her monograph on Verrocchio, questions both the subject and the artist.) Close by we have two more works by Verrocchio—­No. 180, a marble relief of the Madonna and Child, the Madonna’s dress fastened by the prettiest of brooches, and She herself possessing a dainty sad head and the long fingers that Verrocchio so favoured, which we find again in the famous “Gentildonna” (No. 181) next it—­that Florentine lady with flowers in her bosom, whose contours are so exquisite and who has such pretty shoulders.

Near by is the little eager S. John the Baptist as a boy by Antonio Rossellino (1427-1478), and on the next wall the same sculptor’s circular relief of the Madonna adoring, in a border of cherubs.  In the middle is the masterpiece of Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570):  a Bacchus, so strangely like a genuine antique, full of Greek lightness and grace.  And then we come back to the wall in which the door is, and find more works from the delicate hand of Mino da Fiesole, whom we in London are fortunate in being able to study as near home as at the Victoria and Albert Museum.  Of Mino I have said more both at the Badia and at Fiesole.  But here I might remark again that he was born in 1431 and died in 1484, and was the favourite pupil of Desiderio da Settignano, who was in his turn the favourite pupil of Donatello.

In the little church of S. Ambrogio we have seen a tablet to the memory of Mino, who lies there, not far from the grave of Verrocchio, whom he most nearly approached in feeling, although their ideal type of woman differed in everything save the slenderness of the fingers.  The Bargello has both busts and reliefs by him, all distinguished and sensitive and marked by Mino’s profound refinement.  The Madonna and Child in No. 232 are peculiarly beautiful and notable both for high relief and shallow relief, and the Child in No. 193 is even more charming.  For delicacy and vivacity in marble portraiture it would be impossible to surpass the head of Rinaldo della Luna; and the two Medicis are wonderfully real.  Everything in Mino’s work is thoughtful and exquisite, while the unusual type of face which so attracted him gives him freshness too.

This room and that next it illustrate the wealth of fine sculptors which Florence had in the fifteenth century, for the works by the unknown hands are in some cases hardly less beautiful and masterly than those by the known.  Look, for example, at the fleur-de-lis over the door; at the Madonna and Child next it, on the right; at the girl’s head next to that; at the baby girl at the other end of the room; and at the older boy and his pendant.  But one does not need to come here to form an idea of the wealth of good sculpture.  The streets alone are full of it.  Every palace has beautiful stone-work and an escutcheon which often only a master could execute—­as Donatello devised that for the Palazzo Pazzi in the Borgo degli Albizzi.  On the great staircase of the Bargello, for example, are numbers of coats of arms that could not be more beautifully designed and incised.