Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/253

1510] painted for the convent of S. Barnabà. The eighty-four drawings in illustration of the Divina Commedia, formerly at Hamilton Palace, and now at Berlin, were executed by him for Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici, who remained in Florence until his death in 1503. Eight sheets from the same volume, once the property of Queen Christina of Sweden, are now in the Vatican. The whole series is of the deepest interest, especially the illustrations of the Purgatorio and Paradiso, which reveal the mystic tendency of Sandro's imagination, while his love of delicate foliage, of fluttering draperies and showering roses, appears at every page. In the last design Beatrice is seen, crowned with flowers, standing with the poet at her side, in the highest spheres of Paradise, attended by nine circles of rejoicing angels, and one little cherub bearing a cartellino with the artist's name, Sandro di Mariano.

In January, 1504, Botticelli, although infirm and old, came out of his retreat to meet his old friend Leonardo and the other chief masters in Florence, and choose a site for Michelangelo's David. After that we hear no more until, on the 17th May, 1510, he was buried in his father's vault in the church of Ognissanti.