m. He has worked out in them a distinct and peculiar type, definite
enough in his own mind, for he has painted it over and over again,
sometimes one might think almost mechanically, as a pastime during that
dark period when his thoughts were so heavy upon him. Hardly any
collection of note is without one of these circular pictures, into which
the attendant angels depress their heads so naively. Perhaps you have
sometimes wondered why those peevish-looking Madonnas, conformed to no
acknowledged or obvious type of beauty, attract you more and more, and
often come back to you when the Sistine Madonna and the virgins of Fra
Angelico are forgotten. At first, contrasting them with those, you may
have thought that there was even something in them mean or abject, for
the abstract lines of the face have little nobleness and the colour is
wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the
"Desire of all nations," is one of those who are neither for God nor
for his enemies; and her choice is on her face. The white light on it is
cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the
ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness
of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious
child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet
look of devotion which men have never been able altogether to love, and
which still makes the born saint an object almost of suspicion to his
earthly brethren. Once, indeed, he guides her hand to transcribe in a
book the words of her exaltation, the _Ave_ and the _Magnificat_, and
the _Gaude Maria_, and the young angels, glad to rouse her for a moment
from her dejection, are eager to hold the inkhorn and support the book;
but the pen almost drops from her hand, and the high cold words have no
meaning for her, and her true children are those others, in the midst of
whom, in her rude home, the intolerable honour came to her, with that
look of wistful inquiry on their irregular faces which you see in
startled animals--gipsy children, such as those who, in Apennine
villages, still hold out their long brown arms to beg of you, but on
Sundays become _enfants du choeur_ with their thick black hair nicely
combed and fair white linen on their sunburnt throats.

What is strangest is that he carries this sentiment into classical
subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the Uffizi, of
Venus rising from the sea,