of his own day,
particularly by the Florentine Donatello, one of the geniuses of the
early Renaissance. Mantegna's studies of form in sculpture made him
an excellent draughtsman. Strangely enough, it was this very severe
artist who was, perhaps, the first to depict the charm of babyhood.
Often he draws his babes wrapped in swaddling clothes, with their
little fingers in their mouths, or else in the act of crying, with
their eyes screwed up tight, and their mouths wide open. Such a
combination of hard sculpturesque modelling with extreme tenderness
of feeling has a charm of its own.

We have now just one more picture of a sacred subject to look at, one
of the last that still retains much of the old beautiful religious
spirit of the Middle Ages. The painter of it, Sandro Botticelli, a
Florentine, in whom were blended the piety of the Middle Ages and the
intellectual life of the Renaissance, was a very interesting man, whose
like we shall not find among the painters of his own or later days.
He was born in 1446, in Florence, the city in Italy most alive to the
new ideas and the new learning. Its governing family, the Medici, of
whom you have doubtless read, surrounded themselves with a brilliant
society of accomplished men, and adorned their palaces with the finest
works of art that could be produced in their time. The best artists
from the surrounding country were attracted to Florence in the hope
of working for the family, who were ever ready to employ a man of
artistic gifts.

In such an atmosphere an original and alert person like Botticelli
could not fail to keep step with the foremost of his day. His fertile
fancy was charmed by the revived stories of Greek Mythology, and for
a time he gave himself up to the painting of pagan subjects such as
the Birth of Venus from the Sea, and the lovely allegory of Spring
with Venus, Cupid, and the Three Graces. He was one of the early artists
to break through the old wall of religious convention, painting frankly
mythological subjects, and he did them in an exquisite manner all his
own.

The true spirit of beauty dwelt within him, and all that he painted
and designed was graceful in form and beautiful in colour. If, for
instance, you look closely into the designs of the necks of dresses
in his pictures, you will find them delightful to copy and far superior
to the ordinary designs for such things made to-day. In his love of
beauty and his keen appreciation of the new possibi