Among the other pupils of Donatello is Agostino di Duccio, who, like a neo-Attic sculptor, draped his figures in clouds of tissue and cloth, with garlands, spirals and curves. At the same period lived Desiderio da Settig nano, who gave his marble a soft vagueness, which seemed to be attained with a feather and not with a chisel. He had great dignity, refine ment and elegance. Mino, his disciple, gave • tverything a facile, light character as though executed in wax or paste, and was, as Vasari said, more versed in the graces than in the fundamental canons of art. Very prolific and with a peculiar and interesting mannerism, Ber nardo and Antonio Rosellino and Benedetto da Mariano (da'Maiano or Majano), whose works exhibited the effect of study of perspective on sculptors and sculpture, were other pupils of the master. In marked contrast with these is Antonio Pollajuolo, who loved the strength shown in the muscles of the athlete. Their realism is seen in an unfeeling spirit of analysis, in the want of repose shown by the form of the larger extremities, in their knotty fingers and steely tendons. There was striving for effect, indicative of the beginning of a decline in art. When Florence was laying the founda tion of modern sculpture, Jacopo della Quercia at Siena, following Donatello's style rather closely, represented the return of art to the forms of its Etruscan ancestors. His art was free from all grossness; he died expecting his soul to be transformed into that of Michel angelo by an artistic metempsychosis.
A Hercules was lurking in all the marbles Michelangelo chiseled. He slumbered in the white blocks from the quarries of Luni and, awaking, cast far from him like flakes of snow the chips that covered his powerful muscles. And behold! Moses arose with a look of sub lime wrath and passion, on whose lips were forming words of malediction. Again behold! the slaves of the Museum of the Louvre, who shudder on awaking and who uphold this old world on their mighty arms. Lorenzo di Medici, the pensive, is another sombre creation of the master,— the Hercules, for once, omitted in favor of princely grace, beneath whose head pauses the shadow of death's wing; and the "Nights (hi Nolte) who sleeps on the sepulchre of the Middle Ages, shunning the light. Michel angelo is steeped in sadness; over his spirit are cast the shadows of human sorrow. In the midst of their glory his heroes hear the wailing of humanity. He is lifted, however, above the things of earth and touches the heavenly; he exalts his divine sentiment and meets the mys teries of existence; be builds• his art on human tragedy and attains the sorrow of the universe. Michelangelo is the huge limit of modern art, as the marble mountain which he himself carved was transformed into a giant whose crest scales the clouds, shedding waves of light o'er the Tyrrhenian Sea. Michelangelo was this giant on the summit of Italian art! The other re gions of Italy had not the sculptural genius which combines in itself the multiple forces of production. At Venice the Tuscan masters had given an impulse to the formation of the new school. Sculpture in Lombardy in the Quattro cento is typified in the statues that adorn the cathedral of Milan. It is recognized with less uncertainty in the second half of that century in the works left in the Carthusian Monastery of Pavia by the brothers Mantegazza and by Amadeo and his followers. The Mantegazzi were noted for their drapery resembling wet paper,— "the cartaceous manner? The chef d'iruvre of the art of sculpture in Lombardy in the 15th century,— the work probably of one of the masters who decorated in terra cotta the cloisters of the Carthusian Monastery,—is the 'Dance of the Angels' in the vaulted ceiling of the cupola of the Portinari Chapel in Sant' Eustorzio at Milan. Agostino Busti, called
was an exponent of all the char acteristics of the Lombardy school of sculpture in the 15th century, showing himself, however, insatiable in the adornment of his statues and in the decoration of his monuments. From northern Italy the art of sculpture was intro duced into Sicily by Pietro di Bondate, Fran cesco Laurana, and above all, by Domenico Gazini, the master of a school that filled Sicily with statues until well on in the Cinquecento. Antonello Gazini, architect and sculptor, was extraordinarily industrious and productive, ever displaying the native grace and restraint of the Quattrocento. Mantua in the Quattrocento gloried in Sperandio; Modena in Guido Maz zoni; Bologna showed signs of vitality after there came within her walls the brothers Dalle Masezze, Jacopo della Quercia, Niccolo Ball' Area di Bari, called oftener Niccol6 dell' Arca, 1414-94. Sperandio, Andrea da Fiesole and Francesco di Simone da Fiesole, whereupon painting began and attempted to represent the noble figures of Francia.
At the commencement of the Cinquecento, differences in art in the various regions of Italy disappeared. Masters who reflected social life adhered to the costumes of their contempora ries, and displayed the most minute attention to detail and truthfulness in individual portrai ture, were superseded by those who represented traditional costumes, general academic forms and typical truth to type. Spontaneous art was forsaken by the artists enamored of Raphael's lyrical mannerisms and also by men who found inspiration in the epic grandeur of Michelan gelo's decoration in the Sistine Chapel, that most consummate evidence of puattrocento art. A great national artistic unity began to take definite form, due mainly to the predomi nance of classical antiquity in the new art. The pagan world which art revived represented submission, oppression and inaugurated the Decadence; the word "rinoscita"Renaissance* uttered by Vasari [that writer on art and artists from whom so many borrow LH.] believed he saw the salvation of the art in the Cinquecento in imitating classic antiquity, expresses for us the arrest of Italian . artistic vitality. When this vitality began to wane, art had become a servile imitator and sacrificed itself on the altar of classicism. The geniuses (the last sons of the Quattrocento) having disappeared and formula was substituted for sincerity. Raphael seemed everywhere triumphant, imitated by a host of artists; but his sweetness was not to be found in the frescoes of those who copied him. It seemed as though Michelangelo was to dominate the world; but the statues made by his nimble, acrobatic imitators lacked the strong breathing-power of his athletes and the terrible grandeur and solemnity of his imagination. Thus art, towards the middle of the 16th cal-, tury, appeared to be almost completely devoid of inspiration. Imposing masses were used to produce astounding effects; feeling the chill of immense spaces, they attempted restlessly to enliven them nvith strong chiaro'scuro effects and forthwithan to twist, contort and' tor ture all forms. They invoked grace and made a grimace; they sought to clothe themselves in great magnificence, but succumbed under its weight; they endeavored to imitate the antique and produced only a parody thereof. They were co conventional that truth was effaced and imagination played no part. This art, which no longer followed nature, was bowed beneath pon derous reminiscences, like a wrinkled old bom bastic glutton.