In its clear depths; no soul, no truth is there.
Oh, praise your Rubens and his fleshy brush!
Oh, love your Titian and his carnal air!
Give me the trilling of a pure-toned thrush,
And take your crimson parrots. Artist-saint!
O Fra Angelico, your brush was dyed
In hues of opal, not in vulgar paint;

You showed to us pure joys for which you sighed,

Your heart was in your work, you never

feigned;

You left us here the Paradise you gained!"

-Maurice Francis Egan.

Quite different from Angelico's spiritual conceptions are the pictures of his contemporary, Fra Filippo Lippi-or Lippo Lippi, for shortwho painted his religious subjects in a human atmosphere, not idealizing them. Well might his Superior in the convent of the Carmine say:

"Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the truth
As much as pea and pea-it's a devil's game-
Your business is not to catch men with show,
With homage to the perishable clay,

But lift them over, ignore it all,

Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh. Your business is to paint the souls of men!

Give us no more body than shows soul! Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,

That sets us praising,-why not stop with him? Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head With wonder at lines, colors and what not! Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms! Rub it all out, try at it a second time.

Oh that white smallish female with the breasts, She's just my niece-Herodius, I would say, Who went and danced and got men's heads cut

off

Have it all out!"

-Robert Browning.

Lippo Lippi's Madonna with Child and Angels, in the Uffizi is described by Richard Watson Gilder in his poem:

A MADONNA OF FRA LIPPO LIPPI.

"No heavenly maid we here behold,
Though round her brow a ring of gold;
This baby, solemn-eyed and sweet,
Is human all from head to feet.

Together close her palms are prest
In worship of that godly guest;
But glad her heart and unafraid,
While on her neck His hand is laid.

Two children, happy, laughing, gay,
Uphold the little child in play;

Not flying angels these, what though

Four wings from their four shoulders grow.