ver forget the deep impression of solitude and aloofness from all
earthly things produced by it. It is not so much the admirable grouping
and masterly drawing of the four sleeping soldiers, or even the majestic
type of the Christ emergent without effort from the grave, as the
communication of a mood felt by the painter and instilled into our souls,
that makes this by far the grandest, most poetic, and most awe-inspiring
picture of the Resurrection. The landscape is simple and severe, with the
cold light upon it of the dawn before the sun is risen. The drapery of the
ascending Christ is tinged with auroral colours like the earliest clouds
of morning; and His level eyes, with the mystery of the slumber of the
grave still upon them, seem gazing, far beyond our scope of vision, into
the region of the eternal and illimitable. Thus, with Piero for
mystagogue, we enter an inner shrine of deep religious revelation. The
same high imaginative faculty marks the fresco of the "Dream of
Constantine" in S. Francesco at Arezzo, where, it may be said in passing,
the student of art must learn to estimate what Piero could do in the way
of accurate foreshortening, powerful delineation of solid bodies, and
noble treatment of drapery.[166] To Piero, again, we owe most precious
portraits of two Italian princes, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta and
Federigo of Urbino, masterpieces[167] of fidelity to nature and sound
workmanship.

In addition to the many great paintings that command our admiration, Piero
claims honour as the teacher of Melozzo da Forli and of Luca Signorelli.
Little is left to show the greatness of Melozzo; but the frescoes
preserved in the Quirinal are enough to prove that he continued the grave
and lofty manner of his master.[168] Signorelli bears a name illustrious
in the first rank of Italian painters; and to speak of him will be soon my
duty. It was the special merit of these artists to elevate the ideal of
form and to seek after sublimity, without departing from the path of
conscientious labour, in an age preoccupied on the one hand with
technicality and naturalism, on the other with decorative prettiness and
pietism.

While the Florentine and Umbro-Tuscan masters were perfecting the arts of
accurate design, a similar direction toward scientific studies was given
to the painters of Northern Italy at Padua. Michael Savonarola, writing
his panegyric of Padua about 1440, expressly mentions Perspective as a
branch of philosop