Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/201

1498] and cypress groves, and narrow paths lead down into fruitful valleys watered by clear streams.

The special event which Cosimo de' Medici wished to commemorate was the General Council, which had been removed from Ferrara to Florence in 1439, and the visit of the Greek Emperor, who had been magnificently entertained by him within these palace walls. Accordingly, in the first two kings we have portraits of Joseph, the venerable Patriarch of Constantinople, and of John Palæologus, a fine-looking, dark-bearded prince, wearing a coronet on his turban, and a flowered robe of gorgeous green and gold. In the youthful king on the white horse, with the blue cap and jewelled crown jauntily set on his curling locks, and the green laurel boughs about his bright young face, we recognise the boy Lorenzo, Piero de' Medici's eldest son, and the hope of all his noble house. Close beside him ride a princely escort, among whom are his grandfather, the aged Cosimo, on a white horse led by a youthful page, with his two sons, Piero and the handsome Giovanni, whose death, four years later, was the bitterest grief of his father's declining years. Marsilio Ficino and the painter himself mingle in the familiar throng of scholars and humanists. But the pageant does not end here. From the pomp and glory of earthly splendour we turn to the cradle of Bethlehem, and are given a glimpse of the unseen. This Benozzo has painted for us on the east wall of the Chapel, round the altar where Fra Filippo's Madonna adoring the Child-Christ hung of old. The background has changed, and instead of the olive-clad slopes and scarred heights of the Apennine we have the "divine forest"