Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/83

1430] the pleasures of the world, are a group of knights and fair ladies with falcons and lap-dogs, seated under a grove of pomegranate trees; and one richly-dressed lady in green, called by Vasari Petrarch's Laura, represents Earthly Love. Further to the right a Dominican friar gives absolution to a penitent soul and points out the way to Paradise, where angels welcome the elect, and St. Peter stands ready to unlock the golden gates; and beyond, we catch a glimpse of saints in glory and happy spirits dancing hand in hand. On the opposite wall St. Thomas Aquinas is enthroned between Prophets and Evangelists, under a Gothic canopy, with the Book of Wisdom open in his hands, and the heretics Arius, Sabellius and Averroes crouching vanquished at his feet. Beneath, we have a row of fourteen Virtues and Sciences, seated in richly carved Gothic stalls, with illustrious teachers at their feet. Cicero, conspicuous by his fine intellectual face, sits at the feet of Rhetoric; Justinian, wearing a blue robe and white and gold crown, appears under the figure of Civil Law; Pythagoras represents Arithmetic; Pope Clement V., Canon Law; Boethius, Theology, and Aristotle, the science of Dialectics. The refined and thoughtful philosopher, wearing a gold crown on his head, and seated at the feet of Astronomy, is said to represent Atlas, the first king of Fiesole, while Tubal Cain, a shaggy, long-haired patriarch, lifts his hammer to strike the anvil, under the green-robed form of Music. These allegorical figures lack the convincing power and reality of Giotto's Vices and Virtues, but many of the heads have a certain grandeur, and the way in which the whole system