The little chapel next the choir on the right is that of Filippo Strozzi the elder who was one of the witnesses of the Pazzi outrage in the Duomo in 1478.  This was the Filippo Strozzi who began the Strozzi palace in 1489, father of the Filippo Strozzi who married Lorenzo de’ Medici’s noble grand-daughter Clarice and came to a tragic end under Cosimo I. Old Filippo’s tomb here was designed by Benedetto da Maiano, who made the famous Franciscan pulpit in S. Croce, and was Ghirlandaio’s friend and the Strozzi palace’s first architect.  The beautiful circular relief of the Virgin and Child, with a border of roses and flying worshipping angels all about it, behind the altar, is Benedetto’s too, and very lovely and human are both Mother and Child.

The frescoes in this chapel, by Filippino Lippi, are interesting, particularly that one on the left, depicting the Resuscitation of Drusiana by S. John the Evangelist, at Rome, in which the group of women and children on the right, with the little dog, is full of life and most naturally done.  Above (but almost impossible to see) is S. John in his cauldron of boiling oil between Roman soldiers and the denouncing Emperor, under the banner S.P.Q.R.—­a work in which Roman local colour completely excludes religious feeling.  Opposite, below, we see S. Philip exorcising a dragon, a very florid scene, and, above, a painfully spirited and realistic representation of the Crucifixion.  The sweetness of the figures of Charity and Faith in monochrome and gold helps, with Benedetto’s tondo, to engentle the air.

We then come again to the Choir, with Ghirlandaio’s urbane Florentine pageant in the guise of sacred history, and pass on to the next chapel, the Cappella Gondi, where that crucifix in wood is to be seen which Brunelleschi carved as a lesson to Donatello, who received it like the gentleman he was.  I have told the story in Chapter XV.

The left transept ends in the chapel of the Strozzi family, of which Filippo was the head in his day, and here we find Andrea Orcagna and his brother’s fresco of Heaven, the Last Judgment and Hell.  It was the two Orcagnas who, according to Vasari, had covered the Choir with those scenes in the life of the Virgin which Ghirlandaio was allowed to paint over, and Vasari adds that the later artist availed himself of many of the ideas of his predecessors.  This, however, is not very likely, I think, except perhaps in choice of subject.  Orcagna, like Giotto, and later, Michelangelo, was a student of Dante, and the Strozzi chapel frescoes follow the poet’s descriptions.  In the Last Judgment, Dante himself is to be seen, among the elect, in the attitude of prayer.  Petrarch is with him.

The sacristy is by Talenti (of the Campanile) and was added in 1350.  Among its treasures once were the three reliquaries painted by Fra Angelico, but they are now at S. Marco.  It has still rich vestments, fine woodwork, and a gay and elaborate lavabo by one of the della Robbias, with its wealth of ornament and colour and its charming Madonna and Child with angels.