There is a great temptation to linger awhile in San Marco with the friar, for even to-day the place has not lost its appeal, and there are sufficient landmarks in the surrounding city to enable us to trace the influence of men who were at once the contemporaries and inspirers of his genius. Only the limits of space intervene to forbid too long a stay in Florence, and as the painter's later years were spent in Rome we must follow him there. For those who wish to linger in the monastery there are books in plenty, some dealing with the Quattrocento, others dealing with the Popes, others with Fra Angelico himself. This outline of a painter's life seeks to do no more than introduce him to those who may be interested; it is not intended for those who wish to follow him beyond the limits of a modest appreciation. Vasari, Crowe, and Cavalcaselle, Professor Langton Douglas, Bernhard Berenson and others will supply the more complete and detailed accounts of the painter's life and works, and the careful reader will find sufficient references to other writers to direct him to every side issue. [Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE INFANT CHRIST From the Convent of San Marco. This picture gives a fair idea of the exquisite sweetness and delicacy with which the painter handled the subject of the child Christ. He does not treat this subject very often, but when he does the result is in every way delightful.] Pope Eugenius IV., who visited Florence when he was exiled from Rome, had settled for a while in Bologna until the anti-Pope Felix V. fell from power, and had then hastened back to Rome, and settled down to beautify the Vatican. Like all the great men of his generation he felt the spirit of the Renaissance in the air, and desired no more than leisure in order to respond to it. He remembered the clever artist, whose work had charmed him in the days of his Florentine exile, and sent an invitation to Fra Angelico to come to Rome and decorate one of the chapels in the Vatican. In those days one travelled in Italy, even more slowly than one does to-day by the Italian express trains--strange as the statement may seem to moderns who know the country well--and by the time that the friar had received the summons and had responded to it, Eugenius IV. would appear to have relinquished the keys to his successor. Happily the new Pope Nicholas V. was a scholar, a gentleman, and a statesman, as responsive to the new ideas as his predecessor in office. He gathered the best men of his time to the Vatican, which he proposed to rebuild, and he entered upon a programme that could scarcely have been carried out had he enjoyed a much longer lease of life than Providence granted. Unfortunately he had no more than eight years to rule at St. Peter's, and that did not serve for much more than a beginning of his great scheme. He was succeeded by Tomaso Parentucelli, that ardent scholar whom Cosimo di Medici had appointed custodian of the collection of MSS.