Here in the Accademia you may see Lucrezia Buti, that pale beauty whom he loved, very fair and full of languor and sweetness.  She looks at you out of the crowd of saints and angels gathered round the feet of Madonna, whom God crowns from His throne of jasper.  Behind her, looking at her always, Lippo himself comes—­iste perfecit opus,—­up the steps into that choir where the angels crowned with roses lift the lilies, as they wait in some divine interval to sing again Alleluia.  And for this too he should be remembered, for his son was Filippino Lippo and his pupil Sandro Botticelli.

The Accademia possesses some five pictures by Botticelli,—­the Coronation of the Virgin and its predella (Nos. 73, 74), the Madonna with saints and angels (No. 85), the Dead Christ (No. 157), the Salome (No. 161), and the Primavera (No. 80).  The Coronation is from the Convent of S. Marco, and seems to have been painted after Botticelli had fallen under the strange, unhappy influence of Savonarola; much the same might be said of the Madonna with saints and angels, where his expressiveness, that quality which in him was genius, seems to have fallen almost into a mannerism, a sort of preconceived attitude; and certainly here, where such a perfect thing awaits us, it is rather to the Spring we shall turn at once than to anything less splendid.

The so-called Primavera was painted for Lorenzo de’ Medici, and in some vague way seems to have been inspired by Poliziano’s verses in praise of Giuliano de’ Medici and Bella Simonetta—­

    “Candida e ella, e Candida la vesta,
    Ma pur di rose e fior dipinta e d’erba: 
    Lo innanellato crin dell’ aurea testa
    Scende in la fronte umilmente superba. 
    Ridele attorno tutta la foresta,
    E quanto puo sue cure disacerba. 
    Nell’ atto regalmente e mansueta;
    E pur col ciglio le tempeste acqueta."[119]

Here at last we see the greatest, the most personal artist of the fifteenth century really at his best, in that fortunate moment of half-pensive joy which was so soon to pass away.  How far has he wandered, and through what secret forbidden ways, from the simple thoughts of Angelico, the gay worldly laughter of Lippo Lippi.  On that strange adventurous journey of the soul he has discovered the modern world, just our way of looking at things, as it were, with a sort of gift for seeing in even the most simple things some new and subtle meaning.  And then, in that shadowy and yet so real kingdom in which, not without a certain timidity, he has ventured so far, he has come upon the very gods in exile, and for him Venus is born again from the foam of the sea, and Mars sleeping in a valley will awake to find her beside him, not as of old full of laughter, disdain, and joy; but half reconciled, as it were, to sorrow, to that change which has come upon her so that men now call her Mary, that name in which bitter and sweet are mingled together.