discern the whole future development of the art for a century to
come (see fig. 15, Plate V.). Above all qualities in IVIasaccio's
work we are impressed with the simplicity and the ease of the
work. The youthful artist possessed a reserve of power that,
had he hved, would have carried him at one bound to heights
that it took his actual successors in the school well nigh a
century to cUmb.
The 15th century at Florence presents to us the picture of a progressive advance on the technical side of art, in the course of which various problems were attacked and one by one vanquished, till the form of painting in the style recognized in the school was finally perfected, and was then handed on to the great masters of expression, such as Raphael and Michelangelo, who used it as the obedient instrument of their wills. The efiorts of the artists were inspired by a new intellectual and social movement of which this century was the scene. If the Gothic movement in the 14th century had inspired Giotto and Simone Martini, now it was the revived study of the antique, the true Renaissance, that was behind all the technical struggles of the artists. Painting was not, however, directly and immediately affected by the study of antique models. This was only one symptom of a general stir of intellectual life that is caUed by the apt term " humanism." In the early Gothic epoch the movement had been also in the direction of humanity, that is to say, of softness in manners and of the amenities and graces of Ufe, but it was also a strictly rehgious movement. Now, in the 15th century, the inspiration of thought was rather pagan than Christian, and men were going back to the ideas and institutions of the antique world as a substitute for those which the Church had provided for thirty generations. The direct influence of these studies on art was chiefly felt in the case of architecture, which they practically transformed. Sculpture was influenced to a lesser degree, and painting least of all. It was not till the century was pretty far advanced that classical subjects of a mythological kind were adopted by artists like Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo, the first figures borrowed from the antique world being those of republican worthies displayed for purposes of public edification.
The elements which the humanistic movement contributed to Florentine art are the following: (i) The scientific study of perspective in all its branches, hnear and aerial, including the science of shadows. (2) Anatomy, the study of the nude form both at rest and in action. (3) Truth of fact in details in animate and inanimate subjects. (4) The technique of oil painting. It must be observed that in this work the Florentines were joined by certain painters of Umbria, who were not satisfied with the Umbro-Sienese tradition already spoken of, but alUed themselves with the leaders of the advance who were fighting under the banner of Masaccio.
Of the studies mentioned above by far the most important was that of perspective. Anatomy and reahsm in details only represented an advance along the lines painting had been already following. The new technique of oil painting, though of immense importance in connexion with the art as a whole, affected the Florentines comparatively Uttle. Their favourite form of painting was the mural picture, not the self-contained panel or canvas for which the oil medium was specially designed, and for mural work fresco remained always supreme (see Part III., § 35). In this mural work the introduction of scientific perspective effected something like a transformation. The essence of the work from the decorative point of view had been its flatness. It was primarily pattern-making, and nature had been represented by contours which stood for objects without giving them their full dimensions. When the artist began to introduce varying planes of distance and to gain relief by light and shade, there was at once a change in the relation of the picture to the wall. It no longer agreed in its flatness with the facts of the surface of which it formed the enrichment, but opposed these by its suggestion of depth and distance. Hence while painting as a whole advanced enormously through this effort after the truth of space, yet decorative quality in this particular form of the art proportionately suffered. .: . . .
The study of perspective owed much to the architect and scholar Brunellesco, one of the oldest as well as ablest of the men in whom the new movement of the 15th century was embodied. Brunellesco taught all he knew to Masaccio, for whose genius he felt strong admiration; but the artist in whom the result of the new study is most obvious is Paolo Uccello, a painter of much power, who was born as early as 1397. Uccello, as extant works testify, sometimes composed pictures mainly with a view to the perspective effects for which they furnished the opportunity. See fig. 16, Plate V., where in a fresco of a cavalry skirmish he has drawn in foreshortened view the figure of a warrior prone on the ground, as well as various weapons and other objects under the feet of the horses. A fresco of " The Flood " at Florence is even more naive in its parade of the painter's newly won skill in perspective science. The intarsists, or workers in inlaid woods, who were very numerous in Florence, also adopted perspective motives for their designs, and these testify to the fascination of the study during all the last part of the century and the beginning of the next.
The advance in anatomical studies may be illustrated in the person of Antonio PoUaiuolo. Masaccio had been as great in this department of the painter's craft as in any other; and in the Adam and Eve of the " Expulsion, " and the famous nudes shown in the fresco of " Peter Baptizing, " he had given the truth of action and expression as few have been able to render it; but in the matter of scientific accuracy in detail more anatomical study was needful, and to this men like Pollaiuolo now devoted themselves. Pollaiuolo's " Martyrdom of St Sebastian, " in the London National Gallery, is a very notable Olustration of the efforts which a conscientious and able Florentine of the period would make to master these problems of the scientific side of art. (See fig. 17, Plate V.)
On the whole, however, of the men of this group it was not a Florentine but the Umbrian Piero de' Franceschi that represents the greatest achievement on the formal side of art. His theoretical studies were profound. He wrote a treatise on perspective, representing an advance on the previous treatment of the science by Alberti; and to this study of linear perspective Piero united those of aerial perspective and the science of shadows. A fresco of his at Arezzo entitled the " Dream of Constantine " is epoch-making in presenting a night effect into the midst of which a bolt of celestial radiance is hurled, the incidence of which on the objects of the various planes of the picture has been carefully observed and accurately reproduced. (See fig. iS, Plate V.)
Piero handed on his scientific accomphshments to a pupil, also an Umbrian of Florentine sympathies, Luca SignorelU of Cortona. He achieved still greater success than Pollaiuolo in the rendering of the nude form in action, but more conspicuously than any others of this group he sacrificed beauty to truth, and the nudes in his great series of frescoes on the Last Things at Orvieto are anatomized like ecorches, and are in colour and texture positively repellent. Luca's work is, however, of historical importance as leading on to that of Michelangelo.
A great power in the Florentine school of the 15th century was Andrea del Castagno, an artist with much of the vigour, the feeling for the monumental, of Masaccio, but without Masaccio's saving gift of suavity of treatment. He is best represented by some single figures representing Florentine worthies, whom he has painted as if they were statues in niches. They formed part of the decoration of a villa, and are noteworthy as wholly secular in subject. There is a massiveness about the forms which shows how thoroughly the 15th century Florentines were mastering the representation of solid objects in all their three dimensions. Other painters attracted attention at the time for their reaUstic treatment of details. Vasari singles out Alessio Baldovinetti.
The importance for art of the Florentine school of the isth century resides in these efforts for the perfecting of painting on the formal side, which its representatives were themselves making and were inspiring in others. The general historian of the art will dweU rather on this aspect of the work of the school than on the numerous attractive featufes it offers 19 the
