It is really the decadence, certainly prophesied in the later work of Andrea del Sarto, that we come to in the work of that pupil of his, who was influenced by what he could understand of the work of Michelangelo.  Jacopo Pontormo’s work almost fails to interest us to-day save in his portraits.  The Cosimo I (1270), the Cosimo dei Medici (1267), painted from some older portrait, the Portrait of a Man (1220), have a certain splendour, that we find more attenuated but still living in the work of his pupil Bronzino, who also failed to understand Michelangelo.  Fine though his portraits are, his various insincere and badly coloured compositions merely serve to show how low the taste of the time—­the time of the end of the Republic—­had fallen.

Thus we have followed very cursorily, but with a certain faithfulness nevertheless, the course of Florentine Art.  With the other schools of Italy we shall deal more shortly.

II.  THE SIENESE SCHOOL

It is as a divine decoration that Sienese art comes to us in the profound and splendid work of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the delicate and lovely work of Simone Martini, the patient work of the Lorenzetti.  The masterpiece, perhaps, of Duccio is the great Rucellai Madonna of S. Maria Novella.  There is none of his work in the Uffizi; but one of the most beautiful paintings in the world, the Annunciation of Simone Martini (23), from the Church of S. Ansano in Castelvecchio, is in the first Long Gallery here.  On a gold ground under three beautiful arches, in the midst of which the Dove hovers amid the Cherubim, Gabriel whispers to the Virgin the mysterious words of Annunciation.  In his hand is a branch of olive, and on his brow an olive crown.  Madonna, a little overwhelmed by the marvel of these tidings, draws back, pale in her beauty, the half-closed book of prayer in her hands, catching her robe about her; between them is a vase of campanulas still and sweet.  Who may describe the colour and the delicate glory of this work?  The hand of man can do no more; it is the most beautiful of all religious paintings, subtle and full of grace.  Simone was the greatest follower of Duccio.  Born in 1284, in 1324 he married Vanna di Memmo, and his brother, Lippo Memmi, sometimes assisted him in his work.  Lippo’s hand cannot be discerned in the Annunciation—­none but Simone himself could have achieved it; but the two saints, who stand one on either side, are his work, as well as the four little figures in the frame.

Of the other early Sienese painters, only Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti are represented in the Uffizi.  The first, by a Madonna (15) and a Thebaid; the second (16), in the two predella pictures for the altar-piece of S. Procolo, Sassetta, the best of the Sienese Quattrocento painters, is absent, and Vecchietta is only represented by a predella picture (47); it is not till we came to Sodoma, whose famous St. Sebastian (1279) suggests altogether another kind of art, a sensuous and sometimes an almost hysterical sort of ecstasy, as in the Swooning Virgin or the Swoon of St. Catherine at Siena, that we find Sienese painting again.