Renaissance. To violate the order of
time, with a view to what may here be called the morphology of Italian
art, is, in his case, a plain duty.

Bearing this in mind, it is still possible to regard the eighty years
above mentioned as a period no longer of promise and preparation but of
fulfilment and accomplishment. Furthermore, the thirty years at the close
of the fifteenth century may be taken as one epoch in this climax of the
art, while the first half of the sixteenth forms a second. Within the
former falls the best work of Mantegna, Perugino, Francia, the Bellini,
Signorelli, Fra Bartolommeo. To the latter we may reckon Michael Angelo,
Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, Titian, and Andrea del Sarto. Lionardo da
Vinci, though belonging chronologically to the former epoch, ranks first
among the masters of the latter; and to this also may be given Tintoretto,
though his life extended far beyond it to the last years of the century.
We thus obtain, within the period of eighty years from 1470 to 1550, two
subordinate divisions of time, the one including the last part of the
fifteenth century, the other extending over the best years of the
sixteenth.

The subdivisions I have just suggested correspond to two distinct stages
in the evolution of art. The painters of the earlier group win our
admiration quite as much by their aim as by their achievement. Their
achievement, indeed, is not so perfect but that they still make some
demand upon interpretative sympathy in the student. There is, besides, a
sense of reserved strength in their work. We feel that their motives have
not been developed to the utmost, that their inspiration is not exhausted;
that it will be possible for their successors to advance beyond them on
the same path, not realising more consummate excellence in special points,
but combining divers qualities, and reaching absolute freedom.

The painters of the second group display mastery more perfect, range of
faculty more all-embracing. What they design they do; nature and art obey
them equally; the resources placed at their command are employed with
facile and unfettered exercise of power. The hand obedient to the brain is
now so expert that nothing further is left to be desired in the expression
of the artist's thought.[197] The student can only hope to penetrate the
master's meaning. To imagine a step further in the same direction is
impossible. The full flower of the Italian genius has been unfolded. Its
mess