no distinctive feature in common. But with the opening of the fifteenth
century one particular tendency was developed under the fostering
influence of FRANCESCO SQUARCIONE, born in 1394, which affected in a
very sensible degree the style of the great painters of the next
generation in Venice. This, in a word, was the cult of the antique.

Among the Florentines, as we have seen, the study of form was chiefly
pursued on the principle of direct reference to nature, the especial
object in view being an imitation in two dimensions of the actual
appearances and circumstances of life existing in three. In the Paduan
School it now came to be very differently developed, namely, by the
study of the masterpieces of antique sculpture, in which the common
forms of nature were already raised to a high ideal of beauty. This
school has consequently the merit, as Kugler points out, of applying the
rich results of an earlier, long-forgotten excellence in art to modern
practice. Of a real comprehension of the idealising principle of classic
art there does not appear any trace; what the Paduans borrowed from the
antique was limited primarily to mere outward beauty. Accordingly in the
earliest examples we find the drapery treated according to the antique
costume, and the general arrangement more resembling bas-relief than
rounded groups. The accessories display in like manner a special
attention to antique models, particularly in the architecture, and the
frequent introduction of festoons of fruit; while the exaggerated
sharpness in the marking of the forms due to the combined influence of
the study of the antique and the naturalising tendency of the time,
sometimes borders on excess.

The immediate cause of this almost sudden outbreak of the cult of the
antique--whatever natural forces were behind it--was the visit of
Squarcione to Greece, and Southern Italy, to collect specimens of the
remains of ancient art. On his return to Padua his collection soon
attracted a great number of pupils anxious to avail themselves of the
advantages it offered; and by these pupils, who poured in from all parts
of Italy, the manner of the school was afterwards spread throughout a
great portion of the country. Squarcione himself is better known as a
teacher than as an artist, the few of his remaining works being of no
great importance. There is no example in the National Gallery, but of
the work of his great pupil, Mantegna, we have as much, at any rate, as