ributed to Botticini, certainly not less lovely, are to be found
here: an Annunciation in the manner of his master Verrocchio, where Mary
sits, a delicate white girl, under a portico into which Gabriele has
stolen at sunset and found her at prayer; far away the tall cypresses
are black against the gold of the sky, and in the silence it almost
seems as though we might overhear the first Angelus and the very message
from the angel's lips. And if this is the Annunciation as it happened
long ago in Tuscany, in heaven the angels danced for sure, thinking of
our happiness, as Botticini knew; and so he has painted those seven
angels playing various instruments, while about their feet he has strewn
a song of songs. A S. Andrea and St. John Baptist in a great
fifteenth-century altar are also given to him, while below you may see
S. Andrea's crucifixion, the Last Supper, and Salome bringing the head
of St. John Baptist to Herodias at her supper with Herod. Some fine
della Robbia fragments and a beautiful relief of the Madonna and Child
by Mino da Fiesole are among the rest of the treasures of the
Collegiata, where you may find much that is merely old or curious. Other
churches there are in Empoli, S. Stefano, for instance, with a Madonna
and two angels, given to Masolino, and the marvellously lovely
Annunciation by Bernardo Rossellino; and S. Maria di Fuori, with its
beautiful loggia, but they will not hold you long. The long white road
calls you; already far away you seem to see the belfries of Florence
there, where they look into Arno, for the very water at your feet has
held in its bosom the fairest tower in the world, whiter than a lily,
rosier than the roses of the hills. With this dream, dream or
remembrance, in your heart, it is not Empoli with its brown country face
that will entice you from the way. And so, a little weary at last for
the shadows of the great city, it was with a sort of impatience I
trudged the dusty highway, eager for every turn of the road that might
bring the tall towers, far and far away though they were, into sight.
Somewhat in this mood, still early in the morning, I passed through
Pontormo, the birthplace of the sixteenth-century painter Jacopo
Carrucci, who has his name from this little town. Two or three pictures
that he painted, a lovely font of the fourteenth century in the Church
of S. Michele Arcangiolo, called for no more than a halt, for there,
still far away before me, were the hills, the hi