Studies, and such the subsequent encouragement without, from which it will not appear wonderful to the reader that this city was the foremost to attain the perfection of the art. But let us trace the steps by which it advanced in Florence, and in the rest of Italy.
The followers of Giotto had now carried painting beyond the period of its infancy, but it continued to give proofs of its infant faculties, especially in chiaroscuro, and still more in perspective. Figures sometimes appeared as if falling or slipping from the canvass; buildings had not a true point of view; and the art of foreshortening was yet very rude. Stefano Fiorentino perceived rather than removed the difficulty; others for the most part sought either to avoid or to compensate for the deficiency. Pietro della Francesca, whom we have elsewhere noticed, appears to have been the first who revived the Grecian practice of rendering geometry subservient to the painter. He is celebrated by Pascoli,[68] and by authors of greater note, as the father of perspective. Brunelleschi was the first Florentine who saw the method of bringing it to perfection, "which consisted in drawing it in outline by the help of intersections;"[69] and in this manner he drew the square of St. John, and other places, with true diminution and with receding points. He was imitated in mosaic by Benedetto da Maiano, and in painting by Masaccio, to both of whom he was master. About the same period Paolo Uccello, having studied under Gio. Manetti, a celebrated mathematician, applied to it with assiduity; and even so dedicated himself to the pursuit, that in labouring to excel in this, he never acquired celebrity in the other branches of painting. He delighted in it far beyond his other studies, and used to say that perspective was the most pleasant of all; so true is it that novelty is a great source of enjoyment. He executed no work that did not reflect some new light on that art, whether it consisted of edifices and colonnades, in which a great space was represented in a small compass, or of figures foreshortened with a skill unknown to the followers of Giotto. Some of his historic pictures of Adam, and of Noah, in which he indulged in his favourite taste for the novel and whimsical, remain in the cloisters of S. Maria Novella; and there are also landscapes with trees and animals so well executed, that he might be called the Bassano of the first age. He particularly delighted to have birds in his house, from which he drew, and from thence he obtained his surname of Uccello. In the cathedral there is a gigantic portrait of Gio. Aguto on horseback, painted by Paolo in green earth. This was, perhaps, the first attempt made in painting, which achieved a great deal without appearing too daring. He produced other specimens at Padua, where he delineated some figures of giants with green earth in the house of the Vitali. He was chiefly employed in ornamenting furniture for private individuals; the triumphs of Petrarch in the royal gallery, painted on small cabinets are supposed by some good judges to be his.
Masolino da Panicale cultivated the art of chiaroscuro. I believe he derived advantage from having long dedicated his attention to modelling and sculpture, a practice which renders relief easy to the painter, beyond what is generally conceived. Ghiberti had been his master in this branch, who at this time was unrivalled in design, in composition, and in giving animation to his figures. Colouring, which he yet wanted, was taught him by Starnina, and in this also he became a very celebrated master. Thus uniting in himself the excellences of two schools, he produced a new style, not indeed exempt from dryness, nor wholly faultless; but grand, determined, and harmonious, beyond any former example. The chapel of St. Peter al Carmine, is a remaining monument of this artist. He there painted the Evangelists, and some acts of the Saint, as his vocation to the apostleship, the tempest, the denying of Christ, the miracle performed at Porta Speciosa, and the Preaching. He was prevented by death from representing other acts of St. Peter, as for instance, the tribute paid to Cæsar, baptism conferred on the multitude, the healing of the sick, which several years afterwards were painted by his scholar Maso di S. Giovanni, a youth who obtained the surname of Masaccio, from trusting to a precarious subsistence, and living, as it was said, by chance, while deeply engrossed with the studies of his profession. This artist was a genius calculated to mark an era in painting; and Mengs has assigned him the highest place among those who explored its untried recesses. Vasari informs us that "what was executed before his time might be called paintings, but that his pictures seem to live, they are so true and natural;" and in another place adds, that "no master of that age so nearly approached the moderns." He had formed the principles of his art on the works of Ghiberti and Donatello; perspective he acquired from Brunelleschi, and on going to Rome it cannot be doubted that he improved by the study of ancient sculpture. He there met with two senior artists, Gentile da Fabriano, and Vittore Pisanello, upon whom high encomiums, as the first painter of his time, may be seen in Maffei and elsewhere.[70] They who write thus had either not seen any of the paintings of Masaccio, or at most only his early productions; such as the S. Anna in the church of S. Ambrose in Florence, or the chapel of S. Catherine in S. Clement's at Rome, in which, while still young, he executed some pictures of the passion of Christ, and legends of S. Anna, to which may be added a ceiling containing the Evangelists, which are all that now remain free from retouching. This work is excellent for that time, but some doubt whether it ought to be ascribed to him; and it is inferior to his painting in the Carmine, of which we may say with Pliny, jam perfecta sunt omnia. The positions and foreshortenings of the figures are diversified and complete beyond those practised by Paolo Uccello. The air of the heads, says Mengs, is in the style of Raffaello; the expression is so managed that the mind seems no less forcibly depicted than the body. The anatomy of the figure is marked with truth and judgment. That figure, so highly extolled in the baptism of S. Peter, which appears shivering with cold, marks, as it were, an era in the art. The garments, divested of minuteness, present a few easy folds. The colouring is true, properly varied, delicate, and surprisingly harmonious; the relief is in the grandest style. This chapel was not finished by him. He died in 1443, not without suspicion of poison, and left it still deficient in several pictures, which, after many years were supplied by the younger Lippi. It became the school of all the best Florentine artists whom we shall have occasion to notice in this and the succeeding epoch, of Pietro Perugino, and even of Raffaello; and it is a curious circumstance, that in the course of many years, in a city fruitful in genius, ever bent on the promotion of the art, no one in following the footsteps of Masaccio attained that eminence which he acquired without a director. Time has defaced other works of his hand at Florence, equally commended, and especially the sanctuary of the church del Carmine, of which there is a drawing in the possession of the learned P. Lettor Fontana Barnabita in Pavia. The royal gallery has very few of his works. The portrait of a young man, that seems to breathe, and is estimated at a high price, is in the Pitti collection.
After Masaccio, two monks distinguished themselves in the Florentine school. The first was a Dominican friar named F. Giovanni da Fiesole, or B. Giovanni Angelico. His first employment was that of ornamenting books with miniatures, an art he learned from an elder brother, who executed miniatures and other paintings. It is said that he studied in the chapel of Masaccio, but it is not easy to credit this when we consider their ages. Their style too betrays a different origin. The works of the friar discover some traces of the manner of Giotto, in the posture of the figures and the compensation for deficiencies in the art, not to mention the drapery which is often folded in long tube-like forms, and the exquisite diligence in minute particulars common to miniature painters. Nor did he depart much from this method in the greatest part of his works, which chiefly consist of scripture pieces of our Saviour, or the Virgin, in cabinet pictures not unfrequently to be met with in Florence. The royal gallery possesses several; the most brilliant and highly finished of which, is the birth of John the Baptist. The Glory,[71] which is in the church of S. Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi, from its great size, is among his rarest productions; and it also ranks with the most beautiful. His chief excellence consists in the beauty that adorns the countenances of his saints and angels; and he is truly the Guido of the age, for the sweetness of his colours, which, though in water, he diluted and blended in a manner which almost reaches perfection. He was also esteemed one of the best of his age in works executed in fresco; and he was employed in the decoration of the cathedral of Orvieto, as well as the palace of the Vatican itself, where he painted a chapel—a work much commended by a number of writers. Vasari enumerates Gentile da Fabriano among his disciples,
