FIG. 128. Botticelli. Chigi Madonna.—_Mrs. John L. Gardner, Boston._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 130. Botticelli. Judith.—_Uffizi._ ] In that year the brothers Pollaiuolo undertook the painting of seven figures of the Virtues to decorate the wainscot behind the magistrates’ bench in the Mercanzia, the mercantile court. Evidently they were pressed for time, for they assigned one panel representing Fortitude, Figure 129, to Botticelli. John Ruskin has celebrated in eloquent phrase this frail embodiment of the courage of the mind. “Worn, somewhat, and not a little weary; instead of standing ready for all comers, she is sitting—apparently in revery; her fingers playing restlessly and idly—nay, I think, even nervously about the hilt of her sword. For her battle is not to begin today, nor did it begin yesterday. Many a morn and even have passed since it began, and now—is this to be the ending of it? And if this—by what manner of end?” [Illustration: FIG. 129. Botticelli. Fortitude.—_Uffizi._ ] The passage beautifully illustrates the odd blend of purest insight and casual chatter in Ruskin’s criticism. Forget that the sword is a mace—Ruskin is never right in such trifles. Fortitude sits merely because her sister Virtues do so in the imposed decorative scheme. The nervous action of the hands is chiefly an elegance. Yet the whole characterization expresses with singular felicity the alert and thoughtful charm of this Fortitude amid the stolid effigies of Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo. Ruskin, as often, is most wrong where it least matters. We have more prosaic business with the Fortitude—to note the pouting snub-nosed type, and the elaborate ornaments, which are Fra Filippo’s, the solidly drawn but ill-shapen foot, which is Pollaiuolo’s, and the sensitiveness, which is Botticelli’s own. A still more complete assimilation of Pollaiuolo’s energetic mode is revealed in the admirable little Judith, Figure 130, which must have been painted towards 1475. The faces are still Fra Filippo’s, and he could have invented the eager doglike obsequiousness of the maid. But the springy action and the fine, lean ankles and feet, the bony, expressive wrists and hands, the minutely featured landscape, are completely in Pollaiuolo’s vein. Botticelli’s specific invention is the sublimation of the theme—Judith’s sense of walking in a dream after the unspeakable ordeal of the night. And the flutter of the robes in the clean morning wind has a stylistic grace that amounts to Sandro’s signature.