That many of tho painters however who preceded Masaccio had great ability, even for any period, is certain ; and it is also certain that they had recourse to the study of nature—a fact which proves that the mere study of nature, without the knowledge of what to select for imitation, will not lead to the production of fine forms. And although beautiful forms have been produced by the earlier painters, it is the accident of the model, and not the result of choice ; for we sometimes find the finest parts associated with others so inferior, that from their juxtaposition the whole has an appearance of deformity, which arises both from the inequality in individual models, and from the painter's occasionally trusting his own knowledge and occasionally having re course to the model. This imperfection could only be avoided by the adoption of a standard of form, which should preserve a unity of style in every degree—a standard which, experience has shown us, it would require centuries to attain simply by the study of nature, because of the infinite varieties of form met with in individuals. This standard however already existed in the antique, and it required only the master-mind to appropriate it; and to have been the first to do this efficiently constitutes the great merit of Tommaso Guidi, commonly called Masaccio, on account of the slovenliness of his personal appear ance. Masaccio introduced a style of composition and design which until the appearance of Da Vinci and Michel Angelo experienced no material change. Da Vinci and Fre Bartolomeo enlarged upon Maseccio's style. .Michel Angelo invented a style of his own, and he out lived it. The style of Masaccio, however, expanded to its utmost, still lived in the works of Itaffaelle and the principal paintera of the Roman school. Yet the great improvement in design which was accomplished in the works of Masaccio was not entirely his own merit; for Ghiberti and Donatello had made great advancement in sculpture ; and Gentile da Fabriano and Vittore Pisancllo, with whom Masaccio became ac quainted in Home, had made great improvements upon the Giotteeque school in painting. Masaccio'e greatest works are in the Brancacei chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine at Florence : they have been engraved by Lasinio and others. Masaccio died before the completion of these works, in 1943, in his forty-first or forty-second year, not without suspicion of having been poisoned. Many of his works have perished. His most able contemporaries and followers were Fre Giovanni da Ficsole, Beuozzo Gozzoli, and Fra Filippo Lippi, the beat painter of his time; he completed the works of Masaccio in the Brancacci chapel : he died in 1401). There are in his works much of that mellowness of colouring and harmony of light and shade which characterise the works of Fra Bartolomeo and Leonardo da Vinci. In the gallery of the Academy at Florence there are some beautiful speci mens of the works of Lippi.
Other painters of great ability of this period, both in oil and in fresco, were Andrea del Castagno, called the infamous ; Sandro Botti celli, Filippino Lippi, ltaffaelliuo del Garbo, Domenico del Ghirlandajo, Celina° ltoselli, Piero di Cosimo, Antonio Pollaiuoli, the first Italian painter who studied the dead eubject for the purposes of design ; Andrea Verocchio, and Luca Signorelli of Cortona. There were also many others of merit of this school at about the end of the 15th cen tury, but they followed only in the steps of others.
The works of Lionardo da Vinci, and the laintera who imitated or adopted the chief characteristics of his style, constituted another epoch in the history of painting; but their influence was not confined to Florence or to Tuscany ; it was greater in Milan and iii Lombardy than in Florence. The fulness however and vigour of design which
distinguish the works of Fra Bartolomeo, and even Michel Angelo, characterise in an equal though somewhat different degree also the works of Da Vinci, and are combined with an exquisite finish and harmony of tone which arc peculiar to himself. Lionardo was born at Vinci in 1452, and learnt painting of Andrea Verocchio, who, upon seeing the superiority of his scholar, forsook that art for statuary. Lionardo was painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, mathematician, writer, musician, and poet; he is however chiefly known as a painter. Historians have divided his career into four periods ; lie painted at filet In the manner of Verocchio, and hla pictures of this time are lighter in atyle of design, and have less strength of chiaroscuro, than his Later works. His second period was that spent at Milan in the service of the Duke Sforza, when he painted his Last Supper. The third WO-9 his great Florentine period, from 1500 to 1512, when he executed the famous cartoons of Santa Anna, and of the Battle of Niccolo Piceinino, called the Battle of the Standard; and his own portrait in oils, which is in the gallery at Florence—a work which for painting cannot be surpassed. In the fourth period he was comparatively inactive. In 1512 he returned to Milan ; in 1514 (Vasari says 1513) he visited Rome ; and in 1516 he went with Francis I. to France, where he died, at Fontainebleau in 1519, aged 67. [Vixer, in Broo. Drv.] When Da Vinci returned in 1500 to Florence, the only painter there of extraordinary ability was Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco, or Baccio della Porta, commonly called Il Frate, then in his twenty-ninth year. Michel Angelo Was at that time in his twenty-sixth year only, and had done nothing in painting, having confined himself up to that time nearly exclusively to sculpture ; which rendered the more remarkable his great success in 1506, in the so-called cartoon of Pisa, executed by order of the gonfaloniere Pietro Soderini, for one end of the council hall of the old ralace of the Signory, for the other end of which Da Vinci made his cartoon of the Battle of the Standard, in which a group of horsemen were contending for some colours, with various accessories.
The good effects of the munificence of Lorenzo de' Medici and his encouragement of the arts did not completely show themselves until after the second restoration of the Medici in 1512. Lorenzo established an academy in his garden near the church of San Marco, and formed a splendid museum of ancient and modern works of art : it was the nursery of all the great artists of Florence of the early part of the 16th century. Some singular scenes were enacted by Savonarola during his short triumph over the general order of things. In 1497, at the time of the Carnival, instead of the usual bonfire in the market-place, Savonarola had a large scaffolding prepared, and upon this be piled many of the most excellent works of the Florentine artists, both in painting and sculpture, including the busts and portraits of several beautiful Florentine females, with many foreign tapestries, condemned on account of their nakedness; and they were all burnt amidst the rejoicing of the populace. In 1498, the following year, he repeated the scene on a much greater scale : on this pile was burnt an illumi nated copy of Petrareh. Fra Bartolomeo, Lorenzo di Credi, and other distinguished painters, took part in this fanatical destruction.