Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/16

Rh majority of painters have had more than one master; and scholars have as often prosecuted their labours in foreign cities as in those in which they were originally educated. For this reason, and in order to make the Table as simple as possible, it presents only selections of the most important artists who, during the six centuries comprised, were the chief representatives of painting of the several Schools inserted. The principle of the Table is chronological succession; and the year of death, rather than that of birth, has been adopted, because the majority of men scarcely bring any influence on their fellows into operation before their thirtieth year at soonest, and in many cases still later. As a painter, Michelangelo exerted no influence on his contemporaries till nearly forty years of age, and his was not a late case; Raphael is one of the few exceptions, and he died at an age when many distinguished men have been still obscure. On the whole, therefore, in a Table of this kind, placing the names against the years of birth would give a false impression of nearly half a century. The Table, therefore, shows not only the contemporaries of the several masters, but also the real period of their operation. It is divided into half centuries; those who died early in the half century being placed in the upper part of the division, and so on, each name in proportion, without, however, such precision as to imply that every painter died before those whose names are lower in the list; for some have died in the same year, the dates of others are uncertain, and where a distinguished master has died about the same period as some scholar, or only shortly afterwards, the name of the master precedes that of the scholar; but in all cases the name is placed in the half century in which the painter died. The separation into Schools has been kept as restricted as possible. The painters of Verona and Brescia are comprised under the head of Venice; and those of Mantua and Cremona, with those of Parma and Milan, under the general head of Lombard School. Padua, as displaying a more individual character, recalling the antique bas-reliefs, through the peculiar influence of Squarcione and Andrea Mantegna has its separate classification. In the Ferrarese, Genoese, and Neapolitan Schools, the distinctions are as much local as characteristic. The Umbrian and Sienese are distinct in their early periods, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the local developments gradually lose their individual character, though the great Schools preserve their broad distinctions throughout; that of Rome, after Raphael, was the most general and equal in its qualities, surpassing all the Schools in composition and character. In the others, some one quality greatly prevails; as, the study of form among the Florentines; colour, with