It has become usual to include in the Venetian School those artists from
the subject provinces on the mainland, who came down to try their luck
at the fountain-head and to receive its hallmark on their talent. The
Friulan cities, Udine, Serravalle, and small neighbouring towns, had
their own primitive schools and their scores of humble craftsmen. Their
art wavered for some time in its expression between the German taste,
which came so close to their gates, and the Italian, which was more
truly their element.

Up to 1499 Friuli was invaded seven times in thirty years by the
Turks. They poured in large numbers over the Bosnian borders, crossed
the Isonzo and the Tagliamenta, and massacred and carried off the
inhabitants. These terrible periods are marked by the cessation of work
in the provinces, but hope always revived again. The break caused by
such a visitation can be distinctly traced in the Church of S. Antonino,
at the little town of San Daniele. Martino da Udine obtained the
epithet of Pellegrino da San Daniele in 1494 when he returned from an
early visit to Venice, where he had been apprenticed to Cima. He was
appointed to decorate S. Antonino. His early work there is hard and
coarse, ill-drawn, the figures unwieldy and shapeless, and the colour
dusky and uniform; but owing to the Turkish raid, he had to take flight,
and it was many a year before the monks gained sufficient courage and
saved enough money to continue the embellishment of their church. In the
meantime, Pellegrino's years had been spent partly in Venice and partly,
perhaps, in Ferrara, for the reason Raphael gave for refusing to paint a
"Bacchus" for the Duke, was that the subject had already been painted
by Pellegrino da San Daniele. When Pellegrino resumed his work, it
demonstrated that he had studied the modern Venetians and had come under
a finer, deeper influence. A St. George in armour suggests Giorgione's
S. Liberale at Castelfranco; he specially shows an affinity with
Pordenone, who was his pupil and who was to become a better painter than
his old master. As Pellegrino goes on he improves consistently, and
adopts the method, so peculiarly Venetian, of sacrificing form to a
scheme of chiaroscuro. He even, to some extent, succeeds in his
difficult task of applying to wall painting the system which the
Venetians used almost exclusively for easel pictures. He was an
ambitious, daring painter, and some of his church standards were for
long attr