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Chap. XII. CASTAGNO’S PICTURES. 311 the master. The portrait has indeed Andrea’s low keys of tone and is painted with great care and fusion on a general flesh ground of verde; and the forms are heavy as in most of his productions. Though but a head, the picture reveals characteristic traits of Castagno, and leads the critic by a natural sequence to the contemplation of a Virgin and child between SS. Cosmo and Damian in adoration, and the standing figures of S.S. John the Baptist, Mary Magdalen, Francis and Catherine of Alexandria, an altarpiece originally in S. Ambruogio and now in the Academy of Arts at Florence. 1 This piece which has been attributed to more than one painter is now with sufficient cause catalogued under the name of Botticelli. Yet in. some of the figures, and especially in that of S. Catherine, one may notice some of that heaviness and coarseness .in the rendering of form which' is a peculiarity in the portrait at the Pitti. The painter evidently copied a coarse and rustic model having large hands and feet. The S. Cosmo, kneeling to the left, is also of common type, and the draperies are in fair style; but, in this respect, Castagno had elsewhere attained to equal excellence. 2 The Magdalen standing in rear of S. Cosmo, — the S. Francis, — recal to mind similar figures by Domenico Veniziano, the latter being, at once, a somewhat nobler repetition of that by Castagno, and of a figure not unlike that of Domenico Veniziano in the altarpiece of S. Lucia at Florence. There is a clear resemblance of style, in fact, between Domenico Veniziano and Andrea del Cas tagno, as there is between the latter and Piero della Fran cesca who studied under Domenico. The name of Andrea may thus be put forward as a fair claimant for the author ship of the picture now under notice, the more so, as the colour is of his usual low and verde tinge, at least insofar as the damaged condition of the surface enables one to judge. 3 Besides this piece, three others in the Academy of Fine Arts at Florence are assigned to Andrea del Castagno. S. Jerom 4 in the desert, in one of them beats his breast with a stone in his hand, in front of a crucifix, in a landscape of 1 No. 46 now under the name of Sandro Botticelli, of old as signed to Domenico Ghirlandaio. 2 See postea, the S. Jerom in the Academy of Arts at Florence. (No. 38.) Galerie des grands ta bleaux. 3 Does not Vasari tell us that Andrea del Castagno was the best painter in Florence, and notice him as the master of one of the Pollaiuoli with whom Botticelli painted. (Vas. Vol. IV. p.p. 139 and 151.) 4 No. 38. Acad, of Arts. Galerie des grands tableaux.
