The Adoration, attributed to Fiorenzo, is a crowded but a beautiful composition. The Virgin, S. Joseph, and a group of shepherds kneel in the foreground, and exquisite flowers, grape-hyacinths,
[Illustration: ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS BY FIORENZO DI LORENZO]
even some fluffy heads of dandelion seed grow at their feet. Behind them is the stable--an Umbrian stable in an Umbrian landscape--filled with a host of angels. In the dim distance the shepherds feed their flocks upon the hills. The figures are mere sketches of some Umbrian goat-herds whom Fiorenzo must have met outside the Umbrian farms at dawn. Nos. 10 and 16 (in Sala IX.) are beautiful specimens of the master's later work. Note the hand and the crimson sleeves of the Virgin.
But if Fiorenzo could apply himself with the religious ardour of his school to sacred subjects, to the Bible of his art, he could also sometimes take a holiday and write a fantastic and entrancing _scherzo_ on his own account. It is his series of pictures on the life of San Bernardino of Siena which at once attracts us in the gallery. Here we find one of those wonderful visions of the past--a record of men's manners, of their costumes and architecture, as seen through the eyes of some intelligent yet child-like artist.[99] To describe the miracles is not an easy matter. In seeking the subject one is carried away by the charm of the models, just as the painter was who painted them. A company of entrancing youths with long thin legs, their marvellous crimson tunics trimmed with fur, their small caps barely clinging to their shocks of golden curls, strut up and down the panels, but barely conscious of the Saint and all his patient care of them. No 3, represents the miracle of a girl who has fallen into a well, and whom the Saint has saved from drowning; we see a lovely and impassive creature sitting upon the marble floor, her yellow hair has not been wetted, the small red fillet binds it gracefully; her relations and her lovers pray and pose all round her, but little ruffled by the memory of the late catastrophe. Just the same is the accident of the mason, treated in No. 7. His comrades stand about the wounded man, exquisite and undisturbed. "Ah," they seem to say, "thus and thus it happened, thus, maybe, he fell"; but all the time they are thinking of their well-set tunics and of their long and lovely legs; and who can be surprised at this, seeing that their _toilette_ is carried to perfection? No. 5 shows the capture and escape of a prisoner. It has a pleasant landscape in the background, a sort of park, with a lake and trees about it. In No. 6 the Saint appears in a cloud under a beautiful marble palace and heals the blindness of a fellow friar. The doctors do seem somewhat interested, but everything is too beautiful and finished for much pity or, anyhow, for pain; and as for the hair of the young men in this panel, it is more excellently curled than in any of the series. The remaining miracles are by another hand. Some pupil or imitator of Fiorenzo tried to finish them, but the treatment is coarser, the charm of the first is gone.