Page:Phillpotts - The Grey Room (Macmillan, 1921).djvu/242

Rh their reliefs of dancing putti, familiar to her—the figures, I mean?"

Mary shook her head.

"Then it is certain that in your Italian wanderings you did not go to Prato. These groups of children dancing and blowing horns are very cleverly copied from Donatello's famous pulpit in the duomo. The design is carried on from the chairs to the footboard of the bed; but in their midst upon the footboard is let in this oval, easel-picture, painted on wood. It is faded, and the garlands have withered in so many hundred years, as well they might; but I can feel the dead color quite well, and I also know who painted it."

"Is it possible, signor—this faint ghost of a picture?"

"There exists no doubt at all. You see a little Pinturicchio. Note the gay bands of variegated patterns, the arabesques and fruits. Their hues have vanished, but their forms and certain mannerisms of the master are unmistakable. These dainty decorations were the sign manual of such quattrocento painters as Gozzoli and Pinturicchio; and to these men he, for whom these works of art were created, assigned the painting and adornment of the Vatican. We will come to him directly. It was for Michelangelo to make the creations of these artists mere colored bubbles and froth, when seen against the immensity and intellectual grandeur of his future masterpieces in the Sistine. But that was afterwards. We are concerned with the Pope for whom these chairs