One is an altarpiece; the _Madonna
enthroned_, with the Divine Child in her arms. Era Bartolommeo's
idea of an angel-sustained canopy is here, but the angels hold it up
from the outside instead of the inside. Before her are S. John the
Baptist, S. Julian, S. Nicholas, and S. Dominic. The S. Julian has a
great similarity to the S. Michael of Perugino, and the S. John, by its
good modelling, shows the result of his studies from the antique in the
Medici garden.
For the same church he did the curious conventional painting of the
_Trinity_ on a gold ground. The subject is inartistic, because
unapproachable; the attempt to paint that which is a deep spiritual
mystery degrades both the art and the subject; the latter because it
lowers it to human grasp, the former because it shows its powerlessness
to shadow forth the infinite. There is beautiful painting in the heads
of the angels, at the foot of the Cross, but the brilliancy of the gold
ground is overpowering to the colours, albeit he has balanced it by
reproducing Cosimo Roselli's red-winged cherubs. Nothing but Fra
Angelico's delicate tints can bear such a background.
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