"My people delivered, and by my hand; and God has
been gracious to His handmaid!" The triumph of Miriam over a fallen
host, the fire of exulting mortal life in an immortal hour, the purity
and severity of a guardian angel--all are here; and as her servant
follows, carrying indeed the head, but invisible--(a mere thing to be
carried--no more to be so much as thought of)--she looks only at her
mistress, with intense, servile, watchful love. Faithful, not in these
days of fear only, but hitherto in all her life, and afterwards
forever.
After you have seen it enough, look also for a little while at
Angelico's Marriage and Death of the Virgin, in the same room; you may
afterwards associate the three pictures always together in your mind.
And, looking at nothing else to-day in the Uffizi, let us go back to
Giotto's chapel.
We must begin with this work on our left hand, the Death of St.
Francis; for it is the key to all the rest. Let us hear first what Mr.
Crowe directs us to think of it. "In the composition of this scene,
Giotto produced a masterpiece, which served as a model but too often
feebly imitated by his successors. Good arrangement, variety of
character and expression in the heads, unity and harmony in the whole,
make this an exceptional work of its kind. As a composition, worthy of
the fourteenth century, Ghirlandajo and Benedetto da Majano both
imitated, without being able to improve it.
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