vi., where Ruskin gives a charming account of happy days spent in copying Benozzo's work). These frescoes are remarkable for their wealth of fancy and picturesque detail. The Pisans themselves were so well pleased that they presented the painter in 1478 with a tomb, that his body might repose amidst the great works of his life. He died at Pisa twenty years later. This was a picture painted very much to order. The figure of the Virgin was specially directed--so it appears from the original contract, dated 1461, still in existence--to be made similar in mode, form, and ornaments to one by Fra Angelico, now in the Florentine Academy, and it was also stipulated that "the said Benozzo shall at his own cost diligently gild the said panel throughout, both as regards figures and ornaments." The prices paid for such commissions in those days may be judged from the fact that in the case of his great frescoes at Pisa, Benozzo contracted to paint three a year for 10 ducats each (= say £100). As for Benozzo's own personal feelings, it is easy to see with what pleasure he put in the pretty flowers in the foreground for St. Francis, and the sweet-faced angels behind the throne, and with what gusto he shot the gold in their draperies. The figure on our extreme left is St. Zenobius. His embroidered cope is very rich. The details of needlework in the picture will well repay careful study. Compared with all this, the kneeling St. Jerome and St. Francis and the other saints appear somewhat perfunctory. Notice, too, the bright goldfinches on the alabaster steps, introduced, we may suppose, in honour of Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again! He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers Sisters, brothers--and the beasts--whose pains are hardly less than ours! 284. MADONNA AND CHILD. _Bartolommeo Vivarini_ (Venetian: painted 1450-1499). Bartolommeo Vivarini of Murano was the younger brother of Antonio (see 768), with whom he began to work in partnership in 1450--as is shown by the inscription on the great altar-piece by the two brothers, now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna. Bartolommeo appears to have studied at Padua, and the influence of Squarcione is manifest in the painter's striving after correctness of form. "The ornate character of his altar-pieces, with gold heightening, garlands of fruit and flowers and fluttering fillets, is also borrowed from the Paduans, and lends festal pomp and solemnity to the whole."