Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea D'Agnolo

as well as time, should be marked by periods

e times has the world been illuminated by the full brilliance of A

kings. The second day the sun rose on the shores of many-isled Greece, and shed its rays over Etruria and Rome, and er

hole western world with the glow of colour a

d like a child wondering at all around tried to e

on of humanity, it unfolds divinity. The third era of Christian art, conscious

e first streak of light how dim, stiff, and soulless all things appear! Trees and objects bear precisely the relat

f blue, and rose, and glorious gold! This period which, in art, began with Giotto and ended with Botticelli, culminated in Fra Angelico, who floo

takes its place. The human form must be expressed, in all its solidity and truth, not only in its outward semblance, but the hidden soul must be seen through the veil of flesh.

truly as the celestial sun is the revealer of form, so surel

and sculptures have been but for the veneration of the myst

w as not to soar beyond the greatest perfection of humanity, was thus within the grasp of the artist to express. Given a manly figure with the fullest development of strength; a female one showing the greatest perfection of form; and a noble man whose features express dignity

t is a painting in encaustic, and has been used as a door for his oven by the contadino who dug it up-yet it remains a marvel of genius. The subject is a female head-a muse, or perhaps only a portrait; the delicacy and mellowness of the flesh tints equal those of Raphael or Leonardo, and a lock of hair lying across her breast is so exquisitely painted th

roots in Christianity; but the religion is

these are merely suggestive, and allow the imagination full play around and beyond the

y want to bring religion home to them in a more tangible form, to humanize it, in fact. From this want it arises that nature next to religion inspires art, and finally takes its place. For it follows

bursts of eloquence, "You see that Saint there in the Church and say, 'I will live a good life and be like him.'" If these were the feelings of the least devout and the religious fanatic, how hallowed must the influences of Christian painting have been to the intermediate ranks. Mr. Symonds beautifully expresses the tendency of that time: "The eyes of the worshipper should no longer have a mere st

entury was sublime for the expression of the idea; one only has to study the intense meaning in the works of Giotto, and Orcagna, Duccio, and the Lorenzetti of Siena to perceive this. The fourteenth century, on the contrary, rendered itself glorious for mani

unfinished works prove, he always felt some great overwhelming meaning in his inmost soul, which all his passionate artistic yearnings were inadequate to express. Raphael tried to bring realism into religion through painting, and to give us the scenes of our Lord's and the Apostles' lives in such a humanized aspect, that we should feel ourselves of his nature. But the incarnation of religion in

the decline were many, and are not centred in one man. As long as Religion slumbered in monasticism and dogma, Art seizing on the human parts, such as the maternity of the Madonna, the personifications of saints who had lived in the world, was its adequate exponent. The religion awakened by the aesthetic S. Francis, who loved all kinds of beauty,

aganism; Savonarola would have kept it on the confines of purism; it was divided and fell, passing through the various steps of decadence, the mannerists and the ec

last of the group before the decline. On Fra Bartolommeo the spirituality of Fra Angelico still lingered, while the perfection of Raphael illumined him. Andrea del Sarto, on the other side, had gathered into his hands the gleams of genius from all the great artists who

ra Bartolommeo painted for the sou