ucceeding painters has, through his efforts, been a
submissive slave.

This picture is one of four panels executed for the Bartolini family.
One of the others is in the Louvre, and a third in the Uffizi.
Another--or indeed almost the only other--work of Uccello which is now
to be seen is the colossal painting in monochrome (_terra-verde_) on the
wall of the cathedral at Florence. Strangely enough, this equestrian
portrait commemorates an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, whose name is
Italianized in the inscription into Giovanni Acuto. He was born at Sible
Hedingham in Essex, the son of a tanner, and adventuring under Edward
III. into France, found his way to Florence, where he served the State
so well that they interred him, on his death in 1393, at the public
expense, and subsequently commissioned Uccello to execute his monument.

With all his devotion to science, the artist has committed the strange
mistake of making the horse stand on two legs on the same side, the
other two being lifted.

TO MASACCIO, born in or about 1400, and dying in 1443, we owe a great
step in art towards realism. It was he, says Vasari, who first attained
the clear perception that _painting is only the close imitation, by
drawing and colouring simply, of all the forms presented by nature
showing them as they are produced by her, and that whoever shall most
perfectly effect this may be said to have most nearly approached the
summit of excellence_. The conviction of this truth, he adds, was the
cause of Masaccio's attaining so much knowledge by means of perpetual
study that he may be accounted among the first by whom art was in a
measure delivered from rudeness and hardness; it was he who led the way
to the realisation of beautiful attitudes and movements which were never
exhibited by any painter before his day, while he also imparted a life
and force to his figures, with a certain roundness and relief which
render them truly characteristic and natural. Possessing great
correctness of judgment, Masaccio perceived that all figures not
sufficiently foreshortened to appear standing firmly on the plane
whereon they are placed, but reared up on the points of their feet, must
needs be deprived of all grace and excellence in the most important
essentials. It is true that Uccello, in his studies of perspective, had
helped to lessen this difficulty, but Masaccio managed his
foreshortenings with much greater skill (though doubtless with less
science) and