Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/134

106 the same bright seraphin, with flower-like faces and rainbow wings, the same shadowless draperies and glories of burnished gold. But the Madonna is throned at her Son's side in a blaze of light, and angels dance on the rosy clouds, and swing censers or play the harp and organ at her feet.

Another subject which Fra Angelico often repeated was the Last Judgment. One version which he painted for Lorenzo Monaco's convent of the Angeli is now in the Accademia; another passed from the collection of Cardinal Fesch into that of Lord Dudley, and is now at Berlin. These pictures show at once the limitations and the rare qualities of the saintly Dominican's art. The passions and emotions of ordinary humanity lay beyond the guarded precincts of convent life and stirred no interest in his breast. He would have had no compassion for Francesca's sorrow or Paolo's love, and his rendering of the solemn Dies Iræ, with the grotesque little demons dragging sinners down to hell-fires, fails to inspire us with either pity or terror. But Dante's dream of the happy spirits who circle hand in hand on the flowery meadows of Paradise has never been more perfectly realised than in Angelico's pictures. This is the Urbs beata of the mediæval poet's song, the heavenly Jerusalem where the walls are made of jasper, and the light streams from the golden gates. There the leaf never withers and the flowers never fade. There none are sick and none are sad. The mourner's tears are dried, and the lost and loved are found again. There friends long parted clasp hands once more, and angels welcome holy souls to their embrace; while lilies and roses, daisies and bluebells, blossom in the shining grass,