Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/450

 420 Painting in Venice. In the sixteenth century a want was felt of some greater variety of design than had hitherto been deemed admissible. As the century advanced the love of variety increased, and ideas were borrowed from every side, especially from the East, as is proved by the term " arabesque " having been applied to the decorative designs of Raphael. We have now completed our account — necessarily in- complete — of the great Italian Cinque-cento masters ; and, looking back upon the results obtained, before tracing the progress of the new movement in the rest of Europe, we find a simultaneous fulfilment of all the great principles of painting : form, design, and expression had been perfected in the Roman and Florentine Schools by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael ; and colouring and chiaroscuro in the Schools of Venice and Parma by Correggio, Titian and Paolo Veronese ; spiritual beauty had found its noblest exponent in Raphael, and corporeal in Titian ; the art of portraiture had attained to its highest development; landscape painting, properly so-called, though not much practised, had been greatly improved, and genre painting had been introduced ; the religious subjects almost exclusively favoured in the fifteenth century had given place to some extent to those of antique mythology and history; and a general love of art pervaded all classes. Unfortunately, the high position painting had thus gloriously won was not maintained, and even at the close of the sixteenth century there were signs of its approaching decadence.