reedom of the
pencil. Then arose Da Vinci and Michael Angelo, who practised the
immutable principles by which art could be advanced; and rapidly
following in their steps, Fra Bartolommeo, Fra Angelico, Rossi, and
Andrea del Sarto made the age an era in painting, until the art
culminated in Raphael and Corregio and Titian. And divers cities of
Italy--Bologna, Milan, Parma, and Venice--disputed with Rome and
Florence for the empire of art; as also did many other cities which
might be mentioned, each of which has a history, each of which is
hallowed by poetic associations; so that all men who have lived in
Italy, or even visited it, feel a peculiar interest in these cities,--an
interest which they can feel in no others, even if they be such capitals
as London and Paris. I excuse this extravagant admiration for the
wonderful masterpieces produced in that age, making marble and canvas
eloquent with the most inspiring sentiments, because, wrapt in the joys
which they excite, the cultivated and imaginative man forgets--and
rejoices that he can forget--the priests and beggars, the dirty hotels,
filthy friars, superstition, unthrift, Jesuitism, which stare ordinary
tourists in the face, and all the other disgusting realities which
philanthropists deplore so loudly in that degenerate but classical and
ever-to-be-hallowed land. For, come what will, in spite of popes and
despots it has been the scene of the highest glories of antiquity,
calling to our minds saints and martyrs, as well as conquerors and
emperors, and revealing at every turn their tombs and broken monuments,
and all the hoary remnants of unsurpassed magnificence, as well as
preserving in churches and palaces those wonders which were created when
Italy once again lived in the noble aspiration of making herself the
centre and the pride of the new civilization.

Da Vinci, the oldest of the great masters who immortalized that era,
died in 1519, in the arms of Francis I. of France, and Michael Angelo
received his mantle. The young sculptor was taken away from his chisel
to paint, for Pope Julius II., the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. After
the death of his patron Lorenzo, he had studied and done famous work in
marble at Bologna, at Rome, and again at Florence. He had also painted
some, and with such immediate success that he had been invited to assist
Da Vinci in decorating a hall in the ducal palace at Florence. But
sculpture was his chosen art, and when called to paint