'Lezione di Benedetto Varchi sopra il sottoscritto Sonetto di Michelagnolo Buonarroti, fatta da lui pubblicamente nella Accademia Fiorentina la

CHAPTER XVI The Accademia MichelangeloThe DavidThe tomb of JuliusA contrastFra AngelicoThe beatific painterCimabue and GiottoMasaccioGentile da FabrianoDomenico GhirlandaioFra Angelico

The Accademia delle Belle Arti is in the Via Ricasoli, that street which seen from the top of the Campanile is the straightest thing in Florence, running like a ruled line from the Duomo to the valley of the Mugnone.

at Rome, reproduced in plaster here, in the Accademia, beneath the bronze head of its author.

There, and here, in the Accademia, are his chief works assembled; but he worked also at Fiesole, at Cortona, and at Rome, where he painted frescoes in the chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican and where he died, aged sixty-eight, and was buried.

The Accademia was established with this purpose by that enlightened prince, Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1784.

We pass on at the Accademia from Cimabue's pupil Giotto, to Giotto's followers, Taddeo Gaddi and Bernardo Daddi, and Daddi's follower Spinello Aretino, and the long dependent and interdependent line of painters.

Fra Bartolommeo had some reason to know what Savonarola was like, for he was his personal friend and a brother in the same convent of S. Marco, a few yards from the Accademia, across the square.

And now we come to Botticelli, who although less richly represented in numbers than at the Uffizi, is for the majority of his admirers more to be sought here, by reason of the "Primavera" allegory, which is the Accademia's most powerful magnet.

Before leaving the Accademia for the last time, one should glance at the tapestries near the main entrance, just for fun.

We saw at the Accademia two exquisite portraits by Fra Bartolommeo of Vallombrosan monks.

From the Accademia it is but a step to S. Marco, across the Piazza, but it is well first to go a little beyond that in order to see a certain painting which both chronologically and as an influence comes before a painting that we shall find in the Museo S. Marco.

We have seen Fra Bartolommeo's portrait of Savonarola in the Accademia, and there is another of him here.

We have seen Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Shepherds at the Accademia: this is its own brother.

Perugino is best represented at the Accademia, and there are works of his at the Uffizi and Pitti and in various Florentine churches; but here he is at his best.

Alessio's work we find all over Florence: a Last Judgment in the Accademia, for example, but that is not a very pleasing thing; a Madonna Enthroned, in the Uffizi; the S. Miniato frescoes; the S. Trinità frescoes; and that extremely charming although faded work in the outer court of SS.

Ghirlandaio's chief influences, however, were Masaccio, at the Carmine, Fra Lippo Lippi, and Verrocchio, who is thought also to have been Baldovinetti's pupil and whose Baptism of Christ, in the Accademia, painted when Ghirlandaio was seventeen, must have given Ghirlandaio the lines for his own treatment of the incident in this church.

It was in 1485 that he painted his delightful Adoration, at the Accademia, and in 1486 he began his great series at S. Maria Novella, finishing them in 1490, his assistants being his brother David, Benedetto Mainardi, who married Ghirlandaio's sister, and certain apprentices, among them the youthful Michelangelo, who came to the studio in 1488.

Above these we faintly see that strange Baptism of Christ, so curiously like the Verrocchio in the Accademia, and the Baptist preaching.

Trinity"but it is in very bad condition; while in the Cappella Rucellai in the right transept is what purports to be a Cimabue, very like the one in the Accademia, but with a rather more matured Child in it.

The Uffizi is never crowded; the Accademia is always comfortable; the Bargello is sparsely attended.

Think of the gulf between the Cimabue Madonna and the Giotto Madonna, side by side, which we saw in the Accademia, and this.

What time she spared from her devotions she occupied in the establishment and patronage of the Accademia degli Elevati"Souls," for the encouragement of poetry.

La mia Accademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E stata volentier ne' miei boschetti; E puossi ben veder l' Affrica e l' Asia: Vengon le Ninfe con lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia; E così fuggo mille urban dispetti: Sì ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi, Gente pur sempre di mal dicer vaghi.

And not in vain; for in 1826 he read before the Accademia dei Lincei of Rome, (founded by Federico Cesi,) a paper on the chemical process of coloring a giallone (yellow) in the manufacture of gold, in which he announced some facts in the action of electricity, long before Delarive and other chemists, as noticed in the "Quarterly Journal of Science," Dec., 1828, No. 6, and the "Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève," 1829, Tom.