ell-bound before the
sacred and impassioned reveries of the Fiesolan monk. Masaccio had
inestimable value for his contemporaries. Fra Angelico, now that we know
all Masaccio can teach, has a quality so unique that we return again and
again to the contemplation of his visions. Thus it often happens that we
are tempted to exaggerate the historical importance of one painter
because he touches us by some peculiar quality, and to over-estimate the
intrinsic value of another because he was a motive power in his own age.
Both these temptations should be resolutely resisted by the student who is
capable of discerning different kinds of excellence and diverse titles to
affectionate remembrance. Tracing the history of Italian painting is like
pursuing a journey down an ever-broadening river, whose affluents are
Giotto and Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, and Mantegna. We have to
turn aside and land upon the shore, in order to visit the
heaven-reflecting lakelet, self-encompassed and secluded, called Angelico.

Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Fra Angelico, but in no sense the
continuator of his tradition, exhibits the blending of several styles by a
genius of less creative than assimilative force. That he was keenly
interested in the problems of perspective and foreshortening, and that
none of the knowledge collected by his fellow-workers had escaped him, is
sufficiently proved by his frescoes at Pisa. His compositions are rich in
architectural details, not always chosen with pure taste, but painted with
an almost infantine delight in the magnificence of buildings. Quaint birds
and beasts and reptiles crowd his landscapes; while his imagination runs
riot in rocks and rivers, trees of all variety, and rustic incidents
adopted from real life. At the same time he felt an enjoyment like that of
Gentile da Fabriano in depicting the pomp and circumstance of pageantry,
and no Florentine of the fifteenth century was more fond of assembling the
personages of contemporary history in groups.[173] Thus he showed himself
sensitive to the chief influences of the earlier Renaissance, and combined
the scientific and naturalistic tendencies of his age in a manner not
devoid of native poetry. What he lacked was depth of feeling, the sense
of noble form, the originative force of a great mind. His poetry of
invention, though copious and varied, owed its charm to the unstudied
grace of improvisation, and he often undertook subjects where his idyllic
ra