In the Marches and Umbria, painthig in the Quattrocento chose sacred and allegorical subjects and treated them as though invaded by the spirit of the people who went through life with a scourge. This degenerated into a forced naturalism and a vulgar conventionalism. Niccolo Alunno, often known as N. Foligno, appeared sometimes to be a shouting savage, who depicted sorrowful, wrathful, disconsolate figures. Carlo Crivelli, a Venetian, came also to the Marches and gained force in expression, along with exaggeration and grotesqueness. Crivelli looked at the world with the eyes of. a magpie, for he liked dazzling colors, gor geousness and splendor. He embossed gold ornaments on his pictures and precious stones were sometimes embedded in the Suave Tuscan art, fragrant with spring flowers, breathed upon this region; and the influence of P. della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Gozzoli and, Verrocchio was made manifest, and to a lesser degree that of Perugia°, Pinturicchio and F. di Lorenzo.
Perugino invests his figures with a rare grace, although they all bear the imprint of the same model, the same sentiment of devo tion, humility and abstraction; his saints• gradually became rosy and ethereal while his other personages are transformed into a monotonous, melancholy and mellifluous type. From the works of Perugino in particular was. molded the crowning genius of the ideals of the art of Umbria and the Marches : Raffaello d'Urbino — Raphael. Pinturicchio, frequently the companion of Perugino, was intoxicated with color. Fiorenzo di Lorenzo is vivacious, imaginative and a sure draughtsman. His landscape backgrounds are exquisite. ehchibitedliis,tendencies. in his earliest produce tions. His Florentine figures were incompar ably. sweet and delicately reposeful.. In later work in Florence he drew inspiration . from that ancient art which had dominated the banks of the Arno, as.'well as from modern sources. When..he painted in. Rayne, this great assimi4 lator and eclectic gave us models of consum mate artnlitiej, ivrho a first, like Perugino, delighted to t the sweetness of the devout ens, passed to. the noble . ele gance of the Florentines. In Rome he became a.child of the South and idealized the vigor of the peasant women of the Roman Campagna, their .figures of ample. proportions, their skin Waited by the sun; and of children with large eager eyes-and black hair, The last of his pictures was the Transfiguration; his.pupils placed;the picture at•the foot of his bed when he closed his eyes ' forever, the gentilissiono Raffaelio• d'Urbino.
The Emilian region gave lardy signs of a revival in painting. From the school of
Squarcione in Padua, seeds were sown in Emilia.. Cosine Tura of Ferrara. appeared in the second half of the Qsatirooento and became the head of a school. He was like a gold smith, whb with hammer-blows Wrought figures in
of metal and illumined .them as from an inner, flame, At this time flourished Francesco del Cossa,. painting rugged saints, with enamel-like coloring. Ercole
Roberto, Lorenzo Costa and Ercole Grandi were dis
of these two masters. Returning from Ferrara to Bologna, several of the Ferrarese masters,— Golassb, Francesco del Cossa, Ercole de Roberto, Lorenzo Costa,— held• the field in
painting. A comrade of Costa was Francesco
called Il. Francis, a painter whose
well ordered intelligence and simple and pious
mind, imparted to his pictures' a sense of
scrupulous conscientiousness. One of his con temporaries was keriincesto Bianchi Ferrari, of Madepa • who made accuracy of execution well-nigh a religion. He was . Correggio's master and was known as Frare, or the
Correggio was the acme of Emilian art. Except for his first figures, which partook of Bianchi's spirituality and Solidity, Correggio held his own. as , a colorist and appeared to derive his tints from rubies, sapphires, topazes and amethysts,. from the pigment of roses, the brightest colors. of the rainbow, and was the first to paint diaphanous shadows. Correggio was the painter of light. With his colors har monized like the tones of the lyre, he diffused happiness and joy in the hearts of those about him. In a blending of lights and shadows ap-' peared his 'Dance'; in an autumnal landscape distilling gold from its verdure, his