There is a fresco on the south wall[197] of the Spanish Chapel in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella of Florence which contains a figure answering nearly to this conjecture regarding Scot’s appearance. It is that of a man in the prime of life, slight and dark, with a short brown beard trimmed to a point. He wears a long close-fitting robe of a reddish colour, noticeably narrow at the waist, with a falling girdle. On his head is a tall red pointed cap from which the ringlets of his dark hair escape on each side. He stands among the converts of the Dominican preachers and bends towards the spectator with an intense expression and action as he tears the leaves out of a heretical book[198] that rests on his knee. It would be too much to assert that the figure we have described was meant as a portrait of Michael Scot, yet considering the place he holds in the _Divine Comedy_, it is not impossible that such an idea may have crossed the artist’s mind and left these traces in his work. Certainly no better pictorial illustration can be found, at once of Dante’s lines, and of the somewhat equivocal reputation which began to haunt Scot from the time of his return to court. There was indeed a singular fitness in the Moslem dress considered as the daily wear of one who, though a Christian and a Churchman, had just done more than any living scholar to introduce the Moorish science and philosophy in the West. His choice of such a fashion is evidence that Michael Scot possessed a ready adaptability to his circumstances, and even a vein of aesthetic and dramatic instinct which we might not otherwise have suspected. But it is not to be forgotten that his versions of Averroës were already condemned by the Church, and that the very manner of Scot’s appearance when he brought them from Spain must have heightened the suspicions of heresy which began to attach themselves to the translator of these forbidden works. The only hope for such a man was that he might be induced to tear his book and turn to less dangerous pursuits. This is exactly the idea which the painter of the Spanish Chapel has expressed, and in a form which accords so remarkably with the picturesque description of Michael Scot by Dante.[199] If the philosopher did not actually take such extreme measures with the creatures of his brain and pen, the versions he brought to Sicily were at least suppressed in the meantime, being concealed in the imperial closet till a more suitable opportunity should occur for their publication. This done, their author devoted himself to pursuits less likely to attract unfavourable notice than those in which he had been lately engaged.