"Wrought in the troublous times of Italy By Sandro Botticelli, when for fear Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near, To end all labour and all revelry, He wept and prayed in silence." The painting is full of theological symbolism, and its Greek inscription, being translated, runs: "This, I, Alexander, painted at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, in the half-time after the time during the fulfilment of the eleventh of St. John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the Devil for three years and a half. Afterwards he shall be chained, and we shall see him trodden down, as in this picture." Botticelli had already, earlier in life, got into religious trouble by his reforming tendencies. When quite a young man, he had painted, for a Florentine citizen, Matteo Palmieri, a large picture called _The Assumption of the Virgin_, which also hangs in our Gallery (No. 1126). Palmieri had adopted Origen's strange heresy that the human race was an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of Lucifer, were neither for God nor for his enemies; and, as he and Botticelli, in working out the design of the picture, had made amendments in theology, they fell into disgrace. Suspected of heresy, Botticelli's work was covered up; and the chapel for which it had been painted was closed until the picture left Florence for the Duke of Hamilton's collection and was bought by the nation in 1882. "The story of the heresy interprets," Mr. Pater says, "much of the peculiar sentiment with which Botticelli infuses his profane and sacred persons, neither all human nor all divine." Most interesting, too, is Carpaccio's Venetian painting of the Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (750), which faithfully represents a page of the history of Venice. The doge is shown kneeling before the Virgin, and begging her protection, on the occasion of the plague in 1478. Medicaments and nostrums against the epidemic are contained in a gold vase on the altar before the throne; and a blessing (according to the inscription below) is asked on them: "Celestial Virgin, preserve the City and Republic of Venice, and the Venetian State, and extend your protection to me, if I deserve it." Simple and modest indeed was Venice in the good days of her prosperity! Compare with this kneeling, crownless doge, the new and elaborate frescoes in the Vatican, where the Pope is represented in his grandest robes, benevolently granting to the Madonna an audience, with masters of the ceremonies standing by, and obsequious pages holding his gold-laced train.