In the choir is a Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels, signed by Benozzo Gozzoli, and dated 1466. How stiff and archaic it seems by comparison with its neighbour, the Coronation of the Madonna by Pietro Pollaiuolo, signed and dated 1483, one of the pictures commissioned by Fra Domenico Strambi! Instead of Benozzo's heavy gold haloes in which the names of the saints are inscribed (a characteristic which he borrowed from his master Angelico), Pietro reduces this emblem of sanctity to an almost imperceptible thin ring of gold and makes their human side predominant. There is a certain harshness about Pollaiuolo's picture; Christ and the Madonna are unattractive types, and there is an excessive display of anatomical knowledge; but the admirable heads and powerfully modelled figures of the six saints--Geminianus and Bartolo (the two central figures), Augustine and Jerome, Fina and Nicholas of Tolentino--are unsurpassable in their way. The head of San Bartolo, especially, is a magnificent piece of painting. The beautiful mitres of Augustine and Geminianus on the ground show that the painter was also a goldsmith. On the left is a somewhat Raffaelesque Madonna and Child with Saints, one of the best works of Vincenzo Tamagni; the black monk kneeling in front is not Aquinas (as might be supposed from his attributes), but Nicholas of Tolentino who is much honoured in this town. The choir stalls date from 1490, and there are some illuminated choir books, one of them with ten excellent miniatures ascribed to Niccolò di Ser Sozzo Tegliacci, whose masterpiece in this kind we have seen at Siena. San Gimignano was the first town in Italy to listen to the teaching of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, while Florence still rejected him. He preached the Lents of 1484 and 1485 in this very church. It was here that he first uttered the words of threefold prophecy that were soon to echo through the world. There was to be a renovation of the Church; but, first, the scourge of God would fall upon her and upon Italy; and these things would come speedily. Can we not imagine his eyes resting on Taddeo's Last Judgment at the end of the church, when he first mounted the pulpit, thrust back his cowl, and gazed round upon the assembled people?