Eternal City to which the greatest sons of Florence were ever the foremost to offer spiritual homage.

But it may be doubted whether the task itself was calculated to evoke his highest powers and most characteristic qualities. Neither in its subjects, its scale, nor the conditions under which it was accomplished, was it well suited to Sandro's genius, and while the frescoes contain noble passages and inimitable illustrations of his art, they cannot be regarded as among his masterpieces.

The frescoes were completed and the chapel opened in August 1483. Vasari tells how great renown, above that of all his fellows, in the work, Sandro gained in Rome, and what large sums he received and squandered there. Before settling again in his own city, he worked with Ghirlandajo upon the decorations of the Medici Villa at Volterra.

From 1480 to 1490 he was probably regarded as the greatest of living masters in Florence, and was busy with many commissions. To this period belong several of his greatest works, probably the "Birth of Venus," greatest of them all, with the Madonnas of the Pomegranate and of St. Barnabas, certainly the Lemmi frescoes and the Bardi Madonna. Venus and the frescoes are in the perfect manner which characterises his classical subjects. The others are marked by some decline in technical handling. But in saying this, one must add that Sandro's work is, in all periods, amazingly unequal, alike in execution and conception. One almost wishes indeed that Vasari's dictum, that he worked "when he was minded," was even more true than it appears to be. For Sandro's subtle, wilful, whimsical genius hardly ever expressed its true nature in mere rivalry with other artists, or in the service of ecclesiastical patrons. Yet his undisputed works are too few, hardly fifty in all, for us really to wish any away. Even the panels of the St. Barnabas predella, and the tondo of the Ambrosiana Madonna can hardly be spared.

We come now to the later and stormier years of his life and work—years dominated for him and for Florence by the figure of the Dominican Prior of San Marco. Savonarola had already been for a time in the city, but it was not till 1490 that he made it his home, and began to fill it, as he was soon to fill the whole world, with his prophetic denunciations of corruption both in the Republic and in the Church. 1492 saw not only the death of Lorenzo, and with him of the golden age in Florence, but the enthronement of a Borgia as Father of the Church. It was the end of an epoch. For a few years the prior held the city by the power and fascination of his inspired personality. He welcomed Charles VIII. of France as a new Cyrus, the sword of the Lord, restorer and protector of the liberties of the Republic; and when the king and his army became a public menace, it was he who bade them on their way. In 1496 he was at grips with the Pope. But two years later he had lost his hold upon Florence, and died upon the gallows amid the ferocious yells of the populace.

Sandro, the poet-painter, was less happy than Pico della Mirandola, the beautiful marvellous youth, who had died at the beginning of these troubles wrapped in a friar's cloak, the beloved follower of the lion-hearted preacher. His own brother Simone, with whom he lived, was one of the Prate's followers, and suffered exile for his cause. There can be no doubt that he himself was profoundly influenced by Savonarola. After the tragedy of May 23, 1498, his workshop became a rendezvous for the many unemployed artists who had sympathised with the lost cause; and during the long evenings, those men would talk together of the dead days when "Christ was King of Florence." Sandro lived on for more than a decade, through evil days. Ghirlandajo had died in the same year as Pico, when Charles had entered the city: in 1504 his own pupil Filippino preceded him to the grave. The Pollajuoli were dead; Leonardo was but an occasional visitor, while Michael Angelo was dividing his time between Florence and Rome. In 1503 Botticelli was one of the artists consulted as to the position which should be allotted to the great sculptor's "David." He still shared some small property with his brother, but his principal patrons were dead, the times were out of joint, and he was seeking consolation in the study of Dante. A folio volume of drawings by his hand, illustrating the Divine Comedy, remains uncompleted; whether owing to the death of him for whom it was intended, or of the artist himself, we cannot tell. Sandro died on May 17, 1510, and was buried in All Saints.

PLATE IV.—THE MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT, KNOWN ALSO AS THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN. (From the tondo in the Uffizi)

Probably painted about 1479, this is the most perfect example of Botticelli's circular pictures. The lines of the composition have been compared with those of the corolla of an open rose. The colour is rich and harmonious, and every detail exquisitely finished. The Virgin is still writing her song of the Magnificat, while the Child handles a symbolic pomegranate. The tondo is 44 inches in diameter.

PLATE IV.—THE MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT, KNOWN ALSO AS THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.

II

Botticelli was a Florentine in as intimate a sense as was Dante himself, and nowhere but in his native city can his work be fully appreciated. It is true that notable examples of his art have been carried away from time to time to other places, and that pictures attributed to him are still more widely scattered. New York has one of his most beautiful early works, the Madonna formerly belonging to Prince Chigi, for whose sale to America the unpatriotic Prince was heavily fined; St. Petersburg has an "Adoration of the Magi" belonging to Sandro's years in Rome. The "St. Sebastian" painted for Lorenzo has found its way to Berlin, where there is besides the Bardi Madonna; the badly damaged frescoes celebrating the wedding of Lorenzo Tornabuoni are at the head of a staircase in the Louvre; Rome has the Sixtine frescoes; Milan has two Madonnas; Bergamo has a panel; while our own National Gallery has five works, ranging from the earliest to the latest period.

But it is in Florence that all but a small minority of Sandro's masterpieces are to be found, and it is in Florence that one first really comes under the spell of the magician. There, in the Uffizi, in the Sala de Lorenzo Monaco, in the holy company of Fra Angelico's saints and angels, is Sandro's masterpiece, "The Birth of Venus." It is a large canvas painted in tempera:[1] but a horizontal join just apparent and running right across the picture, together with the medium used, gives it at first sight the appearance of being executed upon wood. It is in the pale cool colours of early morning, enriched by the heavy red of the robe which is about to embrace the wanderer's lovely form. There is a great sense of space behind her, over the grey sea. All about her the wind blows, making the light very clean and clear. She stands upon the edge of the great gleaming shell which has carried her, tilting it down with her weight as she leans forward to step ashore. Her figure, tall, slender, and quite central in the picture, feels the wind and light about it, but not shrinkingly. It floats and moves, yet without consciousness of movement, as it were a somnambulist moving across the sea. The pearly luminous quality of this living ethereal body, the heavy golden tresses of the