FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 357 



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. 



11. 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 vir- 

 gins, 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 - - theatre ? 



Not that even Sandro was able, according to Vasari's re- 

 port, 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 sub- 

 jects 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, declared that Matteo and Sandro 

 had erred gravely in that matter, and had fallen into grievous 

 heresy. 



" Now, whether this be true or not, let none expect the 

 judgment of that question from me : it shall suffice me to 

 note that the figures executed by Sandro in that work are en- 

 tirely worthy of praise ; and that the pains he took in depict- 

 ing those circles of the heavens must have been very great, to 

 say nothing of the angels mingled with the other figures, or 



