[Footnote 105: A large picture of the Glorification of the Madonna, long placed in the Belle Arti at Florence, was painted by Sandro Botticelli for Matteo Palmieri, who, in his Dantesque poem entitled _La Città della Vita_, has advanced a theory that, in Lucifer's rebellion, a certain number of angels assumed a neutral attitude, as a punishment for which they were doomed to a term of trial in the quality of human souls. Although never printed, this work was solemnly condemned by the Inquisition after the author's death, and the picture, which had been composed under his own direction, fell under similar suspicion of heresy. On a rigid examination, the censors having discovered a sort of fullness in the draped bosoms of some angels, pronounced them females, and for this breach of orthodoxy denounced the painting. It was accordingly covered up, and the chapel where it hung in S. Pietro Maggiore was for a time interdicted; but, having escaped destruction, it was offered for sale a few years ago by the heirs of Palmieri. The opportunity for procuring for our national collection a most interesting and characteristic example of early art was as usual lost; but it was brought to England by Mr. Samuel Woodburn in 1846, and has now found a resting-place at Hamilton Palace, in one of the few collections of art which contain nothing common-place or displeasing.[*B]] [Footnote *B: This picture, now in the National Gallery [No. 1126] is by Botticini, not Botticelli.] With the aid of authorities thus deduced through an unbroken chain from primitive times,--to conceive and embody abstractions "which eye hath not seen nor ear heard," was reckoned no rash meddling with sacred mysteries. On the contrary, the subjects almost exclusively selected for the exercise of Christian art, belonged to the fundamental doctrines of Christian faith, to the traditional dogmas of the Church, to the legendary lives of the Saviour and of saints, or to the dramatic sufferings of early martyrs. Such were the transfiguration, the passion, the ascension of our Lord; the conception, the coronation, and the _cintola_ of the Madonna[106]; the birth and marriage of the Blessed Virgin; the miracles performed by popular saints, the martyrdoms in which they sealed their testimony. The choice, and occasionally the treatment, of these topics was modified to meet the spiritual exigences of the period, or the circumstances of the place, but ever in subservience to conventional standards derived from remote tradition. Thus we detect, in works of the Byzantine period, rigid forms, harsh outlines, soulless faces; in the schools of Siena and Umbria, pure figures lit up by angelic expressions; in the followers of Giotto, a tendency to varied movement and dramatic composition.