his native city of Florence, which had been founded by his ancestor Folco, the father of Dante’s Beatrice.  The left panel shows Tommaso praying with his two sons Antonio and Pigallo, the right his wife Maria Portinari and their adorably quaint little daughter with her charming head-dress and costume.  The flowers in the centre panel are among the most beautiful things in any Florentine picture:  not wild and wayward like Luca Signorelli’s, but most exquisitely done:  irises, red lilies, columbines and dark red clove pinks—­all unexpected and all very unlikely to be in such a wintry landscape at all.  On the ground are violets.  The whole work is grave, austere, cool, and as different as can be from the Tuscan spirit; yet it is said to have had a deep influence on the painters of the time and must have drawn throngs to the Hospital to see it.

The other Flemish and German pictures in the room are all remarkable and all warmer in tone.  No. 906, an unknown work, is perhaps the finest:  a Crucifixion, which might have borrowed its richness from the Carpaccio, we saw in the Venetian room.  There is a fine Adoration of the Magi, by Gerard David (1460-1523); an unknown portrait of Pierantonio Baroncelli and his wife, with a lovely landscape; a jewel of paint by Hans Memling (1425-1492)—­No. 703—­the Madonna Enthroned; a masterpiece of drawing by Duerer, “Calvary”; an austere and poignant Transportation of Christ to the Sepulchre, by Roger van der Weyden (1400-1464); and several very beautiful portraits by Memling, notably Nos. 769 and 780 with their lovely evening light.  Memling, indeed, I never liked better than here.  Other fine pictures are a Spanish prince by Lucas van Leyden; an old Dutch scholar by an artist unknown, No. 784; and a young husband and wife by Joost van Cleef the Elder, and a Breughel the Elder, like an old Crome—­a beauty—­No. 928.  The room is interesting both for itself and also as showing how the Flemish brushes were working at the time that so many of the great Italians were engaged on similar themes.

After the cool, self-contained, scientific work of these northerners it is a change to enter the Sala di Rubens and find that luxuriant giant—­their compatriot, but how different!—­once more.  In the Uffizi, Rubens seems more foreign, far, than any one, so fleshly pagan is he.  In Antwerp Cathedral his “Descent from the Cross,” although its bravura is, as always with him, more noticeable than its piety, might be called a religious picture, but I doubt if even that would seem so here.  At any rate his Uffizi works are all secular, while his “Holy Family” in the Pitti is merely domestic and robust.  His Florentine masterpieces are the two Henri IV pictures in this room, “Henri IV at Ivry,” magnificent if not war, and “Henri’s entry into Paris after Ivry,” with its confusing muddle of naked warriors and spears.  Only Rubens could have painted these spirited, impossible, glorious things, which for all their greatness send one’s thoughts back longingly to the portrait of his wife, in the Tribuna, while No. 216—­the Bacchanale—­is so coarse as almost to send one’s feet there too.