Sandro

“ It is sad to think of those last days when Sandro was too old and too weary to paint. He who had loved to make his figures move with dancing feet, was now obliged to walk with crutches. The roses and lilies of spring were faded now, and instead of the music of his youth he heard only the sound of harsh, ungrateful voices, in the flowerless days of poverty and old age.
There is always something sad too about his pictures, but through the sadness, if we listen, we may hear the angel-song, and understand it better if we have in our minds the prayer which Botticelli left for us. ”

“ She spoke eagerly, running her words together.
"Ecco, Messer Sandro," she whispered blushing. "You have heard these sayings.... Who is there in Florence like me?"
"There is no one," said Sandro simply.
"I will be your Lady Venus," she went on breathlessly. "You shall paint me, rising from the sea-foam.... The Genoese love the sea." She was still eager and defiant; her bosom rose and fell unchecked.
"The Signorina is mocking me; it is impossible; the Signorina knows it."
"Eh, Madonna! is it so shameful to be fair—Star of the Sea as your poets sing at evening? ”

“ Sandro the poet knew it perfectly well and taught it to the no small comfort of Mr. Ruskin and his men. Giuditta, dainty, blue-eyed, a girl still and three years a widow, flits homeward through a spring landscape of grey and green and the smile of a milky sky, being herself the dominant of the chord, with her bough of slipt olive and her jagged scimitar, with her pretty blue fal-lals smocked and puffed, and her yellow curls floating over her shoulders. On her slim feet are the sandals that ravished his eyes; all her maiden bravery is dancing and fluttering like harebells in the wind. ”

“ I replied shakily. "And yet the resemblance—it was extraordinary!"
"It was a miracle!" said Peaches. "No two people could look so much alike."
"He had a brother," I began doubtfully, "who was merely supposed to be dead. Sandro would have known you at once."
"But didn't he?" she questioned, striding up and down the room with her long, clean gesture of body. "Why didn't he speak at once? He was too much amazed!"
"Nonsense!" I exclaimed. "How could he be amazed, when as a servant in this house—in all probability Sebastian's valet—he must have known in advance all about your coming here!" ”

“ But two years later he had lost his hold upon Florence, and died upon the gallows amid the ferocious yells of the populace.
Sandro, the poet-painter, was less happy than Pico della Mirandola, the beautiful marvellous youth, who had died at the beginning of these troubles wrapped in a friar's cloak, the beloved follower of the lion-hearted preacher. His own brother Simone, with whom he lived, was one of the Prate's followers, and suffered exile for his cause. There can be no doubt that he himself was profoundly influenced by Savonarola. ”

“ There was a youth with a cropped head and swarthy neck lounging there teasing a spaniel. As the steps sounded on the flags he looked up; the old green cloak and clumsy shoes of the visitor did not interest him; he turned his back and went on with his game. Sandro accosted him—Was the Signorina at the house? The boy went on with his game. "Eh, Diavolo! I know nothing at all," he said. ”

“ I said. "If by chance it really is Sandro it's a nice situation, I'm sure! With your wedding only a few weeks off and, and—why, good gracious! It's simply terrible!"
But Peaches didn't look as if she thought it was simply terrible—not in the least. She was terrifically excited, but more beautiful than ever.
"Free!" she cried. "I know it is he! Do you suppose I could feel as I did—as I do, at the encounter unless it is Sandy? Lots of times people know things without evidence. And this is one of those times. I feel it is he. ”

“ It once happened that one of these pupils, Biagio by name, had made a copy of one of Sandro's pictures, a beautiful Madonna surrounded by eight angels. This he was very anxious to sell, and the master kindly promised to help him, and in the end arranged the matter with a citizen of Florence, who offered to buy it for six gold pieces.
'Well, Biagio,' said Sandro, when his pupil came into the studio next morning, 'I have sold thy picture. Let us now hang it up in a good light that the man who wishes to buy it may see it at its best. ”

