ations. Three years later,
when Savonarola was an object of hatred and the convent of S. Marco
was besieged, the artist was with him, and he then made a vow that if
he lived he would join the order; and this promise he kept, although
not until Savonarola had been executed. For a while, as a monk, he
laid aside the brush, but in 1506 he resumed it and painted until
his death, in 1517. He was buried at S. Marco.

In his less regenerate days Fra Bartolommeo's greatest friend was the
jovial Mariotto Albertinelli, whose rather theatrical Annunciation
hangs between a number of the monk's other portraits, all very
interesting. Of Albertinelli I have spoken earlier. Before leaving,
look at the tiny Ignoto next the door--a Madonna and Child, the child
eating a pomegranate. It is a little picture to steal.

In the next room are a number of the later and showy painters, such as
Carlo Dolci, Lorenzo Lippi, and Francesco Furini, all bold, dashing,
self-satisfied hands, in whom (so near the real thing) one can take
no interest. Nothing to steal here.

Returning through Sala Prima we come to the Sala del Perugino and
are among the masters once more--riper and richer than most of
those we have already seen, for Tuscan art here reaches its finest
flower. Perugino is here and Botticelli, Fra Bartolommeo and Leonardo,
Luca Signorelli, Fra Lippo Lippi and Filippino Lippi. And here is a
Masaccio. The great Perugino Assumption has all his mellow sunset calm,
and never was a landscape more tenderly sympathetic. The same painter's
Deposition hangs next, and the custodian brings a magnifying glass
that the tears on the Magdalen's cheek may be more closely observed;
but the third, No. 53, Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, is finer,
and here again the landscape and light are perfect. For the rest,
there is a Royal Academy Andrea and a formal Ghirlandaio.

And now we come to Botticelli, who although less richly represented
in numbers than at the Uffizi, is for the majority of his admirers
more to be sought here, by reason of the "Primavera" allegory,
which is the Accademia's most powerful magnet. The Botticellis are
divided between two rooms, the "Primavera" being in the first. The
first feeling one has is how much cooler it is here than among the
Peruginos, and how much gayer; for not only is there the "Primavera,"
but Fra Lippo Lippi is here too, with a company of angels helping
to crown the Virgin, and a very sweet, almost transparent, li