“The angels look as if they longed to help both,” were some of the quick answers.

“Yes; inner feelings, you see.  Sometimes he put a crown of thorns somewhere in a picture, as if to explain its expressions.  His Madonna is ‘pondering these things,’ as Scripture says, and the Child-Christ and angels are in intense sympathy with her.  We long to look again and again at such pictures—­they move us.

“Another characteristic of his work is the action—­a vehement impetuous motion.  You will find this finely illustrated in his Allegory of Spring, a very famous picture in the Academy.  His type of figure and face is most easily recognizable; the limbs are long and slender, and often show through almost transparent garments; the hands are long and nervous; the faces are rather long also, with prominent rounded chins and full lips.  He put delicate patterns of gold embroidery about the neck and wrists of the Madonna’s gown and the edges of her mantle, and heaped gold all over the lights on the curled hair of her angels and other attendants.  You can never mistake one of these pictures when once you have grown familiar with his style.

“I think you should study particularly his Allegory of Spring in the Academy for full length figures in motion.  You will find the color of this picture happily weird to agree with the fantastic conception.  Then in the Uffizi Gallery you will find several pictures of the Madonna; notable among them is his Coronation of the Virgin, painted, as he was fond of doing, on a round board.  Such a picture is called a tondo.  Here you will find all his characteristics.

[Illustration:  BOTICELLI.  UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE.

CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.]

“Study this first; study figures, faces, hands, and methods of technique; then see if you cannot readily find the other examples without your catalogue.  A noted one is Calumny.  This exemplifies strikingly Botticelli’s power of expressing swift motion.  In the Pitti Palace is a very interesting one called Pallas, or Triumph of Wisdom over Barbarity,—­strangely enough, found only recently.”

“Found only recently; how can that be, uncle?” quickly asked Malcom.

“The picture was known to have been painted, for Vasari described it in his ‘Life of Botticelli,’ but it was lost sight of until an Englishman discovered it in an old private collection which had been for many years in the Pitti Palace, suspected it to be the missing picture, and connoisseurs agree that it is genuine.  There was a great deal of excitement here when the fact was made known.  The figure of Pallas, in its clinging transparent garment, is strikingly beautiful, and characteristic of Botticelli.  The picture was painted as a glorification of the wise reign of the Medici, who did so much for the intellectual advancement of Florence.”

Then Mr. Sumner told them that he was to be absent from Florence for a week or two, and should be exceedingly busy for some time, and so would leave them to go on with their study of the pictures by themselves.