and the homage it is receiving. Close
by is a goldfinch unafraid; in the distance is a citied valley, with
a river winding in it; and down a neighbouring hill, on the top of
which the shepherds feed their flocks, comes the imposing procession
of the Magi. Joseph is more than commonly perplexed, and the disparity
between his own and his wife's age, which the old masters agreed to
make considerable, is more considerable than usual.

Both Gentile and Ghirlandaio chose a happy subject and made it happier;
Fra Angelico (for the third screen picture) chose a melancholy
subject and made it happy, not because that was his intention, but
because he could not help it. He had only one set of colours and one
set of countenances, and since the colours were of the gayest and the
countenances of the serenest, the result was bound to be peaceful and
glad. This picture is a large "Deposizione della Croce," an altar-piece
for S. Trinita. There is such joy in the painting and light in the
sky that a child would clap his hands at it all, and not least at
the vermilion of the Redeemer's blood. Fra Angelico gave thought to
every touch: and his beatific holiness floods the work. Each of these
three great pictures, I may add, has its original frame.

The room which leads from this one is much less valuable; but Fra
Bartolommeo's Vision of S. Bernard has lately been brought to an easel
here to give it character. I find this the Frate's most beautiful
work. It may have details that are a little crude, and the pointed nose
of the Virgin is not perhaps in accordance with the best tradition,
while she is too real for an apparition; but the figure of the kneeling
saint is masterly and the landscape lovely in subject and feeling. Here
too is Fra Bartolommeo's portrait of Savonarola, in which the reformer
is shown as personating S. Peter Martyr. The picture was not painted
from life, but from an earlier portrait. Fra Bartolommeo had some
reason to know what Savonarola was like, for he was his personal
friend and a brother in the same convent of S. Marco, a few yards
from the Accademia, across the square. He was born in 1475 and was
apprenticed to the painter Cosimo Rosselli; but he learned more from
studying Masaccio's frescoes at the Carmine and the work of Leonardo da
Vinci. It was in 1495 that he came under the influence of Savonarola,
and he was the first artist to run home and burn his studies from the
nude in response to the preacher's denunci