rks executed for
Lorenzo. In the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, in Florence, is a Pieta,
with small figures, by this master: this is a very beautiful work. For
different houses in various parts of the city Sandro painted many
pictures of a round form, with numerous figures of women undraped. Of
these there are still two examples at Castello, a villa of the Duke
Cosimo,--one representing the birth of Venus, who is borne to earth by
the Loves and Zephyrs; the second also presenting the figure of Venus
crowned with flowers by the Graces: she is here intended to denote the
Spring, and the allegory is expressed by the painter with extraordinary
grace."

Our young Reformer enters, it seems, on a very miscellaneous course of
study; the Coronation of Our Lady; St. Sebastian; Pallas in
vine-leaves; and Venus,--without fig-leaves. Not wholly Calvinistic, Fra
Filippo's teaching seems to have been! All the better for the boy--being
such a boy as he was: but I cannot in this lecture enter farther into my
reasons for saying so.

191. Vasari, however, has shot far ahead in telling us of this picture
of the Spring, which is one of Botticelli's completest works. Long
before he was able to paint Greek nymphs, he had done his best in
idealism of greater spirits; and, while yet quite a youth, painted, at
Castello, the Assumption of Our Lady, with "the patriarchs, the
prophets, the apostles, the evangelists, the martyrs, the confessors,
the doctors, the virgins, and the hierarchies!"

Imagine this subject proposed to a young, (or even old) British Artist,
for his next appeal to public sensation at the Academy! But do you
suppose that the young British artist is wiser and more civilized than
Lippi's scholar, because his only idea of a patriarch is of a man with a
long beard; of a doctor, the M.D. with the brass plate over the way; and
of a virgin, Miss ---- of the ---- theater?

Not that even Sandro was able, according to Vasari's report, to conduct
the entire design himself. The proposer of the subject assisted him; and
they made some modifications in the theology, which brought them both
into trouble--so early did Sandro's innovating work begin, into which
subjects our gossiping friend waives unnecessary inquiry, as follows.

"But although this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have
put envy to shame, yet there were found certain malevolent and
censorious persons who, not being able to affix any other blame to the
work,