Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/405

 2. Painting in Italy in the Sixteenth Century. The early part of the sixteenth century was for painting what the age of Pericles had been for sculpture. As we have seen, much had been done to prepare the way by many earnest workers in the fifteenth century ; but the men we have now to consider were so original, so indi- vidual, in their genius that the connection between them and their predecessors is liable to be lost sight of. The appearance of any one of them would have been enough to raise the painting of the period to the very highest rank : but, instead of some single master-spirit, we have a group of original geniuses, each pursuing some great aim ; each inspired with the same divine love of ideal beauty and endowed with the same power of embodying that ideal in masterpieces of undying perfection. We have traced the gradual casting off of the trammels of tradition, the slow and laborious working-out of individuality of form, the painful winning of the secrets of science, and their appli- cation to arts of design, and we have seen the various elements of excellence in painting, forming each the dis- tinctive characteristic of some one school ; but we have now to examine these elements as they appear when blended into one harmonious whole in the works of the five greatest masters of Italy — Leonardo da Vinci, Michel- angelo, Raphael, Titian, Correggio — and their followers, each of whom united command over every art-element with special excellence in some one particular.