In the tiny Gem Room at the end of the corridor are wonders of the lapidary’s art—­and here is the famous intaglio portrait of Savonarola—­but they want better treatment.  The vases and other ornaments should have the light all round them, as in the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre.  These are packed together in wall cases and are hard to see.

Passing through the end corridor, where the beautiful Matrona reclines so placidly on her couch against the light, and where we have such pleasant views of the Ponte Vecchio, the Trinita bridge, the Arno, and the Apennines, so fresh and real and soothing after so much paint, we come to the rooms containing the famous collection of self-painted portraits, which, moved hither from Rome, has been accumulating in the Uffizi for many years and is still growing, to be invited to contribute to it being one of the highest honours a painter can receive.  The portraits occupy eight rooms and a passage.  Though the collection is historically and biographically valuable, it contains for every interesting portrait three or four dull ones, and thus becomes something of a weariness.  Among the best are Lucas Cranach, Anton More, Van Dyck, Rembrandt (three), Rubens, Seybold, Jordaens, Reynolds, and Romney, all of which remind us of Michelangelo’s dry comment, “Every painter draws himself well”.  Among the most interesting to us, wandering in Florence, are the two Andreas, one youthful and the other grown fatter than one likes and very different from the melancholy romantic figure in the Pitti; Verrocchio, by Lorenzo di Credi; Carlo Dolci, surprising by its good sense and humour; Raphael, angelic, wistful, and weak; Tintoretto, old and powerful; and Jacopo Bassano, old and simple.  Among the moderns, Corot’s portrait of himself is one of the most memorable, but Fantin Latour, Flandrin, Leon Bonnat, and Lenbach are all strong and modest; which one cannot say of our own Leighton.  Among the later English heads Orchardson’s is notable, but Mr. Sargent’s is disappointing.

We now come to one of the most remarkable rooms in the gallery, where every picture is a gem; but since all are northern pictures, imported, I give no reproductions.  This is the Sala di Van der Goes, so called from the great work here, the triptych, painted in 1474 to 1477 by Hugo van der Goes, who died in 1482, and was born at Ghent or Leyden about 1405.  This painter, of whose genius there can be no question, is supposed to have been a pupil of the Van Eycks.  Not much is known of him save that he painted at Bruges and Ghent and in 1476 entered a convent at Brussels where he was allowed to dine with distinguished strangers who came to see him and where he drank so much wine that his natural excitability turned to insanity.  He seems, however, to have recovered, and if ever a picture showed few signs of a deranged or inflamed mind it is this, which was painted for the agent of the Medici bank at Bruges, Tommaso Portinari, who presented it to the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova in