Ghirlandaio’s place in this room is interesting on account of his relation to Michelangelo as first instructor; but by the time that the great master’s “Holy Family,” hanging here, was painted all traces of Ghirlandaio’s influence had disappeared, and if any forerunner is noticeable it is Luca Signorelli.  But we must first glance at the pretty little Lorenzo di Credi, No. 1160, the Annunciation, an artificial work full of nice thoughts and touches, with the prettiest little blue Virgin imaginable, a heavenly landscape, and a predella in monochrome, in one scene of which Eve rises from the side of the sleeping Adam with extraordinary realism.  The announcing Gabriel is deferential but positive; Mary is questioning but not wholly surprised.  In any collection of Annunciations this picture would find a prominent place.

The “Holy Family” of Michelangelo—­No. 1139—­is remarkable for more than one reason.  It is, to begin with, the only finished easel picture that exists from his brush.  It is also his one work in oils, for he afterwards despised that medium as being fit “only for children”.  The frame is contemporary and was made for it, the whole being commissioned by Angelo Doni, a wealthy connoisseur whose portrait by Raphael we shall see in the Pitti, and who, according to Vasari, did his best to get it cheaper than his bargain, and had in the end to pay dearer.  The period of the picture is about 1503, while the great David was in progress, when the painter was twenty-eight.  That it is masterly and superb there can be no doubt, but, like so much of Michelangelo’s work, it suffers from its author’s greatness.  There is an austerity of power here that ill consorts with the tender domesticity of the scene, and the Child is a young Hercules.  The nude figures in the background introduce an alien element and suggest the conflict between Christianity and paganism, the new religion and the old:  in short, the Twilight of the Gods.  Whether Michelangelo intended this we shall not know; but there it is.  The prevailing impression left by the picture is immense power and virtuosity and no religion.  In the beautiful Luca Signorelli—­No.74—­next it, we find at once a curious similarity and difference.  The Madonna and Child only are in the foreground, a not too radiant but very tender couple; in the background are male figures nearly nude:  not quite, as Michelangelo made them, and suggesting no discord as in his picture.  Luca was born in 1441, and was thus thirty-four years older than Michelangelo.  This picture is perhaps that one presented by Luca to Lorenzo de’ Medici, of which Vasari tells, and if so it was probably on a wall in the Medici palace when Michelangelo as a boy was taught with Lorenzo’s sons.  Luca’s sweetness was alien to Michelangelo, but not his melancholy or his sense of composition; while Luca’s devotion to the human form as the unit of expression was in Michelangelo carried out to its highest power.  Vasari, who was a relative of Luca’s and a pupil of Michelangelo’s, says that his master had the greatest admiration for Luca’s genius.