om the rediscovered antique or the modern bronze.

The early men of the school were hardly great enough to call for
mention. During the fourteenth century there was some Giotto influence
felt--that painter having been at Padua working in the Arena Chapel.
Later on there was a slight influence from Gentile da Fabriano and his
fellow-worker Vittore Pisano, of Verona. But these influences seem to
have died out and the real direction of the school in the early
fifteenth century was given by Francesco Squarcione (1394-1474). He
was an enlightened man, a student, a collector and an admirer of
ancient sculpture, and though no great painter himself he taught an
anatomical statuesque art, based on ancient marbles and nature, to
many pupils.

Squarcione's work has perished, but his teaching was reflected in the
work of his great pupil Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506). Yet Mantegna
never received the full complement of his knowledge from Squarcione.
He was of an observing nature and probably studied Paolo Uccello and
Fra Filippo, some of whose works were then in Paduan edifices. He
gained color knowledge from the Venetian Bellinis, who lived at Padua
at one time and who were connected with Mantegna by marriage. But the
sculpturesque side of his art came from Squarcione, from a study of
the antique, and from a deeper study of Donatello, whose bronzes to
this day are to be seen within and without the Paduan Duomo of S.
Antonio.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.--MANTEGNA. GONZAGA FAMILY GROUP (DETAIL).
MANTUA.]

The sculpturesque is characteristic of Mantegna's work. His people are
hard, rigid at times, immovable human beings, not so much turned to
stone as turned to bronze--the bronze of Donatello. There is little
sense of motion about them. The figure is sharp and harsh, the
drapery, evidently studied from sculpture, is "liney," and the
archaeology is often more scientific than artistic. Mantegna was not,
however, entirely devoted to the sculpturesque. He was one of the
severest nature students of the Early Renaissance, knew about nature,
and carried it out in more exacting detail than was perhaps well for
his art. In addition he was a master of light-and-shade, understood
composition, space, color, atmosphere, and was as scientific in
perspective as Piero della Francesca. There is stiffness in his
figures but nevertheless great truth and character. The forms are
noble, even grand, and for invention and imagination they were never,
in his