n review in memory none stands
out as those other two I have named. Perhaps Botticelli would win
again, with his "Birth of Venus". Were the Leonardo finished ... but
it is only a sketch. Luca Signorelli's wild flowers in No. 74 seem to
abide with me as vividly and graciously as anything; but they are but a
detail and it is a very personal predilection. Perhaps the great exotic
work painted far away in Belgium--the Van der Goes triptych--is the
most memorable; but to choose an alien canvas is to break the rules of
the game. Is it perhaps the unfinished Leonardo after all? If not, and
not the Botticelli, it is beyond question that lovely adoring Madonna,
so gentle and sweet, against the purest and bluest of Tuscan skies,
which is attributed to Filippino Lippi: No. 1354.

CHAPTER IX

The Uffizi II: The First Six Rooms

Lorenzo Monaco--Fra Angelico--Mariotto Albertinelli turns
innkeeper--The Venetian rooms--Giorgione's death--Titian--Mantegna
uniting north and south--Giovanni Bellini--Domenico
Ghirlandaio--Michelangelo--Luca Signorelli--Wild flowers--Leonardo
da Vinci--Paolo Uccello.

The first and second rooms are Venetian; but I am inclined to think
that it is better to take the second door on the left--the first Tuscan
salon--and walking straight across it come at once to the Salon of
Lorenzo Monaco and the primitives. For the earliest good pictures
are here. Here especially one should remember that the pictures
were painted never for a gallery but for churches. Lorenzo Monaco
(Lawrence the Monk, 1370-c. 1425), who gives his name to this room,
was a monk of the Camaldolese order in the Monastery of the Angeli,
and was a little earlier than Fra Angelico (the Angelic Brother),
the more famous painting monk, whose dates are 1387-1455. Lorenzo
was influenced by Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto's godson, friend, pupil, and
assistant. His greatest work is this large Uffizi altar-piece--he
painted nothing but altar-pieces--depicting the Coronation of the
Virgin: a great gay scene of splendour, containing pretty angels who
must have been the delight of children in church. The predella--and
here let me advise the visitor never to overlook the predellas, where
the artist often throws off formality and allows his more natural
feelings to have play, almost as though he painted the picture for
others and the predella for himself--is peculiarly interesting. Look,
at the left, at the death of an old Saint attended by monks and nuns,
wh