owed all his training to Padua, it is
impossible to regard him as what is called a Squarcionesque--one among
the artistic hacks formed and employed by the Paduan _impresario_ of
third-rate painting. No other eagle like to him was reared in that nest.
His greatness belonged to his own genius, assimilating from the meagre
means of study within his reach those elements which enabled him to
divine the spirit of the antique and to attempt its reproduction. In
order to facilitate the explanation of the problem offered by his early
command of style, it has been suggested with great show of reason that he
received a strong impression from the work executed in bas-relief by
Donatello for the church of S. Antonio at Padua. Thus Florentine
influences helped to form even the original genius of this greatest of
the Lombard masters.

[199] Vasari, vol. v. p. 163, may be consulted with regard to Mantegna's
preference for the ideal of statuary when compared with natural beauty,
as the model for a painter.

[200] See Crowe and Cavalcaselle's _History of Painting in North Italy_,
vol. i. p. 334, for an account of his antiquarian researches in company
with Felice Feliciano. His museum was so famous that in 1483 Lorenzo de'
Medici, passing through Mantua from Venice, thought it worthy of a visit.
In his old age Mantegna fell into pecuniary difficulties, and had to part
with his collection. The forced sale of its chief ornament, a bust of
Faustina, is said to have broken his heart. _Ib._ p. 415.

[201] Painted on canvas in tempera for the Marquis of Mantua, before
1488, looted by the Germans in 1630, sold to Charles I., resold by the
Commonwealth, bought back by Charles II., and now exposed, much spoiled
by time and change, but more by villainous re-painting, on the walls of
Hampton Court.

[202] An oil painting in the National Gallery.

[203] The so-called "Triumph of Scipio" in the National Gallery seems to
me in every respect feebler than the Hampton Court Cartoons.

[204] The "Madonna della Vittoria," now in the Louvre Gallery, was
painted to commemorate the achievements of Francesco Gonzaga in the
battle of Fornovo. That Francesco, General of the Venetian troops, should
have claimed that action, the eternal disgrace of Italian soldiery, for a
victory, is one of the strongest signs of the depth to which the sense of
military honour had sunk in Italy. But though the occasion of its
painting was so mean, the impression made by this