and Letters. We pass on, now,
from Petrarch and the influence the movement had on Italian literature,
to its effect on Italian Art. The Renaissance did not affect Art in the
same way, as Botticelli may serve to show. "But perhaps," said the
lecturer, "the various operations in the province of Art of the two main
motive forces of the Renaissance--the impulse towards the scientific
study of nature, and the impulse to reinstate the classic spirit--may be
best illustrated by reference to Lionardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael
Angelo." The passages in which Leighton characterised these three
masters are among the most striking of all those uttered by him within
the walls of the Academy. Lionardo's scientific "avidity of research,"
Raphael's "classic serenity," and Angelo's "mediaeval ardour," are turned
to admirable effect in the pages of this Discourse; and the tribute paid
to them on the part of an English painter who has zealously sought to
live and work in the light of their great examples, has indeed an
interest that is personal, in a sense, as well as general and critical.

Take this concluding sentence upon Raphael:

"Whatever was best in the classic spirit was absorbed and eagerly
assimilated by him, and imparted to the work of his best day that
rhythm, that gentle gravity, and that noble plenitude of form, which are
its stamp, and proclaim him the brother of Mozart and of Sophocles."

Or this, again, on Michael Angelo, as distinguishing him from Raphael:

"The type of human form which he lifted to the fullest expressional
force is the last development of a purely indigenous conception of human
beauty, whereas the type which we know as Raphaelesque is a classic
ideal warmed with Christian feeling. Sublimely alone as Buonarotti's
genius stands, towering and unapproached, ... it does but mark the
highest summit reached in the magnificent continuity of its evolution,
by the purely native genius of Tuscan Art."

Having arrived at Tuscan Art, and at Michael Angelo, in whom it reaches
its consummate development, we leave Italy, and turn now to the
description of Art in Spain, given by Lord Leighton in his Discourse of
December, 1889. And first we have some account of the extraordinarily
various racial strains which were contributed to form the significant
figure of the fifteenth-century Spaniard. On the ancient Iberian stock
was grafted Celtic, Greek, Phoenician, and Carthaginian blood; and to
these infusions succeed