ssive
incidents of each canto on a single page in the old-fashioned way. In
the Paradise he gives a freer rein to his invention, and his designs
become less a literal illustration of the text than an imaginative
commentary on it. Almost all interest is centred on the persons of Dante
and Beatrice, who are shown us again and again in various phases of
ascending progress and rapt contemplation, often with little more than a
bare symbolical suggestion of the beatific visions presented to them.
Most of the drawings remain in pen outline only over a light preliminary
sketch with the lead stylus; all were probably intended to be finished
in colour, as a few actually are. To the period of these drawings
(1492-1497) would seem to belong the fine and finely preserved small
round of the "Virgin and Child with Angels" at the Ambrosiana, Milan,
and the famous "Calumny of Apelles" at the Uffizi, inspired no doubt by
some contemporary translation of the text by Lucian, and equally
remarkable by a certain feverish energy in its sentiment and
composition, and by its exquisite finish and richness of execution and
detail. Probably the small "St Augustine" in the Uffizi, the injured
"Judith with the head of Holofernes" in the Kaufmann collection at
Berlin, and the "Virgin and Child with St John," belonging to Mr
Heseltine in London, are works of the same period.

Simone di Mariano, a brother of Botticelli long resident at Naples,
returned to Florence in 1493 and shared Sandro's home in the Via Nuova.
He soon became a devoted follower of Savonarola, and has left a
manuscript chronicle which is one of the best sources for the history of
the friar and of his movement. Sandro himself seems to have remained
aloof from the movement almost until the date of the execution of
Savonarola and his two followers in 1498. At least there is clear
evidence of his being in the confidence and employ of Lorenzo di
Pierfrancesco so late as 1496 and 1497, which he could not possibly have
been had he then been an avowed member of the party of the Piagnoni. It
was probably the enforced departure of Lorenzo from Florence in 1497
that brought to a premature end the master's great undertaking on the
illustration of Dante. After Lorenzo's return, following on the
overthrow and death of Savonarola in 1498, we find no trace of any
further relations between him and Botticelli, who by that time would
seem to have become a declared devotee of the friar's memory and an