Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/228

 182 NOTES AND QUERIES. [ 12 S.X.MAB. 11,1022. entitled ' La Cicta (Citta) della Vita,' is in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. A copy is, or was, in the Strozzi Library; the Ambrosian Library at Milan contains the only other known copy. In the National Gallery catalogue of 1921, p. 32, the compiler gives an accurate though concise account of the main portions of the picture, but in his reference to the " land- scape background showing the Arno and Florence left," he makes rather a serious error. In fact, the scene was described with much detail by that accomplished lady the late Miss Margaret Stokes, honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy and Associate of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, whom I met in Florence many years ago. She had a photograph of the " landscape background " to the left of the group of apostles round the Virgin's tomb, armed with which she determined to find out the point of view of the great artist, whoever he may have been. The results of her search are described and illustrated in a volume entitled ' Six Months in the Apennines,' published 1892. Sbt tells us how, starting from Fiesole, she crossed the bridge over the Mugnone, a picturesque tributary of the Arno, and walked uphill towards the Villa Salviati. Then, standing among the ruined terraces of an. ancient garden, she saw at her feet the very scene depicted by the painter " the wide horizon reaching from San Domenico and the Apennines beyond Monte Moro, Scala, and Monte Maggio, round the whole Val d'Arno to San Lorenzo and the northern boundary of Florence." She traced out all the details, and in her volume the scene is reproduced from the picture, and also from her own drawing, made at the time of her visit. The two views are surprisingly alike. The Arno is not visible. The Mugnone,. nowing with devious course from the immediate fore- ground towards Florence, has been narrowed and straightened somewhat. In the picture it is crossed by a bridge of three arches, where there is now one of a single span. The old walls of the city have been swept away, but various delightful buildings re- main almost unchanged, and of these Miss Stokes gives a list. I will only refer to two of them. On high ground to the extreme left stands the Badia of Fiesole, its fa$ade unfinished as in the fifteenth century. The villa that rises amid tall cypress and olive trees on the height above the Mugnone Beyond the bridge, is the house of Matteo Palmieri, author of the poem which inspired this great painting, and here Botticelli may have been his guest. Boccaccio makes this the abode of the tellers of the stories in his ' Decamerone ' during the plague of 1348. In 1892 it was the home of the widowed Lady Crawford and her daughters, and four years earlier it had been occupied for a short time by that illustrious personage her late Majesty Queen Victoria. PHILIP NORMAN. LAMBERT FAMILY. AT 6 S. x. 436, a query appears as to the family of Ralph Lambert, Bishop of Meath. It does not appear to have been answered. Having made some research as to the kinsfolk of this bishop, I venture to send the result to ' N. & Q.' as a contribution to Irish genealogy, repeating the question of your correspondent of 38 years ago - who was Robert Lambert, otherwise Robert Lambert Tate, father of Lady Annesley ? His wife was a descendant of the Lambert family, as will appear below, but he himself is described as Robert Lambert Tate in his marriage entry in 1750. There does not appear to be any connexion between this family and that of the Earls of Cavan, whose name is spelled Lambart. As will be seen later on, several references to this family in published pedigrees are erroneous. A note was published in * N. & Q.' (2 S. viii. 10), regarding the first known ancester, who was : The Rev. THOMAS LAMBERT, ordained priest by Theophilus, Bishop of Llandaff, March 15, 1625; Chaplain in H.M.'s Army; Vicar of Dromiskin 1633-61, and Vicar of Dunany, both in Co. Louth ; died 1661. Prerogative will proved Feb. 1661-2, having had four children : I. James Lambert. II. George, of whom immediately. I. Anne Lambert, m. Matthew Geering. II. Lambert, m. John Brunker. The younger son : GEORGE LAMBERT of Dundalk, Co. Louth, m. Alice, sister of the Right Rev. William Smyth, Bishop of Kilmore, and dau. of Capt. Ralph Smyth of Ballymacash, near i Lisburn, Co. Antrim, High Sheriff Co. his wife, and by her, who was buried at I Lisburn Cathedral, Aug. 16, 1715, had five sons and four daughters (order of age I uncertain) : I I. George Lambert of Downpatrick and
 * Antrim 1680, by Elizabeth Hawkesworth