Painting

All that Giotto and Masaccio had attained in the rendering of tactile values, all that Fra Angelico or Filippo had achieved in expression, all that Pollaiuolo had accomplished in movement, or Verrocchio in light and shade, Leonardo, without the faintest trace of that tentativeness, that painfulness of effort which characterised his immediate precursors, equalled or surpassed.

In closing, let us note what results clearly even from this brief account of the Florentine school, namely that, although no Florentine merely took up and continued a predecessor’s work, nevertheless all, from first to last, fought for the same cause. There is no opposition between Giotto and Michelangelo. The best energies of the first, of the last, and of all the intervening great Florentine artists were persistently devoted to the rendering of tactile values, or of movement, or of both.

(REYNOLDS)

FREDERIC G. STEPHENS

(HOBBEMA)

PAUL LAFOND

(CONSTABLE)

C.L. BURNS

(RAPHAEL)

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

(ANDREA DEL SARTO)

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

(VELASQUEZ)

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

The Surrender of Breda, better known under the name of Las Lanzas, mingles in the most exact proportion realism and grandeur. Truth pushed to the point of portraiture does not diminish in the slightest degree the dignity of the historical style.