long hair that hangs heavily against the wind, which with one hand she holds, while she lays the other dreamily on her breast, these are in the most perfect harmony with that flower-like immortal wistfulness which Sandro has put into her face. In striking contrast with this sea-born vision of Love, this strange visitant from an unknown world, stands the comparatively prosaic maiden who welcomes her and is about to wrap her in a rich mantle. This earth maiden, the representative of the Spring, in her pale gown sprigged with cornflowers, and her long plaits of dark hair, is garlanded, like the goddess in "Pallas and the Centaur," with olive branches. The curves of the mantle, which she holds out against the boisterous wind, make a delicious line that balances that of the "Venus." After the figure of the goddess, however, who really is no Venus, but rather the Muse of Sandro's art, the ideal of his aspirations—after her figure, the interest of the picture lies in the intricate whirl of living lines, of dark wings, pale limbs, and delicately coloured scarfs, with which Botticelli has symbolised the winds of Spring, stirring up the water with their feet and blowing the voyager on her way.

PLATE V.—THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE. (From the tondo in the Uffizi)

A companion to the earlier tondo, this was probably not painted before Sandro's return from Rome, about the same time as the "Venus." It is broader in treatment and of more sombre colour than the "Magnificat." The eyes of the Child, who raises his hand in blessing, look straight out of the picture, in marked contrast to the attitude of the earlier work. There is a striking resemblance in many details, but the two pictures are quite distinct in character and feeling. This tondo measures 56 inches.

PLATE V.—THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE.

Any attempt to convey by description the mystical significance of this decorative design would obviously be idle. Yet to miss that significance is to miss all. Regarded as the mere illustration of some verse of Politian's, or of Homer's hymn, the picture is open to endless criticism—the figure of Venus is out of drawing; the promontories, waves, and laurel trees are bare shorthand notes. It is when the spirit in the onlooker responds to the spirit entangled in the magical lines and tones and colours of the painting, that its indefinable beauty dawns upon him. You must love Botticelli's drawing if you are to understand it.

In the same room hangs a smaller picture, very different in style, an "Adoration of the Kings"—a masterpiece too, and worthy of the closest study, but worlds removed from the "Venus." It is very highly and deliberately finished, and unlike its companion, belongs to the years before Sandro worked in Rome. It contains portraits of the Medicis and, more important to us, of the painter himself.[2] Detached from the others he stands in the right-hand corner, under the peacock, wrapped in an orange mantle, gazing at us over his shoulder—a tall figure of a man with powerful enigmatic face. The composition of this picture, with its thirty figures and varied colouring, has been often and rightly praised. In spite of the clear individualisation of personalities and the elaboration of magnificent accessories, the unity and balance of design with its semi-circular grouping and the nobility and distinction of its lines, are well kept. If it was painted in rivalry with Ghirlandajo, for whose work it was at one time mistaken, it is marked by an intensity of realisation foreign to that worthy painter.

These two pictures of the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco, the "Venus" and the "Adoration," are representative of the two realms in which Sandro worked; the one, of pure imagination, wedding Platonic ideas with a new conception of the possibilities of decorative art; the other, of the patrons and atmosphere of fifteenth-century Florence. Very few of his pictures belong exclusively to the one realm or the other, but to one or other belongs the influence which predominates in any one. Of the first class are notably the remaining works painted with classical motives. Foremost among these is the "Spring" of the Florence Academy, with its inimitable group of the Graces dancing in a marvellous rhythm of flowing intertwining lines, somewhat over-mannered, it is true, and with feeling a little forced, but yet of quite unique grace and intensity of conception. Much wordy debate over the literary signification of this painting has come between the vital meaning of the design and those who behold it. We may find suggestions in Lucian or Alberti, in Politian's or Lorenzo's verses, but as a work of art it derives only secondarily from any of these. It is a representation of beauty in a whimsical and even bizarre group of figures gleaming whitely under the dark trees between whose trunks shines the pale serene sky, while the grass through which their delicately modelled feet are moving is rich and full of flowers. This picture, in which the figures are nearly life size, while it has much in common with the "Venus," belongs to an earlier period, and is probably nearer in date to the "Adoration" already described, painted when the artist was about thirty-four years old.

Some two years later he painted his "Pallas and the Centaur." The figure of the goddess, beautiful as it is, lacks something of the vitality and motion of the "Spring" and the "Venus"; perhaps the artist has given too much thought to the lovely wreathing of the symbolic olive boughs about her breast and arms and head; but on the other hand, the melancholy Centaur whom she leads by his heavy forelock is one of the most perfect expressions of his art. It is among the peculiar qualities of Sandro that he makes one feel, in looking at this picture, that it is one's own hand which grasps those dark curling locks; just as in the "Venus" one is conscious of the light and the wind falling upon one's own body. Behind the Centaur rises a mass of sculptured overhanging rocks, beyond lies a boat in the bay. Almost always there is some note of vista and distance in Botticelli's pictures. The colour of this large canvas is very pleasing. Pallas is clad in a loose green mantle and an under-robe of white adorned with the triple rings of the Medici; she is wreathed with olive, her auburn hair blows out behind her, and her feet are covered with a sort of orange buskin. Nothing could be finer than the contrast she presents with the dark, wild, pathetic figure of "Chaos and Old Night" whom she is leading captive.

The most beautiful of Sandro's earlier works, a little panel only 10 inches by 8, representing the return of Judith to Bethulia after the slaying of Holofernes, is in the Uffizi. It has suffered from repainting, the figure of Judith having been shortened and its movement limited by the drawing back of the right foot at least half an inch, so that it does not now correspond with that of Abra following so close behind with her horrid burden; but in spite of this, it retains a wonderful joyous serenity of light, line, and colour, and the same windy clearness of air and buoyant rhythmical movement as distinguishes the "Venus." The figure of Judith is so closely related to that of the Fortezza, painted for the Pollajuoli in 1470, and exhibited in the same gallery, that it may well belong to the years immediately succeeding it, when Sandro was between twenty-six and thirty years of age. The companion panel of Holofernes, though interesting, is much inferior as a design and is somewhat comic in its frank and