MAY 313 



concentric rings of strangely blended colour, still to be 

 found by those who search long enough for it in the long 

 grass of the Maremma. Just such a strange flower was 

 that mythology of the Italian Eenaissance which grew up 

 from the mixture of two traditions, two sentiments the 

 sacred and the profane. Classical story was regarded as 

 so much imaginative material to be received and assimi- 

 lated. It did not come into men's minds to ask curiously 

 of science concerning the origin of such story, its primary 

 form and import, its meaning for those who projected it. 

 The thing sank into their minds, to issue forth again with 

 all the tangle about it of mediaeval sentiment and ideas. 



'In the Doni Madonna in the Tribune of the Uffizi 

 Michael Angelo actually brings the pagan religion, and with 

 it the unveiled human form, the sleepy-looking fauns of 

 a Dionysiac revel, into the presence of the Madonna, as 

 simpler painters had introduced there other products of 

 the earth, birds or flowers ; while he has given to that 

 Madonna herself much of the uncouth energy of the older 

 and more primitive " Mighty Mother." ' 



Is it possible to see side by side more different 

 criticisms of the same picture ? And it is not only the 

 difference of a young woman and a scholarly man ; it 

 means the immense march the world has made altogether 

 in the understanding of its own evolution. 



To return to Mrs. Jameson. She runs on with her 

 criticisms through the sights of Florence. Most of the 

 pictures she admires are certainly not those that excite 

 the greatest admiration in these days. The name Botti- 

 celli is never once mentioned by her, any more than it 

 is thirty years later by George Eliot in her notes on 

 Florentine art in the diary published in her Life. Pater, 

 on the contrary, tells us that Sandro Botticelli is the only 

 contemporary mentioned, whether by accident or intention, 

 by Leonardo in his treatise on painting. 



