Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/251

Botticelli's last pictures, the Calumny—which he painted towards the end of his life for his intimate friend Antonio Segni—and the Nativity, in the National Gallery. The subject of the former is taken from Lucian's account of the picture by Apelles, which Alberti quoted in his "Treatise on Painting," but the fierce strife of factions in Florence, and the tragedy of Savonarola's end, may well have stirred the master to paint this allegory of the violence and injustice of man. The scene is laid in a stately portico adorned with antique statues, where King Midas, wearied by the importunities of Suspicion and Ignorance, receives Calumny, a richly-clad woman, who drags the prostrate youth Innocence by the hair. Envy, Treachery, and Intrigue attend her steps, and Remorse, an old hag in ragged clothes, looks back regretfully at Truth, who, standing deserted and alone, points upwards in calm certainty that her mute appeal will be heard in heaven. Through the pillars of the open loggia we look out on a wide waste of waters, bounded by no further shore, which gives an indefinable sense of dreariness—the expression of the painter's conviction that truth and justice were nowhere to be found on earth. The Nativity was painted a few months after that November evening when Sandro extorted Doffo Spini's confession of the martyred friar's innocence, and a Greek inscription on the panel explains its mystic intention:

"This picture I, Alessandro, painted at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, in the half-time after the time, during the fulfilment of the Eleventh of St. John, in the Second