360 PRÆTERITA-II

studied the Angelicos only, Lippi and Botticelli being still far beyond me; but the Ghirlandajos in the choir of Santa Maria Novella, in their broad masses of colour, complied with the laws I had learned in Venice, while yet they swiftly and strictly taught me the fine personalities of the Florentine race and art. At Venice, one only knows a fisherman by his net, and a saint by his nimbus. But at Florence, angel or prophet, knight or hermit, girl or goddess, prince or peasant, cannot but be what they are, masque them how you will.

Nobody ever disturbed me in the Ghirlandajo apse. There were no services behind the high altar; tourists, even the most learned, had never in those days heard Ghirlandajo’s name; the sacristan was paid his daily fee regularly whether he looked after me or not. The lovely chapel, with its painted windows and companies of old Florentines, was left for me to do what I liked in, all the forenoon; and I wrote a complete critical and historical account of the frescoes from top to bottom of it, seated mostly astride on the desks, till I tumbled off backwards one day at the gap where the steps went down, but came to no harm, though the fall was really a more dangerous one than any I ever had in the Alps. The inkbottle was upset over the historical account, however, and the closing passages a little shortened,-which saved some useful time.¹

127. When the chief bustle in the small sacristy, (a mere cupboard or ecclesiastical pantry, two steps up out of the transept) was over, with the chapel masses of the morning, I used to be let in there to draw the Angelico Annunciation,-about eleven inches by fourteen as far as I recollect, then one of the chief gems of Florence, seen in the little shrine it was painted for, now carried away by republican pillage, and lost in the general lumber of

¹ [The historical account of these frescoes has not been found among Ruskin’s papers or note-books. From a note-book of 1845, with descriptions of other paintings in Florence, numerous quotations have been made in this edition: see, e.g., the list of Contents in Vol. IV. pp. xv.-xvi.]

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