If you enter by the door most to the left, or north, and turn immediately
to the right, on the interior of the wall of the facade is an Annunciation,
visible enough because well preserved, though in the dark, and extremely
pretty in its way,--of the decorated and ornamental school following
Giotto:--I can't guess by whom, nor does it much matter; but it is well
To look at it by way of contrast with the delicate, intense, slightly
decorated design of Memmi,--in which, when you return into the Spanish
chapel, you will feel the dependence for its effect on broad masses of
white and pale amber, where the decorative school would have had mosaic
of red, blue, and gold.
Our first business this morning must be to read and understand the
writing on the book held open by St. Thomas Aquinas, for that informs
us of the meaning of the whole picture.
It is this text from the Book of Wisdom VII. 6.
"Optavi, et datus est mihi sensus.
Invocavi, et venit in me Spiritus Sapientiae,
Et preposui illam regnis et sedibus."
"I willed, and Sense was given me.
I prayed, and the Spirit of Wisdom came upon me.
And I set her before, (preferred her to,) kingdoms
and thrones."
The common translation in our English Apocrypha loses the entire
meaning of this passage, which--not only as the statement of the
experience of Florence in her own education, but as universally
descriptive of the process of all noble education whatever--we had
better take pains to understand.
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