Phillipps, Evelyn March: The frescoes in the Sixtine chapel (London: John Murray, 1901)

THE LEPER HOSPITAL

31

leaning forward from the seat on the left,
afterwards suggested to Raphael the stoop-
ing boys who look upward on the left of the
Disputa.
And now we ask, Why has this ancient
and elaborate ceremony been portrayed for
the first and only time in art in the private
chapel of the Pope ? The answer is so clear,
that it is strange that it has for so long
escaped recognition. The great Renaissance
facade is that of the old leper hospital of San
Spirit©, which had at this time just been
completely restored by Sixtus IV. It was
a reminder upon which the Pope’s eyes
could rest with pleasure whenever he went
into his chapel. The Pope, too, was a
member of the Franciscan Order, and the
first act of St. Francis after his institution of
the Order had been the care and succour of
lepers; and Botticelli, with his appreciation
of the mystical, would go further, and would
see the interpretation of the Church’s power
to cleanse the sins of the soul, even as the
old Jewish dispensation declared the patient
free from sins of the body.