Also in this room are four delicious little panels by Lippo Lippi (264 and 263), representing the Annunciation divided into two compartments, St. Antony Abbot and the Baptist; two Monks of the Vallombrosa, by Perugino (241, 242), almost worthy of Raphael; and two charming scenes of mediaeval university life, the School of Albertus Magnus (231) and the School of St. Thomas Aquinas (247). These two latter appear to be by some pupil of Fra Angelico, and may possibly be very early works of Benozzo Gozzoli. In the first, Albert is lecturing to an audience, partly lay and partly clerical, amongst whom is St. Thomas, then a youthful novice but already distinguished by the halo and the sun upon his breast; in the second, Thomas himself is now holding the professorial chair, surrounded by pupils listening or taking notes, while Dominicans throng the cloisters behind. On his right sits the King of France; below his seat the discomforted Averrhoes humbly places himself on the lowest step, between the heretics--William of St. Amour and Sabellius. From the left of the David's tribune, we turn into three rooms containing masterpieces of the Quattrocento (with a few later works), and appropriately named after Botticelli and Perugino. In the _Sala prima del Botticelli_ is Sandro's famous _Primavera_, the Allegory of Spring or the Kingdom of Venus (80). Inspired in part by Poliziano's _stanze_ in honour of Giuliano dei Medici and his Bella Simonetta, Botticelli nevertheless has given to his strange--not altogether decipherable--allegory, a vague mysterious poetry far beyond anything that Messer Angelo could have suggested to him. Through this weirdly coloured garden of the Queen of Love, in "the light that never was on sea or land," blind Cupid darts upon his little wings, shooting, apparently at random, a flame-tipped arrow which will surely pierce the heart of the central maiden of those three, who, in their thin clinging white raiment, personify the Graces. The eyes of Simonetta--for it is clearly she--rest for a moment in the dance upon the stalwart Hermes, an idealised Giuliano, who has turned away carelessly from the scene. Flora, "pranked and pied for birth," advances from our right, scattering flowers rapidly as she approaches; while behind her a wanton Zephyr, borne on his strong wings, breaks through the wood to clasp Fertility, from whose mouth the flowers are starting. Venus herself, the mistress of nature, for whom and by whom all these things are done, stands somewhat sadly apart in the centre of the picture; this is only one more of the numberless springs that have passed over her since she first rose from the sea, and she is somewhat weary of it all:-- "Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli Adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus Summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum."[47]