on armour, and even on the hair; completely confusing the effect of the whole, and enforcing the application of extravagant hues of colour.

The splendour thus acquired by the altar, was a sacrifice offered at the expense of the art; and this is the first instance, after its revival, wherein we find men mistaking addition of ornament for increase of sentiment; or rather adding the ornament to the destitution of sentiment, expecting to produce more engaging pictures; whereas it debased, and in measure destroyed the art.

And yet so engaging did this absurd ornament become to eyes accustomed to behold it, or so imperious were the demands for it by the church, that it continued in use long through the better times of the art.

Though Masaccio wisely declined it, with Bartolomeo della Porta, yet Ghirlandaio, Perugino, and even Raffaelle, employed it. In his Madonna della Seggiola, the glories are gold, and so are the necklace and ear-rings in the Fornarina.

He carried it with him into the Vatican. The Dispute of the Sacrament, or as it is now more properly called, the School of Theology, is full of it to excess; and so are others of his first works there. In the School of Athens there is less of this defect, and it is confined to the borders of draperies; but in the Heliodorus, the Attila, and other pictures wrought after he had better culti

vated his native taste, and aggrandised his style, he omitted it; and probably his mind being once relieved of the idea of its necessity, imbibed in the school of Perugino, he would not, had he lived, have returned to it.

Michel Angelo even, does not appear entirely free from this evil in his great work in the Sistine Chapel; but, to the annoyance of Pope Julius who was offended by the slight use of it, there is but little, and that not upon the figures.

To return to the history, a singular and important feature of which is the immediate application of pictures to, or upon, the altars of the Christian Church.

This first occurred in the painting of small pictures of holy subjects upon the front of the predelle, or platforms raised upon the table, and on which is placed the holy chalice. Afterwards, but not till the beginning of the fifteenth century, long pictures, of divers subjects, divided by pilasters, and sometimes surrounded by saints and angels, were introduced, elevated upon the back of the predelle, or on the table. By degrees, the pilasters or divisions were taken away; the proportions of the figures, and the size of the pictures, increased; and the saints, instead of surrounding the picture like so many statues, were brought within it, accompanying the Virgin and the Saviour in varied positions and actions.

Thus were formed those anomalous compositions of holy personages which now so overload the altars of the churches of Italy, and the collections of the cognoscenti.

At the end of the fourteenth, and to the middle of the fifteenth century, arose a great number of ingenious artists, whose works are well worthy of attention. Angelico da Fiesole, Benozzo Gozzoli, Paolo Uccello, Pesellino, Filippo Lippi, Gentile do Fabriano, and many others, all and each adding more or less of finish and of refinement, still retaining the main object, expression. But the real successor of Giotto, as a great improver of the art, was Tomaso di San Giovanni, better known under the name of Masaccio*, whose labours give date to the second epoch of its restoration.

The great work upon which his fame principally depends, is in the church of the Carmelites at Florence. It consists of several pictures, the subjects of which are, the crime of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Paradise; with some scenes of the life of St. Peter.

This work had been begun by his able master, Masolino da Panicale, with great good sense and ability in every respect; but Masaccio, continuing it, wrought with greater simplicity than he, with more grandeur of line and more fulness of effect: a combination most appropriate to the

b. 1401.

serious and impressive nature of the subjects which he adopted.

This improvement, the result of a gradual progression in the scientific portion of the art through a period of 160 years, Masaccio happily combined with the pure principles of Giotto, in what relates to feeling and taste in composition. He recalled the attention of artists to unity of interest in treating a subject, and to the simplicity of that great painter's style; which had been in a considerable degree forgotten, in the search after minutiæ. He directed it to the consideration of that which was alone requisite and proper. His composition leads and confines the eye to the principal point of the subject, undisturbed by extraneous matter. There is great breadth in his imitation, justness in his proportions, and propriety, but not energy, in his choice of action, with a very good but simple system of colouring and execution.

From the predominance of those good qualities in his works, they became the favourite source of study to most of the great artists who succeeded him; Michel Angelo among them, and his foe, Torregiano; and it was while studying them, that the keen wit of the former excited the anger of Torregiano, and Michel Angelo's nose was, in consequence, deprived of a portion of its natural elevation. bolts lo

E 3

Gifted with the power I have described, Masaccio may be considered as the true precursor of Raffaelle, in the application of our art to produce dramatic effect; and Raffaelle has himself testified his admiration of him, by adopting several of his figures, and applying them in his own pictures.*

There are but few of his paintings remaining; the best are in the churches of St. Clement at Rome, and of the Carmelites at Florence. The subjects of the former, are a series of the history of St. Catherine, large figures of the Evangelists on the ceiling, a Crucifixion, and some others. Of those at Florence I have already spoken.

In the former, we find much power over expression; but in the latter, it is limited to the action and look of his figures; and he has not ventured to give much variation or action to their features. Even the orator who accuses St. Peter before the Roman Emperor, does it with his mouth closed; and none of his figures exhibit that vigour of expression which we see, in some of the works of Giotto, and still more in those that surround the dying Ananias in the cartoon by Raffaelle.

His Adam and Eve at the Tree of Knowledge, and the figure of St. Paul exhorting St. Peter.