“THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART” 233

63. None of Orcagna’s pupils, except Francisco Traini,¹ attained celebrity-

“nothing in fact is known of them except their names. Had their works, however inferior, been preserved, we might have had less difficulty in establishing the links between himself and his successor in the supermacy of the Semi-Byzantine school at Florence, the Beato Fra Angelico da Fiesole. ... He was born at Vicchio, near Florence, it is said in 1387, and was baptized by the name of Guido. Of a gentle nature, averse to the turmoil of the world, and pious to enthusiasm, though as free from fanaticism as his youth was innocent of vice, he determined, at the age of twenty, though well provided for in a worldly point of view, to retire to the cloister; he professed himself accordingly a brother of the monastery of S. Domenico at Fiesole in 1407, assuming his monastic name from the Apostle of love, S. John. He acquired from his residence there the distinguishing surname ‘da Fiesole;’ and a calmer retreat for one weary of earth and desirous of commerce with heaven would in vain be sought for;-the purity of the atmosphere, the freshness of the morning breeze, the starry clearness and delicious frangrance of the nights, the loveliness of the valley at one’s feet, lengthening out, like a life of happiness, between the Apennine and the sea-with the intermingling sounds that ascend perpetually from below, softened by distance into music, and by an agreeable compromise at once giving a zest to solitude and cheating it of its loneliness-rendering Fiesole a spot which angles might alight upon by mistake in quest of paradise, a spot where it would be at once sweet to live and sweet to die.”-Vol. iii. pp. 151-153.

64. Our readers must recollect that the convent where Fra Giovanni first resided is not that whose belfry tower and cypress grove crown the “top of Fèsole.”² The Dominican convent is situated at the bottom of the slope of olives, distinguished only by its narrow and low spire; a cypress avenue recedes from it towards Florence-a stony path, leading to the ancient Badia of Fiesole, descends in front of the three-arched loggia which protects the entrance to the church. No extended prospect is open to it; though over the low wall, and through the sharp, thickest olive leaves, may be seen one silver gleam of the Arno, and, at evening,

¹ [“Among all the disciples of Orcagna, none,” says Vasari, “was found superior to Francesco Traini” (Bohn’s ed., vol.i. p.217). A picture by him (mentioned by Vasari), of “St. Thomas Aquinas” in the church of St. Catarina at Pisa is still in situ. An altar-piece by Traini is in the Accademia at Florence; it was finished in 1346.]

² [Paradise Lost, i. 289; see Vol. IV.p. 352 and n.]

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