Roman soldiers.

Such was the Grassina procession. It passed slowly and solemnly through
the town from the hill and up the hill again; and not soon shall I
forget the mournfulness of the music, which nothing of tawdriness in
the constituents of the procession itself could rid of impressiveness
and beauty. One thing is certain--all processions, by day or night,
should first descend a hill and then ascend one. All should walk to
melancholy strains. Indeed, a joyful procession becomes an impossible
thought after this.

And then I sank luxuriously into a corner seat in the waiting tram,
and, seeking for the return journey's thirty centimes, found that
during the proceedings my purse had been stolen.

CHAPTER XVIII

S. Marco

Andrea del Castagno--"The Last Supper"--The stolen Madonna--Fra
Angelico's frescoes--"Little Antony"--The good archbishop--The
Buonuomini--Savonarola--The death of Lorenzo the Magnificent--Pope
Alexander VI--The Ordeal by Fire--The execution--The S. Marco
cells--The cloister frescoes--Ghirlandaio's "Last Supper"--Relics of
old Florence--Pico and Politian--Piero di Cosimo--Andrea del Sarto.

From the Accademia it is but a step to S. Marco, across the Piazza, but
it is well first to go a little beyond that in order to see a certain
painting which both chronologically and as an influence comes before
a painting that we shall find in the Museo S. Marco. We therefore
cross the Piazza S. Marco to the Via d'Arrazzieri, which leads into
the Via 27 Aprile, [7] where at a door on the left, marked A, is an
ancient refectory, preserved as a picture gallery: the Cenacolo di
S. Apollonia, all that is kept sacred of the monastery of S. Apollonia,
now a military establishment. This room is important to students of
art in containing so much work of Andrea del Castagno (1390-1457),
to whom Vasari gives so black a character. The portrait frescoes are
from the Villa Pandolfini (previously Carducci), and among them are
Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante--who is here rather less ascetic than
usual--none of whom the painter could have seen. There is also a very
charming little cupid carrying a huge peacock plume. But "The Last
Supper" is the glory of the room. This work, which belongs to the
middle of the fifteenth century, is interesting as a real effort at
psychology. Leonardo makes Judas leave his seat to ask if it is he
that is meant--that being the dramatic moment chosen by this prince
of painters: Castagno call