After Lippo’s death his Madonnas were revered as sacred images, and were only uncovered on festivals dedicated to the Virgin. Several are still to be seen in the ancient churches of Bologna, and a lunetto of the “Virgin between St. Sixtus and St. Benedict” over the portal of San Procolo, is pointed out as the very picture which excited the admiration of Pope Clement VIII. On returning from the conquest of Ferrara, he is said to have paused before Lippo’s “Virgin,” and, saluting it with the utmost devotion, to have exclaimed that no other images ever touched him as deeply as those painted by the old Bologna master. In later days, Guido professed an extraordinary veneration for Lippo’s Madonnas, and often declared that some supernatural influence must have guided the artist’s pencil, since no modern painter could ever succeed in designing a figure of so much purity and holiness. In spite of these enthusiastic expressions it is impossible to give Lippo a high place among his contemporaries, and this Fra Angelico of Bologna is as far below the friar of St. Marco as the school of his native city is inferior to that of Florence. One of Lippo’s pictures, originally in the Ercolani Palace at Bologna, is now in the National Gallery, and may be taken as a fair specimen of his style. The Virgin, embracing her child, appears in mid-air surrounded by a circular glory, angels hover above, and a flowery meadow lies below. There is a good deal of religious feeling and maternal tenderness in the Madonna’s face, and some attempt at rendering natural movement, without either beauty of type or skill of workmanship. Side by side with the mystic traditions of the Madonna painter we trace a more vigorous vein in the early school of Bologna, and see decided proofs of the Giottesque influences which had already reached its artists. This Florentine tendency is prominent in the works of both Simone dai Crocifissi and Jacopo degli Avanzi, the only two other Bolognese painters of this period who deserve mention. According to Malvasia, Simone executed nothing but crucifixes, and although other paintings at Bologna are attributed to him, this was no doubt the chief branch of art in which he was engaged. The best of his crucifixes are those in San Giacomo Maggiore, and in the fourth of the seven churches belonging to the ancient pile of San Stefano, in both of which he to a great extent follows Giotto’s example, but retains much of the bad taste of Byzantine art in the emaciation of the figure and the grimace of the attendant saints.