superficial observer. The Fra Angelicos, the Filippo Lippis,
the Benozzo Gozzohs, the Botticellis, the Fih'ppino Lippis of
the century express pleasantly in their work various phases of
feeUng, devotional, idyllic or pensive, and enjoy a proportionate
popularity among the lovers of pictures. Exigencies of space
preclude anything more than a mention of their names, but a
sentence or two must be given to a painter of the last half of the
century who represents better than any other the perfection
of the monumental style in fresco painting. This painter is
Ghirlandajo, to whom is ascribed a characteristic saying. When
disturbed in hours of work about some domestic affair he
exclaimed: " Trouble me not about these household matters;
now that I begin to comprehend the method of this art I would
fain they gave me to paint the whole circuit of the walls of
Florence with stories." Ghirlandajo was entering into the
heritage of technical knowledge and skill that had been laboriously
acquired by his countrymen and their Umbrian comrades
since the beginning of the century, and he spread himself upon
the plastered walls of Tuscan churches with easy copiousness,
in works which give us a better idea than any others of the time
of how much can be accomplished in a form of art of the kind
by sound tradition and a businesslike system of operation.
The mural painting of Ghirlandajo represents in its perfection one important phase of the art. It was still decorative in the sense that lime colour-washes were the natural finish of the lime plaster on the wall, and that these washes were arranged in a colour-pattern pleasing to the eye. The demonstrative element, that is, the significance of these patches of colour as representations of nature, was however in the eyes of both painter and public the matter of primary importance, and similitude was now carried as far as knowledge of anatomy and linear perspective rendered possible. Objects were rendered in their three dimensions and were properly set on their planes and surrounded with suitable accessories, while aerial perspective was only drawn on to give a general sense of space without the eye being attracted too far into the distance. As a specimen of the monumental style nothing can be better than Ghirlandajo's fresco of the " Burial of S. Fina " at S. Gimignano in Tuscany (see fig. 19, Plate V.). We note with what architectural feeling the composition is balanced, how simple and monumental is the effect.
§ 16. The Fifteenth Century in the other Italian Schools. — It has been already noticed that the painting of the 14th century in the Umbrian cities was inspired by that of Siena. Through the isth century the Umbrian school developed on the same lines. Its artists were as a whole content to express the placid religious sentiment with which the Sienese had inspired them, and advanced in technical matters almost unconsciously, or at any rate without making the pronounced efforts of the Florentines. While Piero de' Franceschi and Luca Signorelli vied with the most ardent spirits among the Florentines in grapphng with the formal problems of the art, their countrymen generally preserved the old flatness of effect, the quiet poses, the devout expressions of the older school. This Umbro-Sienese art produced in the latter part of the century the typical Umbrian painter Perugino, whose chief importance in the history of his art is the fact that he was the teacher of Raphael.
An Umbrian who united the suavity of style and feeling for beauty of the Peruginesques with a daring and scientific mastery that were Florentine was Piero de' Franceschi's pupil, Melozzo da Forli. His historical importance largely resides in the fact that he was the first master of the so-called Roman school. As was noticed before in connexion with the early Roman master, Pietro Cavallini, the development of a native Roman school was checked by the departure of the papal court to France for the best part of a century. After the return, when affairs had been set in order, the popes began to gather round them artists to carry out various extensive commissions, such as the decoration of the walls of the newly-erected palace chapel of the Vatican, called from its founder the Sistine. These artists were not native Romans but Florentines and Umbrians, and among them was Melozzo da Forli, who by taking up his
residence permanently at Rome became the founder of the Roman school, that was afterwards adorned by names like those of Raphael and Michelangelo.
In the story of the development of Italian painting Melozzo occupies an important place. He carried further the notion of a perspective treatment of the figure that was started by Masaccio's angel of the " Expulsion, " and preceded Corrcggio in the device of representing a celestial event as it would appear to a spectator who was looking up at it from below.
On the whole, the three Umbrians, Piero de' Franceschi, with his two pupils Luca SignoreUi and Melozzo, are the most important figures in the central Itahan art of the formative period. There is one other artist in another part of Italy whose personalty bulks more largely than even theirs, and who, like them a disciple of the Florentines, excelled the Florentines in science and power, and this is the Paduan Mantegna.
We are introduced now to the painters of north Italy. Their general character differs from that of the Umbro-Sienese school in that their work is somewhat hard and sombre, and wanting in the naivete and tenderness of the masters who originally drew their inspiration from Simone Martini. Giotto had spent some time and accomplished some of his best work at Padua in the earliest years of the 14th century, but his influence had not lasted. Florentine art, in the more advanced form it wore in the first half of the 15th century, was again brought to it by Donatello and Paolo Uccello, who were at work there shortly before 1450. At that time Andrea Mantegna was receiving his first education from a painter, or rather impresario, named Francesco Squarcione, who directed his attention to antique models. Mantegna learnt from Donatello a statuesque feeling for form, and from Uccello a scientific interest in perspective, while, acting on the stimulus of his first teacher, he devoted himself to personal study of the remains of antique sculpture which were common in the Roman cities of north Italy. Mantegna built up his art on a scientific basis, but he knew how to inspire the form with a soul. His own personalty was one of the strongest that we meet with in the annals of Italian art, and he stamped this on all he accomplished. No figures stand more firmly than Mantegna's, none have a more plastic fullness, in none are details of accoutrement or folds of drapery more clearly seen and rendered. The study of antique remains supphed him with a store of classical details that he uses with extraordinary accuracy and effectiveness in his representations of a Roman triumph, at Hampton Court. Ancient art invested, too, with a certain austere beauty his forms of women or children, and in classical nudes there is a firmness of modelling, a suppleness in movement, that we look for in vain among the Florentines. Fig. 20, Plate VI., which shows a dance of the Muses with Venus and Vulcan, is typical. Mantegna was not only a great personality, but he exercised a powerful and wide-reaching influence upon all the art of north Italy, including that of Venice. His perspective studies led him in the same direction as Melozzo da Forli, and in some decorative paintings in the Camera degh Sposi at Mantua he pointed out the way that was afterwards to be followed by Correggio.
Mantegna's relations with the school of Venice introduce us to the most important and interesting of all the Italian schools save that of Florence. Venetian painting occupies a position by itself that corresponds with the place and history of the city that gave it birth. The connexions of Venice were not with the rest of Italy, but rather with the East and with Germany. Commercially speaking, she was the emporium of trade with both. Into her markets streamed the wealth of the Orient, and from her markets this was transferred across the Alps to cities like Nuremberg. From Germany had come a certain Gothic element into Venetian architecture in the 14th century, and a little later an influence of the same kind began to affect Venetian painting. Up to that time Venice had depended for her painters on the East, and had imported Byzantine Madonna pictures, and called in Byzantine mosaic-workers to adorn the walls and roof of her metropolitan church. The first sign of native activity is to be found at Murano, where,