“ Then he called to the hostlers and other servants to come and clear away the useless cars, for Donna Hera was going to make a dash in the night. With a will they fell to, and one wreck after another was dragged out of the garage. Sandro touched something in the surviving machine, and smiled to hear it respond with coughs and sobs. He took a minute to crawl under it, measure things with critical eye by the light of an electric lantern, and was on his feet again throwing in lap cloths and handing a mask to Hera. He sprang in, pulled the lever and shot the machine out to the court. ”

“ And forthwith they vanished, leaving me to absorb a detailed description of Sir Anthony's indigestion, delivered by himself, which description lasted for the remainder of the evening. But my thoughts were on other things, though I said "Yes?" and "Indeed!" automatically whenever Sir Anthony came to a full stop.
So it was "Sandro" already, was it? And that same Sandro, who loved famous paintings so, and knew such a lot about them, had been somewhere that newspapers did not reach from the time the panels were stolen from the château in which he was visiting, until he reappeared at Monte Carlo. ”

“ The third, who is likewise kneeling, seems to be offering thanksgiving as well as adoration; this is the likeness of Giovanni, the son of Cosimo.
"The beauty which Sandro has imparted to these heads cannot be adequately described; all the figures are in different attitudes, some seen full face, others in profile, some almost entirely turned away, others bent down; and to all the artist has given an appropriate expression, whether old or young, showing numerous31 peculiarities, which prove the mastery he possessed over his art. ”

“ As if you did not know! Ah! it’s only the girls who break their hearts, I suppose. Well! if you don’t know—”
“All I know is, that I must run and tell the padrone”—it was so that Giulia always spoke of the master of the family;—“that Ser Sandro is coming up the hill! Good bye, Beppo! Don’t be cruel to poor Lisa!”
And off she tripped to the part of the field where Paolo was at work, and from which that part of the hollow lane, in which the attorney was riding, was not visible.
“’Gnor padrone! There is Ser Sandro, from Fano, coming up the hill! ”

“ Petersburg "Adoration" is broadly conceived, and full of interest, but it suffers from that conscious and obvious emotion which belongs to Sandro's inferior work. In his best, his figures are pure creations, certain of their purpose, confident of conveying a sense of beauty transcending mere subject-interest; they are not "lifelike," they are ideas and symbols of life, and therefore able to convey the spiritual contact of living forms. This is not the case in any of the Adorations I am describing, nor is it in any of the Sixtine frescoes if we except that of "Moses at the Well." ”

“ Instead he returned home and painted a banner of Pallas, for Lorenzo's younger brother Giuliano, the idol of Florence, to carry in the magnificent tournament of January 1475. The banner has been lost, but it marks a point of departure in Sandro's art; as a banner, it recalls the fact that the artist was also a craftsman, and introduced a new method of making such things; the new patron, too, whose life and love were alike destined to so brief a course, whose personality was so vivid and so knightly, exercised no little influence on the painter ”

“ Why did Giuliano love her? Did he love her, indeed? He was bewitched then, for she was cold, and a brazen creature in spite of it. How dare she bare her neck so! Oh! 'twas Genoese. "Uomini senza fede e donne senza vergogna," they quoted as they ran.
And Simonetta walked alone down the way with her head high; but Sandro stepped behind, at the edge of her trailing white robe....
... The poet was leaning against an ancient alabaster vase, soil-stained, yellow with age and its long sojourn in the loam, but with traces of its carved garlands clinging to it still. ”

“ Yes, I dare say, she was in love with the broad acres of Bella Luce. Ah, it was a bad day for the Vannis when that sly baggage came into the house;—and she without a smock to her back. Why, if it had not been for her wiles and lures, Beppo might have had old Sandro Bartoldi’s daughter; and what a match that would have been!
And then the women would smile, and cast their eyes down, and say that a woman could always bring a man to her lure—if she chose to do so! Only it is not every woman, nor many women, thank Heaven! ”

