To this later period belongs, I believe, the diptych at Naples which represents two themes rare in early Florentine painting, the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Miracle of the Snow, Figure 84. The latter scene shows Pope Liberius tracing the foundations of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore which were indicated by a miraculous snow-fall in midsummer. It is delightful as story-telling, and some of the minor figures are entrancing, as is the landscape. Since Michelangelo and Giorgio Vasari once admired this picture together at Rome, we should not grudge it our admiration. Nor should we fail to note the curious defects in construction. The heads of the attendant figures are set on the shoulders like a ball on a post. You could blow any of these heads off without overtaxing your lungs. The picture shows the utmost of which Masolino was capable. It reveals him as lightly touched by the new learning and faithful to the old panoramic ideals of narrative which had come down from Taddeo Gaddi and the Lorenzetti. [Illustration: FIG. 84. Masolino. Pope Liberius tracing the snow-marked plan of Santa Maria Maggiore.—_Naples._ ] Logically we should next consider Masaccio, but first we may well give an eye to a minor sort of narrative painting which worked in the direction of contemporary realism. This was domestic painting as distinguished from ecclesiastical or civic.[33] In a prosperous Florentine home the chest was the most important article of furniture. In the fifteenth century its front was pictured with races, pageants, feasts, battles, or the new themes from classical mythology. Every patrician bride normally received two such painted cassoni to contain her trousseau. For example,[34] Giovanna di Filippo Aldobrandini when she married Tommaso di Berto Fini, in 1418, received two bride chests depicting the races on St. John’s day. A complete chest in the Bargello, Florence, shows the riders carrying to the Baptistery the _palii_, or lengths of brocade which were the prizes. The front panel of the companion chest is in the Holden Collection, at Cleveland, and commemorates with extraordinary vivacity and fidelity the race itself, Figure 85. The winner is just preparing to touch the _palio_ which hangs from the ceremonial car at the finish. Jesters, policemen, eager women, and impatient urchins who pelt the losers make up a remarkable picture of contemporary customs. Besides the pictured chests, a well appointed room had at the height of a sitter’s shoulder similar but larger panels which were called _Spalliere_. And still higher there was, on a still larger scale, what were called cornice panels. These too were contemporary or mythological in subject matter. Where many a room thus had three courses of pictures from the floor to the ceiling there was abundant opportunity for the narrative painter and remarkable stimulus to invention. The richness and complexity of this household decoration