Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/245

1510] hospital of S. Spirito, which had been lately erected by Pope Sixtus, while portraits of his nephews, Giuliano della Rovere, afterwards Pope Julius II., holding a white cloth in his hands, and Girolamo Riario, bearing the staff of papal Gonfaloniere, are introduced in the group on the right. The foliage of the oak, the badge of the della Rovere family, figures prominently among the trees in the foreground, and the whole composition is evidently intended to be a glorification of Pope Sixtus. The second fresco suffers from the same confusion of subjects and want of unity, and contains no less than seven different scenes from the early history of Moses. But the details are full of charm, and in the central episode of Jethro's Daughter at the well, we have a lovely idyll of pastoral life. Sandro rarely painted a more graceful figure than this of Zipporah standing among her maidens under the palm-trees by the stream, with a myrtle wreath in her hair, and a distaff and apple-branch, the symbol of labour and its reward, in her hand. In the third fresco, the Destruction of Korah, the grand figure of Moses standing before the altar with his rod stretched out to destroy the rebellious people, gives a certain unity to the whole, and the scene of tumult and confusion is rendered with dramatic vividness. The whole series abounds in reminiscences of classical architecture and sculpture, and shows how profoundly Sandro was impressed by the monuments of ancient Rome. The portrait-heads in the fresco of Korah are especially remarkable for beauty and character, and among the dignitaries of the papal court, in sumptuous robes, we recognise the dreamy eyes and finely-cut features of the