y Cene dalla
Chitarra, _Poeti del Primo Secolo,_ vol. ii. pp. 196-207; the epithet
"Molles Senae," given by Beccadelli; and the remarks of De Comines.

[160] I have not thought it necessary to distinguish between tempera and
fresco. In tempera painting the colours were mixed with egg, gum, and
other vehicles dissolved in water, and laid upon a dry ground. In fresco
painting the colours, mixed only with water, were laid upon plaster while
still damp. The latter process replaced the former for wall-paintings in
the fourteenth century.

CHAPTER V

PAINTING

Mediaeval Motives exhausted--New Impulse toward Technical
Perfection--Naturalists in Painting--Intermediate Achievement needed
for the Great Age of Art--Positive Spirit of the Fifteenth
Century--Masaccio--The Modern Manner--Paolo Uccello--Perspective--Realistic
Painters--The Model--Piero della Francesca--His Study of Form--Resurrection
at Borgo San Sepolcro--Melozzo da Forli--Squarcione at Padua--Gentile da
Fabriano--Fra Angelico--Benozzo Gozzoli--His Decorative Style--Lippo
Lippi--Frescoes at Prato and Spoleto--Filippino Lippi--Sandro
Botticelli--His Value for the Student of Renaissance Fancy--His Feeling
for Mythology--Piero di Cosimo--Domenico Ghirlandajo--In what sense he
sums up the Age--Prosaic Spirit--Florence hitherto supreme in
Painting--Extension of Art Activity throughout Italy--Medicean Patronage.

After the splendid outburst of painting in the first half of the
fourteenth century, there came a lull. The thoughts and sentiments of
mediaeval Italy had been now set forth in art. The sincere and simple style
of Giotto was worked out. But the new culture of the Revival had not as
yet sufficiently penetrated the Italians for the painters to express it;
nor had they mastered the technicalities of their craft in such a manner
as to render the delineation of more complex forms of beauty possible. The
years between 1400 and 1470 may be roughly marked out as the second period
of great, activity in painting. At this time sculpture, under the hands of
Ghiberti, Donatello, and Luca della Robbia, had reached a higher point
than the sister art. The debt the sculptors owed to Giotto, they now
repaid in full measure to his successors, in obedience to the law whereby
sculpture, though subordinated, as in Italy, to painting, is more
precocious in its evolution. One of the most marked features of this
period was the progress in the art of design, due to bronze mode