Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/325

1462-1521] Botticelli had glorified the pious and merciful acts of Pope Sixtus in his fresco of the Purification of the Leper, so Piero was desired to celebrate his warlike deeds, and especially the victory which the papal general, Roberto di Sanseverino, had obtained at Campomorto in August, 1482, over Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, whose armies had invaded the papal dominions and threatened Rome itself. Moses, the leader of the chosen people, is represented standing on the shore, watching the Egyptian hosts and the chariots of Pharaoh in the act of being swallowed up by the raging seas, while Miriam, attended by the Hebrew women, chaunts her song of triumph at his side. The groups of warriors and horses struggling in the waves, the angry skies and the fury of the elements, are rendered with great truth and force, and the whole fresco is distinctly superior to the earlier works executed by Cosimo Rosselli, who probably found this subject beyond his powers.

After his return to Florence, Piero began to work as an independent master, and received many important commissions towards the close of the century, when Ghirlandajo was dead and Leonardo absent in Milan. Filippino's influence appears in several round Madonnas and Holy Families of his earlier period, as well as in the large altar-piece of the Conception, which he painted for the Tedaldi Chapel in the Annunziata, and which is now in the Uffizi. Here the Virgin is represented standing on a pedestal, adorned with a bas-relief of the Annunciation, and looking up with rapt expression at the Holy Dove which hovers in a sea of golden light above. Six saints, among whom are Filippo Benizzi, the founder of the Servite