Note 130 — NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES (continued 5)
Reading edition
Mr. Pater, in a well-known passage, gives a different explanation of the peculiar sentiment in Botticelli's Madonnas. "Perhaps you have sometimes wondered why they attract you more and more, and often come—although conformed to no obvious type of beauty—back to you when the Madonnas of Raphael and the Virgins of Fra Angelico are forgotten. At first, contrasting them with those, you may have thought that there was something even mean or abject in them, for the lines of the face have little nobleness, and the colour is wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the 'Desire of all Nations,' is one of those who are neither for God nor for his enemies (see under III. 1126), and her choice is on her face. She shrinks from the presence of the Divine Child, and pleads in unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower humanity" (W. H. Pater: Studies of the Renaissance).
You promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth and perfect change of will; But sweet, sweet is this human life, So sweet I fain would breathe it still. Your chilly stars I can forgo: This warm, kind world is all I know.
Ionica: Mimnermus in Church.