Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/248

208 no longer introduced portraits of his contemporaries into his sacred pictures.

In the absence of dates, it is difficult to say with any certainty which of Botticelli's numerous Madonnas belong to this period; but there can be little doubt that these sorrowful Virgins, burdened with a mysterious sense of coming woes, were inspired by the eloquent and impassioned words in which the great preacher paints the Mother of Sorrows. There is the lovely Madonna of the Pomegranate, with the six child-angels bearing lilies and choir-books, in the Uffizi, and the Mother nursing her Child in the Ambrosiana and turning the leaves of the missal, in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum. There is the noble S. Barnabà altar-piece of the throned Virgin, surrounded by angels bearing instruments of the Passion, and worshipped by six saints, who represent different types of struggling humanity—Michael and Katherine in their youthful beauty, the scholar-saints Ambrose and Augustine between the ascetic Baptist and Barnabas, the Son of Consolation. There is the great Coronation—which was ordered for Savonarola's own convent church by the Guild of Silk Weavers—with its troop of angels scattering roses and dancing on the clouds of heaven in a tumult of wild rapture, and below, the aged St. John and St. Jerome, fired with the same triumphant joy. Above all, there is the famous tondo of the Magnificat, which in beauty of design and depth of feeling surpasses all others. The Virgin, wearing a green and gold mantle, and a transparent veil over her fair tresses, is in the act of dipping her pen into the ink, to write her song of praise on the pages of an open missal, and the Child on her knee