s did not carry with
it the religious feeling as in Gothic days. Art had grown to be
something else than a teacher of the Bible. In the painter's hands it
had come to mean beauty for its own sake--a picture beautiful for its
form and color, regardless of its theme. This was the teaching of
antique art, and the study of nature but increased the belief. A new
love had arisen in the outer and visible world, and when the Church
called for altar-pieces the painters painted their new love,
christened it with a religious title, and handed it forth in the name
of the old. Thus art began to free itself from Church domination and
to live as an independent beauty. The general motive, then, of
painting during the High Renaissance, though apparently religious from
the subject, and in many cases still religious in feeling, was largely
to show the beauty of form or color, in which religion, the antique,
and the natural came in as modifying elements.

In technical methods, though extensive work was still done in fresco,
especially at Florence and Rome, yet the bulk of High-Renaissance
painting was in oils upon panel and canvas. At Venice even the
decorative wall paintings were upon canvas, afterward inserted in wall
or ceiling.

[Illustration: FIG. 39.--ANDREA DEL SARTO. MADONNA OF ST. FRANCIS.
UFFIZI.]

THE FLORENTINES AND ROMANS: There was a severity and austerity about
the Florentine art, even at its climax. It was never too sensuous and
luxurious, but rather exact and intellectual. The Florentines were
fond of lustreless fresco, architectural composition, towering or
sweeping lines, rather sharp color as compared with the Venetians, and
theological, classical, even literary and allegorical subjects.
Probably this was largely due to the classic bias of the painters and
the intellectual and social influences of Florence and Rome. Line and
composition were means of expressing abstract thought better than
color, though some of the Florentines employed both line and color
knowingly.

This was the case with Fra Bartolommeo (1475-1517), a monk of San
Marco, who was a transition painter from the fifteenth to the
sixteenth century. He was a religionist, a follower of Savonarola, and
a man of soul who thought to do work of a religious character and
feeling; but he was also a fine painter, excelling in composition,
drawing, drapery, color. The painter's element in his work, its
material and earthly beauty, rather detracted from its spir