Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/379

 fWAXti-^i III. Renaissance Painting in Italy. A kem ark able difference exists between the history of painting and that of sculpture and architecture at the Renaissance period. Of the two latter arts the Romans had left so many remains that, when the revival of letters altered the current of men's thoughts, it was natural to revert to the actual models existing abundantly in Italy ; and, as we have seen, this was done. In painting the case was different : the art was in a constant state of development, which was influenced but not interrupted by the classic revival. We may, if we please, consider the fifteenth century as a trajisitioju period, and the sixteenth as the Renaissance period; but the terms must not be under^oOd^'lTr-crhliracterise a revival of classical modes at all so complete as that which occurred in the sister arts. By many_writers it is consid ered that the Renaissance of painting in Italy began early in the fifteenth century, or even witlf Giotto at the commencement of the fourteenth century. 1. Painting in Italy in the Fifteenth Century. The fifteenth century was a time of exceptional intellec- tual activity, and the progress made in scientific discovery was of great importance to the arts of painting and sculp- ture. As we have seen, a considerable advance had been made in expression and imitation in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ; but oil-painting was still unpractised, portraiture was little cultivated, linear perspective was very imperfectly understood, and landscape painting, as an independent branch of art, was not even attempted. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, however, the