FILIPPO LIPPI TO BRONZING 



An Adoration by Sandro Filipepi, called Botticelli Botticelli, 

 (Florence, Uffizi), has no processional movement, and the 

 peacock is the only life other than human represented. 

 The peacock's striking appearance and colour would 

 naturally win for it a place in painting, but its beauty 

 (and its voice) is made to point several excellent morals 

 in Physiologus. 



A picture of the same subject in the National 

 Gallery, formerly attributed to Filippino Lippi, but 

 given by the best modern opinion to Botticelli, is of 

 more interest for our purpose. There is a playful little 

 monkey, chained to a belt round its waist, which stands 

 up affectionately to attract its owner's attention. Another 

 sits in a crouching attitude with folded arms, looking up 

 at the stirring scene. It is noticeable how most of the 

 animals — ox, ass, dog, as well as monkey — keenly 

 observant with head on side, help to focus the attention 

 upon the central group. There are rabbits at the foot 

 of a pillar, and deer are seen stampeding into a wood. 



Botticelli was a careful observer of nature, as his 

 frescoes of the Life of Moses in the Sistine Chapel 

 especially show. " He lived," says Pater, "in a genera- 

 tion of naturalists, and he might have been a mere 

 naturalist amongst them. There are traces enough of 

 that alert sense of outward things which in the pic- 

 tures of that period fills the lawns with delicate living 



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