lities of painting
he was a true child of the Renaissance, though he had not the joyous
nature so characteristic of the time. Moreover, as I have said, he
retained the old sweet religious spirit, and clothed it with new forms
of beauty in his sacred paintings. There is something pathetic about
many of these--the Virgin, while she nurses the Infant Christ, seems
to foresee all the sorrow in store for her, and but little of the joy.
The girl angels who nestle around her in so many of his pictures, have
faces of exquisite beauty, but in most of them, notwithstanding the
fact that they are evidently painted from Florentine girls of the time,
Botticelli has infused his own personal note of sadness.

At the end of the fifteenth century, when Botticelli was beginning
to grow old, great events took place in Florence. Despite the revival
of learning, we are told by historians that the Church was becoming
corrupt and the people more pleasure-loving and less interested in
the religious life. Then it was that Savonarola, a friar in one of
the convents of Florence, all on fire with enthusiasm for purity and
goodness, began to awaken the hearts of the people with his burning
eloquence, and his denunciations of their worldliness and the deadness
of the Church. He prophesied a great outpouring of the wrath of God,
and in particular that the Church would be purified and renewed after
a quick and terrible punishment. The passion, the conviction, the
eloquence of Savonarola for a time carried the people of Florence away,
and Botticelli with them, so that he became one of the 'mourners' as
the preacher's followers were called.

At this time many persons burnt in great 'bonfires of vanities' all
the pretty trinkets that they possessed. But when the prophecies did
not literally come true, and the people began to be weary of
Savonarola's vehemence, we read that a reaction set in, which afforded
a chance for his enemies within the Church, whom he had lashed with
his tongue from the pulpit of the cathedral. They contrived to have
him tried for heresy and burnt in the market-place of Florence, in
the midst of the people who so shortly before had hung on every word
that fell from his lips.

This tragedy entirely overwhelmed Botticelli, who thenceforward
almost abandoned painting, and gave up his last years to the practices
of the religious life. It was at this time, says Mr. Horne, and under
the influence of these emotions, in the year 1500, w