Chief among the other pictures are two by the delightful Alessio Baldovinetti, the master of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Nos. 60 and 56; and a large early altar-piece by the brothers Orcagna, painted in 1367 for S. Maria Nuova, now the principal hospital of Florence and once the home of many beautiful pictures.  This work is rather dingy now, but it is interesting as coming in part from the hand that designed the tabernacle in Or San Michele and the Loggia de’ Lanzi.  Another less-known painter represented here is Francesco Granacci (1469-1543), the author of Nos. 1541 and 1280, both rich and warm and pleasing.  Granacci was a fellow-pupil of Michelangelo both in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s garden and in Ghirlandaio’s workshop, and the bosom friend of that great man all his life.  Like Piero di Cosimo, Granacci was a great hand at pageantry, and Lorenzo de’ Medici kept him busy.  He was not dependent upon art for his living, but painted for love of it, and Vasari makes him a very agreeable man.

Here too is Gio.  Antonio Sogliani (1492-1544), also a rare painter, with a finely coloured and finely drawn “Disputa,” No. 63.  This painter seems to have had the same devotion to his master, Lorenzo di Credi, that di Credi had for his master, Verrocchio.  Vasari calls Sogliani a worthy religious man who minded his own affairs—­a good epitaph.  His work is rarely met with in Florence, but he has a large fresco at S. Marco.  Lorenzo di Credi (1459-1537) himself has two pretty circular paintings here, of which No. 1528 is particularly sweet:  “The Virgin and Child with St. John and Angels,” all comfortable and happy in a Tuscan meadow; while on an easel is another circular picture, by Pacchiarotto (1477-1535).  This has good colour and twilight beauty, but it does not touch one and is not too felicitously composed.  Over the door to the Venetian room is a Cosimo Rosselli with a prettily affectionate Madonna and Child.

From this miscellaneous Tuscan room we pass to the two rooms which contain the Venetian pictures, of which I shall say less than might perhaps be expected, not because I do not intensely admire them but because I feel that the chief space in a Florentine book should be given to Florentine or Tuscan things.  As a matter of fact, I find myself when in the Uffizi continually drawn to revisit these walls.  The chief treasures are the Titians, the Giorgiones, the Mantegnas, the Carpaccio, and the Bellini allegory.  These alone would make the Uffizi a Mecca of connoisseurs.  Giorgione is to be found in his richest perfection at the Pitti, in his one unforgettable work that is preserved there, but here he is wonderful too, with his Cavalier of Malta, black and golden, and the two rich scenes, Nos. 621 and 630, nominally from Scripture, but really from romantic Italy.  To me these three pictures are the jewels of the Venetian collection.  To describe them is impossible:  enough to say that some glowing genius produced them; and whatever