m through generations with the life of its
organic unity.[269] The artists had no reason to paint thoughts and
theories. It was enough to set forth Venice and to illustrate her acts.

Long before Venetian painting reached a climax in the decorative triumphs
of the Ducal Palace, the masters of the school had formed a style
expressive of the spirit of the Renaissance, considered as the spirit of
free enjoyment and living energy. To trace the history of Venetian
painting is to follow through its several stages the growth of that
mastery over colour and sensuous beauty which was perfected in the works
of Titian and his contemporaries.[270] Under the Vivarini of Murano the
Venetian school in its infancy began with a selection from the natural
world of all that struck them as most brilliant. No other painters of
their age in Italy employed such glowing colours, or showed a more marked
predilection for the imitation of fruits, rich stuffs, architectural
canopies, jewels, and landscape backgrounds. Their piety, unlike the
mysticism of the Sienese and the deep thought of the Florentine masters,
is somewhat superficial and conventional. The merit of their devotional
pictures consists of simplicity, vivacity, and joyousness. Our Lady and
her court of saints seem living and breathing upon earth. There is no
atmosphere of tranced solemnity surrounding them, like that which gives
peculiar meaning to similar works of the Van Eycks and Memling--artists,
by the way, who in many important respects are more nearly allied than any
others to the spirit of the first age of Venetian painting.[271]

What the Vivarini began, the three Bellini,[272] with Crivelli, Carpaccio,
Mansueti, Basaiti, Catena, Cima da Conegliano, Bissolo, Cordegliaghi,
continued. Bright costumes, distinct and sunny landscapes, broad
backgrounds of architecture, large skies, polished armour, gilded
cornices, young faces of fisherboys and country girls,[273] grave faces of
old men brown with sea-wind and sunlight, withered faces of women hearty
in a hale old age, the strong manhood of Venetian senators, the dignity of
patrician ladies, the gracefulness of children, the rosy whiteness and
amber-coloured tresses of the daughters of the Adriatic and lagoons--these
are the source of inspiration to the Venetians of the second period.
Mantegna, a few miles distant, at Padua, was working out his ideal of
severely classical design. Yet he scarcely touched the manner of the
Venetia