grievously wounded, timid soul, an intruder at the portals of paradise, but without the courage to enter or withdraw.  He had visions that rapt him up into the seventh heaven, and when he reported them in the speech of his design his harassed, divided spirit chilled the ardours of his art.  And thus it is that many do not worship at his shrine as at the shrine of Raphael, for they see the adumbration of a paganism long since dead, but revived by a miracle for a brief Botticellian hour.  Madonna and Venus!  The Christ Child and Bacchus!  Under which king?  The artist never frankly tells us.  The legends of fauns turned monks, of the gods at servile labour in a world that had forgotten them, are revived, but with more sublimated ecstasy than by Heine, when we stand before Botticelli and listen to his pallid, muted music.

He was born at Florence in 1446; he died May 27, 1510; in 1515, according to Vasari.  A study of him is by Emile Gebhart, late of the French Academy.  It is erudite, although oddly enough it ignores the researches of Morelli and Berenson.  Gebhart attributes to Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi about eighty-five pictures, many of which were long ago in Morelli’s taboo list—­that terrible Morelli, the learned iconoclast who brought many sleepless nights to Dr. Wilhelm Bode of Berlin.  Time has vindicated the Bergamese critic.  Berenson will allow only forty-five originals to Botticelli’s credit.  Furthermore, Gebhart does not mention in his catalogue the two Botticellis belonging to Mrs. Gardner of Boston, a lamentable oversight for a volume brought out in 1907.  Need we add that this French author by no means sees Botticelli in the musical sense?  He is chiefly concerned with his historic environment.  Gebhart’s authorities are the Memoriale of Francesco Albertini; Anonyme Gaddiano, the manuscript of the Magliabecchiana, which precedes the Vasari edition; the Life of Botticelli, by Vasari, and many later studies, the most complete, he avers, being that of Hermann Ulmann of Munich, whose Sandro Botticelli, which appeared in 1893, is rigorously critical.  Nevertheless, it is not as critical as Morelli’s Italian Painters.  Details about the typical ears, hands, and noses of the painter may be found therein.  The last word concerning Botticelli will not be uttered until his last line has vanished.  And, even then, his archaic harmonies may continue to sound in the ears of mankind.

VIII.  SIX SPANIARDS

“EL GRECO”

Large or small, there has been a Greco cult ever since the Greek-Spanish painter died, April 7, 1614, but during the last decade it has grown into a species of worship.  One hears the names of Velasquez and El Greco coupled.  His profound influence on the greatest of the realists is blithely assumed, and for these worshippers, Ribera, Zurbaran, Murillo are hardly to be ranked with the painter of the Burial of the Count of Orgaz.  While this undiscriminating