One other painting we must see—­the “Last Supper” of Domenico Ghirlandaio.  Florence has two “Last Suppers” by this artist—­one at the Ognissanti and this.  The two works are very similar and have much entertaining interest, but the debt which this owes to Castagno is very obvious:  it is indeed Castagno sweetened.  Although psychologically this picture is weak, or at any rate not strong, it is full of pleasant touches:  the supper really is a supper, as it too often is not, with fruit and dishes and a generous number of flasks; the tablecloth would delight a good housekeeper; a cat sits close to Judas, his only companion; a peacock perches in a niche; there are flowers on the wall, and at the back of the charming loggia where the feast is held are luxuriant trees, and fruits, and flying birds.  The monks at food in this small refectory had compensation for their silence in so engaging a scene.  This room also contains a beautiful della Robbia “Deposition”.

The little refectory, which is at the foot of the stairs leading to the cells, opens on the second cloisters, and these few visitors ever enter.  But they are of deep interest to any one with a passion for the Florence of the great days, for it is here that the municipality preserves the most remarkable relics of buildings that have had to be destroyed.  It is in fact the museum of the ancient city.  Here, for example, is that famous figure of Abundance, in grey stone, which Donatello made for the old market, where the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele now is, in the midst of which she poured forth her fruits from a cornucopia high on a column for all to see.  Opposite is a magnificent doorway designed by Donatello for the Pazzi garden.  Old windows, chimney-pieces, fragments of cornice, carved pillars, painted beams, coats of arms, are everywhere.

In cell No. 3 is a pretty little coloured relief of the Virgin adoring, which I covet, from a tabernacle in the old Piazza di Brunelleschi.  Here too are relics of the guild houses of some of the smaller Arti, while perhaps the most humanly interesting thing of all is the great mournful bell of S. Marco in Savonarola’s time, known as La Piagnone.

In the church of S. Marco lie two of the learned men, friends of Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose talk at the Medici table was one of the youthful Michelangelo’s educative influences, what time he was studying in the Medici garden, close by:  Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), the poet and the tutor of the three Medici boys, and the marvellous Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), the enchanted scholar.  Pico was one of the most fascinating and comely figures of his time.  He was born in 1463, the son of the Count of Mirandola, and took early to scholarship, spending his time among philosophies as other boys among games or S. Antonio at his devotions, but by no means neglecting polished life too, for we know him to have been handsome, accomplished, and a knight in the court of Venus.  In 1486 he