arm upraised and noble face lifted to heaven. She is intimately related to the figure of Venus Anadyomene—but here she seems tragically out of place. The fancy lavished upon the bas-reliefs bears witness to Sandro's whimsical imagination even in the midst, as we may suppose, of the dark days when Florence was full of the false spirit suggested in this panel.

With the "Calumny" I must mention, though only in passing, the several panels of the life of Saint Zenobius, two of which are in the collection of Mrs. Ludwig Mond. Less theatrical, but often more violent in manner than the "Calumny," and not less definitely of the genre character of illustration, they contain some pleasing colour, geranium reds, soft greys, and mauves, blues, and much white. These, with the illustrative panels from the stories of Virginia and Lucretia, were probably painted after 1490, for wedding chests.

A more important group of pictures comprises the six—including the "Adoration" already described—which centre in the three figures of the Holy Family, whether they be called Adorations or Nativities; and the Sixtine frescoes. All these pictures are full of figures, most of them are set in large, carefully studied landscapes, which seem to challenge Leonardo's assertion that Botticelli was indifferent to this part of his art. The two most pleasing compositions, after the aforesaid "Adoration"—the "Adoration" now in St. Petersburg, and the "Scenes from the Life of Moses" in the