Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/257

1504] Peter and St. Paul before the tribunal of Nero, and the Crucifixion of St. Peter. The figure of Nero, seated on his throne under a green baldacchino and stretching out his arm towards the prisoners, is full of dignity, and his head is copied from Roman medals. As before, the spectators are chiefly portraits of well-known Florentines. We recognise Antonio Pollaiuolo in the tall man with the long nose and high cap, standing near Cæsar, and Filippino himself in the graceful and picturesque youth in the right-hand corner, while Sandro Botticelli, clad in a red mantle and grey cap, is one of the three men standing immediately in front of the archway which connects the two subjects, watching the scene of martyrdom. All the progress which Painting had made during the last sixty years, the wonderful advance in realistic portraiture and scientific knowledge, the mastery of problems of chiaroscuro and perspective, which Masaccio had first tried to solve, and which were now the common property of every artist's apprentice, are embodied in this fresco. But although so much fresh ground had been gained, and although Filippino was undoubtedly one of the cleverest and most accomplished masters of his age, his composition fails to reach the power and grandeur of Masaccio's works. He was more successful in the two smaller subjects which he painted on the pilasters below Masaccio's frescoes of Adam and Eve, at the entrance of the chapel. The figure of St. Paul addressing St. Peter as he prays behind his prison-bars, is solemn and noble, and the young soldier, sleeping on his bench outside the prison, while the angel opens the doors and delivers the captive, has