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The principal magnets that draw people here, no doubt, are the Fra Angelicos and Botticelli's "Primavera"; but in five at least of the rooms there is not an uninteresting picture, while the collection is so small that one can study it without fatigue no little matter after the crowded Uffizi and Pitti.
Dante's picture Sir John Hawkwood Ancestor and Descendant The Pazzi Conspiracy Squeamish Montesecco Giuliano de' Medici dies Lorenzo's escape Vengeance on the Pazzi Botticelli's cartoon High Mass Luca della Robbia Michelangelo nearing the end The Miracles of Zenobius East and West meet in splendour Marsilio Ficino and the New Learning Beautiful glass.
And yet, the more you come to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is no mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon them by which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you will like this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that quaint design of Botticelli's a more direct inlet into the Greek temper than the works of the Greeks themselves even of the finest period.
The Prince was not the only guest; there was a slender, flaxen-haired girl from New York dressed after Botticelli's Judith, an artillery captain as Lorenzo dei Medici, and another man, a Roman, in the grey of the order of San Francesco. "Poppa left for Monte this morning," Mamie explained over the soup.
No blood, if you please. Therefore, in Botticelli's Judith, nothing but the essentials are insisted on; the rest we instantly imagine, but it is not there to be sensed. The panel is in a tremor.
Such was the aspect of the Sistine Chapel when Michelangelo began his great work. Perugino's three frescoes on the west wall were afterwards demolished to make room for his Last Judgment. The two frescoes on the east wall are now poor pictures by very inferior masters; but the twelve Scripture histories and Botticelli's twenty-eight Popes remain from the last years of the fifteenth century.
And finally there were Botticelli's hands, so carefully and delicately painted, so full of life, wantoning so to say in a free atmosphere, now joining, caressing, and even, as it were, speaking, the whole evincing such intense solicitude for gracefulness that at times there seems to be undue mannerism, though every hand has its particular expression, each varying expression of the enjoyment or pain which the sense of touch can bring.
In connection with the peculiar type of melancholy exhibited on the face of Botticelli's Madonna, it will be of interest to refer to the work of Francia. The two artists were, in some points, kindred spirits; both felt the burden of life's mystery and sorrow. Francia, as we have seen, imbibed from the works of Perugino something of the spirit of mysticism common to the Umbrian school.
It was by Botticelli's hand that the greater painter sent a letter to Lorenzo from a duchess friend who was also his patron. This was in Angelo's youth; in Botticelli's old age. All his life was a drama of morbid seeking after the unattainable, and finally he became so poor and helpless that in his old age he would have starved had Lorenzo de' Medici not taken care of him.
Botticelli's noble frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are apt to be overlooked because of Michael Angelo's 'sublime work' on the ceiling. There has been a revival of Botticelli's renown within late years, partly due to the new interest in the earlier Italian painters which Mr Browning has done something to stimulate.
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