Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/229

1488] the pines and cypresses of the garden, but the type of the faces, the decorative stone-work of the Virgin's desk, and the general character of the whole are still in the goldsmith's style. A half-length Madonna, at Berlin, looking down on the laughing Child, who stretches out both arms to her, and a Virgin and Child between the Angels, in the National Gallery, which has been the subject of much discussion, are now ascribed by several critics to Verrocchio. Both of these pictures were formerly given to the Pollaiuoli, but bear far more resemblance to Andrea's terracotta reliefs, while the angels in the National Gallery painting recall those in the Baptism at Florence.

Another group of pictures in which Mr Berenson and other critics recognise Verrocchio's hand, are the three profile-portraits of young Florentine women, which are respectively in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum at Milan, the Berlin Gallery and the Uffizi. These famous busts, with the same fair hair elaborately coiled and plaited, the same square bodice of rich brocade, and the same clear-cut features, painted in pale tints in flat relief against deep blue sky, are plainly the work of a sculptor, and bear a strong likeness to Andrea's own carved busts in the Bargello. They belong, we feel, to the same class of work as those which Vasari describes when he speaks of Verrocchio's drawings of women-heads, distinguished by a beautiful style and arrangement of the hair, which Leonardo da Vinci often imitated, because of their rare beauty. At the same time, their strong individuality and portrait-like character remind us that Andrea was one of the first artists to take plaster-casts of living personages, from which