no conception of anything better.

"It is true that in the following age, founded on the absolutely stern
rectitude of this, there came a phase of gigantic power and of exquisite
ease and felicity which possess an awe and a charm of their own. They
are more inimitable than the work of the perfect school. But they are
not _perfect_." ...

238. This period Mr. Ruskin named "the 'Time of the Masters,' Fifty
Years, including Luini, Leonardo, John Bellini, Vitto Carpaccio, Andrea
Mantegna, Andrea Verrocchio, Cima da Conegliano, Perugino, and in date,
though only in his earlier life, belonging to the school, Raphael....
The great fifty years was the prime of life of three men: John Bellini,
born 1430, died at 90, in 1516; Mantegna, born 1430, died at 76, in
1506; and Vittor Carpaccio, who died in 1522."

"The object of these masters is wholly different from that of the former
school. The central Gothic men always want chiefly to impress you with
the facts of their subject; but the masters of this finished time desire
only to make everything dainty and delightful. We have not many pictures
of the class in England, but several have been of late added to the
National Gallery, and the Perugino there, especially the compartment
with Raphael and Tobit, and the little St. Jerome by John Bellini, will
perfectly show you this main character--pictorial perfectness and
deliciousness--sought before everything else. You will find, if you look
into that St. Jerome, that everything in it is exquisite, complete, and
pure; there is not a particle of dust in the cupboards, nor a cloud in
the air; the wooden shutters are dainty, the candlesticks are dainty,
the saint's scarlet hat is dainty, and its violet tassel, and its
ribbon, and his blue cloak and his spare pair of shoes, and his little
brown partridge--it is all a perfect quintessence of innocent
luxury--absolute delight, without one drawback in it, nor taint of the
Devil anywhere." ...

239. After dilating on several other pictures of this class, giving
evidence of the entire devotion of the artists of the period to their
art and work, Mr. Ruskin adverted to the second part of his discourse,
the rivers of Verona. "There is but one river at Verona, nevertheless
Dante connects its name with that of the Po when he says of the whole of
Lombardy,--

'In sul paese, ch' Adice e Po riga,
Solea valore e cortesia trovarsi
Prima che Federigo avesse briga.'

I want to speak for a minut