and furniture, appropriate to
each successive situation. The whole is done with so much grace,
such simplicity of composition, and transparency of style,
corresponding to the _naif_ and superficial legend, that we feel a
perfect harmony between the artist's mind and the motives he was
made to handle. In this respect Bazzi's portion of the legend of S.
Benedict is more successful than Signorelli's. It was fortunate,
perhaps, that the conditions of his task confined him to
uncomplicated groupings, and a scale of colour in which white
predominates. For Bazzi, as is shown by subsequent work in the
Farnesina Villa at Rome, and in the church of S. Domenico at Siena,
was no master of composition; and the tone, even of his
masterpieces, inclines to heat. Unlike Signorelli, Bazzi felt a deep
artistic sympathy with female beauty; and the most attractive fresco
in the whole series is that in which the evil monk Florentius brings
a bevy of fair damsels to the convent. There is one group, in
particular, of six women, so delicately varied in carriage of the
head and suggested movement of the body, as to be comparable only to
a strain of concerted music. This is perhaps the painter's
masterpiece in the rendering of pure beauty, if we except his S.
Sebastian of the Uffizzi.

We tire of studying pictures, hardly less than of reading about
them! I was glad enough, after three hours spent among the frescoes
of this cloister, to wander forth into the copses which surround the
convent. Sunlight was streaming treacherously from flying clouds;
and though it was high noon, the oak-leaves were still a-tremble
with dew. Pink cyclamens and yellow amaryllis starred the moist
brown earth; and under the cypress-trees, where alleys had been cut
in former time for pious feet, the short firm turf was soft and
mossy. Before bidding the hospitable Padre farewell, and starting in
our waggonette for Asciano, it was pleasant to meditate awhile in
these green solitudes. Generations of white-stoled monks who had sat
or knelt upon the now deserted terraces, or had slowly paced the
winding paths to Calvaries aloft and points of vantage high above
the wood, rose up before me. My mind, still full of Bazzi's
frescoes, peopled the wilderness with grave monastic forms, and
gracious, young-eyed faces of boyish novices.

_MONTEPULCIANO_

I

For the sake of intending travellers to this, the lordliest of
Tuscan hill-towns, it will be well to state at once