had done the same
before him, as they have always done since, but none of them had thought
of drawing upon metal merely for the sake of the impression it would
make, and without any intention of using the metal afterwards. Within
fifty years of Finiguerra's invention very beautiful engravings were
sold all over Italy, and many famous painters engraved their own
works--foremost among these, Mantegna and Botticelli.

Early Italian art rose thus by regular steps, from the helpless,
traditional, imitative work of the Romanesque and Byzantine artists to
its highest development. It then passed a succession of climaxes in the
masterpieces of Lionardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, and
thence descended gradually to the miserably low level of the eighteenth
century.

It is easy to trace the chief objects which painting had in view in its
successive phases. Tradition, Reality and Illusion were the three.
Cimabue was still a Traditionist. Giotto was the first Realist. Mantegna
first aimed at the full illusion which finished art is capable of
producing, and though not so great a man as Giotto, was a much greater
painter. Then came Lionardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, the men of
universal genius, who could make use of tradition without being
commonplace, who could be realistic without being coarse, and who
understood how to produce illusion without being theatrical. In the
decay of Italian art what strikes one most strongly is the combination
of the three faults which the great men knew how to avoid--coarseness,
commonplace thought and theatrical execution.

[Illustration: PALAZZO DEI CONSERVATORI

From a print of the last century]

Cimabue had found out that it was possible to paint sacred pictures
without the dictation of priests, as prescribed by the Council of Nice.
The idea discovered by Giotto, or rather the fact, namely, that nature
could be copied artistically, produced a still greater revolution, and
he had hosts of scholars and followers and imitators. But they were
nothing more, or at the most it may be said that they developed his idea
to the furthest with varying success. It was realism--sometimes a kind
of mystic evocation of nature, disembodied and divinely pure, as in
Beato Angelico; often exquisitely fresh and youthful, as in his pupil,
Benozzo Gozzoli, whose vast series of frescoes half fills the Camposanto
of Pisa--sometimes tentative and experimental, or gravely grand, as in
Masaccio, impetuous