“ All is varied and fanciful in the garments, the foreshortenings, and the attitudes: all is novel in the composition and the designs. He that contemplates the pictures of Sandro and his associates on the walls, and then, raising his eyes to the ceiling, beholds Michelangiolo "soaring like an eagle above them all," can hardly believe that a man, not exercised in painting, in what may be considered as his first essay, should so nearly approach the greatest masters of antiquity, and thus open a new career to modern artists. ”

“ Nothing that I take is ever missed. I make one exception to that—the Scarpia panels. I bungled that badly. And then last night—if it had not been for Markheim's brutality to you"—here Sandro's face grew livid at the recollection—"if it had not been for that interruption, when I remembered that I had left your little knife on the frame and returned to get it because I could not endure to leave behind the only souvenir I had of you—I [Pg 273] would have got away clear. ”

“ Poor child, all by herself amid good-for-nothing people! They are all bad in the cities, mother, all of them. Who sent Giulia there? when it was better,—twenty times over better,—to send her to her grave!"
"Why, you know, Beppo, as well as I do, that the priest said it was for the best. It was little enough either your father or I had to say in the matter. Signor Sandro—and he is a very good man, and a sponsible—said it was a good thing; but your father would never have sent her for all that, without the priest. ”

“ Girls are easily spoilt;—and the handsomest perhaps the quickest.”
“Tell me the truth, now, as an old friend, Signor Sandro!” said Beppo, piteously, while the big drops of perspiration gathered on his brow; “do you mean that la Giulia has got herself talked about in a way—that—that a good girl should not?”
“Well, my dear friend, it is a difficult question to answer! It is hard to say what a good girl may do, and what she may not. I don’t wish to be severe. I dare say la Giulia is a very good girl, as girls in her position are,—a very good girl. ”

“ We have now just one more picture of a sacred subject to look at, one of the last that still retains much of the old beautiful religious spirit of the Middle Ages. The painter of it, Sandro Botticelli, a Florentine, in whom were blended the piety of the Middle Ages and the intellectual life of the Renaissance, was a very interesting man, whose like we shall not find among the painters of his own or later days. He was born in 1446, in Florence, the city in Italy most alive to the new ideas and the new learning. ”

“ If cousin Giulia had been out of the question, really Beppo might have done worse than make up to Lisa Bartoldi, the rich Fano attorney’s only daughter; as his father, and Don Evandro, and Lisa’s father, old Sandro Bartoldi, wished him to do.
“Ay, if cousin Giulia were out of the question! as she would have been if Paolo Vanni had never taken her to live at Bella Luce.”
“See what comes of doing a charitable action, and sacrificing one’s own interest to one’s goodness of heart! It’s always the way!” ”

“ Instead of the convent and the kind monks, he was placed under the care of a great painter, and worked in the master's studio with other boys as well off as himself.
The name of Filippino's master was Sandro Botticelli, a Florentine artist, who had been one of Filippo's pupils and had worked with him in Prato. Fra Diamante knew that he was the greatest artist now in Florence, and that he would be able to teach the child better than any one else. ”

“ So, as she listened, joy died out of Lucrezia's life. Spring might come again, and summer sunshine make others glad, but for her it would be ever cold, bleak winter. For never more should her heart grow warm in the sunshine of Filippo's smile--that sunshine which had made every one love him, in spite of his faults, ever since he ran about the streets, a little ragged boy, in the old city of Florence.
SANDRO BOTTICELLI
We must now go back to the days when Fra Filippo Lippi painted his pictures and so brought fame to the Carmine Convent. ”

“ A young workman walked up to the carriage and shot him at three paces.”
“At three paces!” several women repeated, shocked anew by this detail of the crime.
“What kind of man is the assassin?”
“The guard said he is a silk-weaver and an anarchist. That was the rumor from Monza. They have him in charge.”
At the word anarchist, Tarsis, with a quick movement, turned from Sandro and set his gaze [Pg 160] on Mario Forza. The act was so marked that every eye followed his. Mario returned a steady look, and for a moment they stood thus, to the amazement of all. ”