et gentleness which is
truly sublime. These qualities reach the highest grade in the
"Coronation of the Virgin" at the Convent of San Marco, and in the
picture at Pisa[8] where the Saviour is represented standing upright,
in the act of blessing with his right hand, while in the uplifted left
he holds a golden cup.

He is represented full face, in all his majesty, his features of an
exquisite sweetness and nobility,--a grand figure, which has all the
seduction of a vision, such as our Dominican alone could conceive and
design.

As he could, in a manner no one had ever done before, give to the
figure of the living Christ the expression of infinite goodness, ready
for sacrifice; so in his Crucifixions, instead of following the
example of his contemporaries, who depicted Christ already dead, with
marks of sorrow on His features, and contorted by the spasm of a
violent death; he represented Him living, calm and serene, conscious
of the sacrifice He completed, and full of joy in dying for man's
salvation.

The type of the Virgin, too, though its characteristic construction of
features, and short and receding chin, are derived from the Sienese
masters, especially from Lorenzetti, in Fra Angelico responds to an
artistic idealization chosen by him as approaching more the divinity
of her person. The flowing robes of the Virgin show her long and
refined hands, but beneath that mantle he draws no feminine figure nor
can one even guess at it. All the power of the artist is concentrated
in her face

umile in tanta gloria,
(humble in such great glory)

on which the artist has impressed such candour, and so lively an
expression of ineffable grace, that one is involuntarily moved to
devotion.

The divine child with its golden curls, full and sunny face, wide open
and sparkling eyes, is in the pictures at Cortona and Perugia depicted
with rosy fingers in the act of blessing; in the "Madonna della
Stella" He embraces His mother so closely that He almost hides Himself
in her bosom; in the great azure-surrounded tabernacle of the Linen
Guild, He is smiling; while in the fresco of the corridor at San
Marco, He has an ingenuous wondering gaze as He holds forth His little
hand,--an expression so natural that it shows a happy grafting of
ideal representation, on a conscientious and close study of the real.

Full of character, too, are the heads of his old people, with flowing
beards and severe aspect, and those of his saints and m