Page:Peter Whiffle (1922).djvu/184

 Leaving David behind us, we walked down the long, marble, fourteenth century stairway of the Palazzo del Podesta, into the magnificent court embellished with the armorial bearings of the old chief magistrates, out to the Via del Procónsolo, on through the winding streets to the Palazzo Riccardi, where Peter again paused before the frescoes of Benozzo Gozzoli. The Gifts of the Magi is the general title but Gozzoli, according to a pleasant custom of his epoch, has painted the Medici on a hunting expedition, the great Lorenzo on a white charger, with a spotted leopard at its heels, falcons on the wrists of his brilliant attendants, a long train of lovely boys, in purple and mulberry and blue and green and gold, the colours as fresh, perhaps, as the day they were painted. The most beautiful room in the world, Peter exclaimed, this little oratory about the size of a cubicle at Oxford, painted by candlelight, for until recently, there was no window in the room, and I believed him. I am not sure but, belike, I believe him still. Then Peter loved the walk in that gallery which connects the Pitti Palace with the Uffizi, a long narrow gallery which runs over the shops of the Ponte Vecchio (was ever another bridge so richly endowed with artistic and commercial interest?), where hang the old portraits of the families who have reigned in Florence, and some others. Quaint old canvases, they are, by artists long forgotten and of people no longer remembered, but more interesting to Peter and me