nd the study of nature--were carried into the art of the
time with greater realization.

The inference must not be made that because nature and the antique
came to be studied in Early Renaissance times that therefore religion
was neglected. It was not. It still held strong, and though with the
Renaissance there came about a strange mingling of crime and
corruption, aestheticism and immorality, yet the Church was never
abandoned for an hour. When enlightenment came, people began to doubt
the spiritual power of the Papacy. They did not cringe to it so
servilely as before. Religion was not violently embraced as in the
Middle Ages, but there was no revolt. The Church held the power and
was still the patron of art. The painter's subjects extended over
nature, the antique, the fable, allegory, history, portraiture; but
the religious subject was not neglected. Fully three-quarters of all
the fifteenth-century painting was done for the Church, at her
command, and for her purposes.

But art was not so wholly pietistic as in the Gothic age. The study of
nature and the antique materialized painting somewhat. The outside
world drew the painter's eyes, and the beauty of the religious subject
and its sentiment were somewhat slurred for the beauty of natural
appearances. There was some loss of religious power, but religion had
much to lose. In the fifteenth century it was still dominant.

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--BOTTICELLI. CORONATION OF MADONNA. UFFIZI.]

KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANTIQUE AND NATURE: The revival of antique learning
came about in real earnest during this period. The scholars set
themselves the task of restoring the polite learning of ancient
Greece, studying coins and marbles, collecting manuscripts, founding
libraries and schools of philosophy. The wealthy nobles, Palla
Strozzi, the Albizzi, the Medici, and the Dukes of Urbino, encouraged
it. In 1440 the Greek was taught in five cities. Immediately
afterward, with Constantinople falling into the hands of the Turks,
came an influx of Greek scholars into Italy. Then followed the
invention of printing and the age of discovery on land and sea. Not
the antique alone but the natural were being pried into by the spirit
of inquiry. Botany, geology, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, anatomy,
law, literature--nothing seemed to escape the keen eye of the time.
Knowledge was being accumulated from every source, and the arts were
all reflecting it.

The influence of the newly discove