Renaissance Painting

In northern Italy, the most important centre of the arts was at Padua, the school there hav ing been founded in the second half of the 15th century by Francesco Squarcione (q.v.), known as the °Father of Painters? and the discoverer of the genius of Andrea Mantegna (q.v.), whom he adopted at the age of 10. In this latter artist, one of the most learned, in genious and original of his age, the first to master the complete rules of composition, the study of nature was happily balanced by a corresponding study of the antique. In Venice, enjoying a most unusual order and prosperity under the intelligent despotism of her dukes, the revival of art did not manifest itself strongly until the second half of this century, but its final florescence was one of the most brilliant of any age. Two families of painters i appear in this first period, the Vivanni and the Mini, the latter much the more famous. To them Antonello da Messina seems to have communicated the method of painting in oil, which they so soon mastered,— a love of color and splendor being one of the natural gifts of the Venetians. The head of the family was Jacopo Bellini (q.v.), who went to Florence early in his career; his sons were Gentile (q.v.) and Giovanni (q.v.), the latter praised by Al brecht Direr at the period of his visit to Italy in 1506. In the works of these Venetians ap pears that which is so diligently sought by the modern schools,— the feeling of space and air, of the relative position and value of the figures in the general arrangement; the Gothic angularity and awkwardness have been replaced by a fuller knowledge. The most eminent of the followers of Gentile Bellini was Vittore Carpaccio (Scarpaccia), famous for his cycle of nine pictures illustrating the legend of Saint Ursula.

The greatest name in the Renaissance proper is that of Leonardo da Vinci (q.v.), b. 1452, distinguished as a scientist, an architect, a sculptor, a musician, an author and a painter,— and qualifying painting, himself, as the noblest of the arts and as at the same time a science. But few of his pictures survive, the most famous and the most wonderful being the portrait known as the

Lorenzo de Medici; and it was in 1508 that the Pope Julius II commissioned him to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. In 1535 he began the now in the Dresden Gallery, was accepted for more than three centuries as the greatest painting in the world. Andrea del Sarto (q.v.), the best colorist in the Florentine school, may be said to err only in a certain lack of deep feeling; and the versatile talent of Cor reggio (q.v.) leads up to the splendors of the later Venetian school of Giorgione, Palma, Vecchio and Titian, and, later still, of Paul Veronese, Tintoretto and Tiepolo, the apotheosis of the beauty of oil painting. Giorgio da Castel franco (so great a Giorgio that he was called Giorgione, that is, Big George) was a fellow student with Titian under Giovanni Bel lini. But very few of his authenticated works survive, one of them being in the Louvre. Of Giacomo Palma, the elder (q.v.), called Palma Vecchio, more is known, over a hundred exist ing paintings being attributed to him, the finest being probably the altar-piece of Santa Maria Formosa, Venice, a single figure of Saint Bar bara. With the majestic figure of Titian, Tiziano Vecelli da Cadore (q.v.) (1477-1576), the golden period of the Renaissance may be said to end,—of all the numerous assistants who worked under him during his long life, including a brother and a son, none inherited his power. His paintings, sacred, allegorical, mythological, and portraits, are preserved in all the great galleries of Europe; the most beauti ful, and perhaps the most characteristic of this school being the so-called