lies in his gift for expressing not beauty but the
life of his time, the fifteenth century in Florence, which lives still
in all his work. Consider, then, the bright facile mediocre work of
Benozzo Gozzoli, not at its best, in the Campo Santo of Pisa, remember
how in the dark chapel of the Medici palace he lights up the place
almost as with a smile, in the gay cavalcade that winds among the hills.
There is much fancy there, much observation too; here a portrait, there
a gallant fair head, and the flowers by the wayside. Well, it is in much
the same way that Ghirlandajo has painted here in the choir of S. Maria
Novella. He has seen the fashions, he has noted the pretty faces of the
women, he has watched the naive homely life of the Medici ladies, for
instance, and has painted not his dreams about Madonna, but his dreams
of Vanna Tornabuoni, of Clarice de' Medici, and the rest. And he was
right; almost without exception his frescoes are the most interesting
and living work left in Florence. He has understood or divined that one
cannot represent exactly that which no longer exists; and it is to
represent something with exactitude that he is at work. So he contents
himself very happily with painting the very soul of his century. It is a
true and sincere art this realistic, unimpassioned, impersonal work of
Ghirlandajo's, and in its result, for us at any rate, it has a certain
largeness and splendour. Consider this "Birth of the Virgin." It is full
of life and homely observation. You see the tidy dusted room where St.
Anne is lying on the bed, already, as in truth she was, past her youth,
but another painter would have forgotten it. She is just a careful
Florentine housewife, thrifty too, not flurried by her illness, for she
has placed by her bedside, all ready for her need, two pomegranates and
some water. Then, again, they are going to wash the little Mary. She
lies quite happily sucking her fingers in the arms of her nurse, the
basin is in the middle of the floor, a servant has just come in briskly,
no doubt as St. Anne has always insisted, and pours the water quickly
into the vessel. It is not difficult to find all sorts of faults, of
course, as the critics have not hesitated to do. That perspective, for
instance, how good it is: almost as good as Verrocchio's work,--and
those dancing _angiolini_; yes, Verrocchio might have thought of them
himself. But the lady in the foreground, how unmoved she seems; it is as
though the