Even in his Crucifixions there is a certain underlying happiness, due to his knowledge that the Crucified was to rise again and ascend to Heaven and enjoy eternal felicity.  Knowing this (as he did know it) how could he be wholly cast down?  You see it again in the Flagellation of Christ, in the series of six scenes (No. 237).  The scourging is almost a festival.  But best of all I like the Flight into Egypt, in No. 235.  Everything here is joyous and (in spite of the terrible cause of the journey) bathed in the sunny light of the age of innocence:  the landscape; Joseph, younger than usual, brave and resolute and undismayed by the curious turn in his fortunes; and Mary with the child in her arms, happy and pretty, seated securely on an amiable donkey that has neither bit nor bridle.  It is when one looks at Fra Angelico that one understands how wise were the Old Masters to seek their inspiration in the life of Christ.  One cannot imagine Fra Angelico’s existence in a pagan country.  Look, in No. 236, at the six radiant and rapturous angels clustering above the manger.  Was there ever anything prettier?  But I am not sure that I do not most covet No. 250, Christ crucified and two saints, and No. 251, the Coronation of the Virgin, for their beauty of light.

In the photographs No. 246—­a Deposition—­is unusually striking, but in the original, although beautiful, it is far less radiant than usual with this painter.  It has, however, such feeling as to make it especially memorable among the many treatments of this subject.  What is generally considered the most important work in this room is the Last Judgment, which is certainly extraordinarily interesting, and in the hierarchy of heaven and the company of the blest Fra Angelico is in a very acceptable mood.  The benignant Christ Who divides the sheep and the goats; the healthy ripe-lipped Saints and Fathers who assist at the tribunal and have never a line of age or experience on their blooming cheeks; the monks and nuns, just risen from their graves, who embrace each other in the meads of paradise with such fervour—­these have much of the charm of little flowers.  But in delineating the damned the painter is in strange country.  It was a subject of which he knew nothing, and the introduction among them of monks of the rival order of S. Francis is mere party politics and a blot.

There are two other rooms here, but Fra Angelico spoils us for them.  Four panels by another Frate, but less radiant, Lippo Lippi, are remarkable, particularly the figure of the Virgin in the Annunciation; and there is a curious series of scenes entitled “L’Albero della Croce,” by an Ignoto of the fourteenth century, with a Christ crucified in the midst and all Scripture in medallions around him, the tragedy of Adam and Eve at the foot (mutilated by some chaste pedant) being very quaint.  And in Angelico’s rooms there is a little, modest Annunciation by one of his school—­No. 256—­which shows what a good influence he was, and to which the eye returns and returns.  Here also, on easels, are two portraits of Vallombrosan monks by Fra Bartolommeo, serene, and very sympathetically painted, which cause one to regret the deterioration in Italian ecclesiastic physiognomy; and Andrea del Sarto’s two pretty angels, which one so often finds in reproduction, are here too.