fore it
found complete utterance.

In order to keep the main idea clearly before the mind of the reader, to
show him how the Renaissance reveals itself in Venetian painting, the
introduction of anything not strictly relevant to the subject has been
avoided. The salient points once perceived and connected with the more
important painters, the reader will find no difficulty in seeing the
proper place of any given work by a great master, or the relative
importance of those second-and third-rate painters of whom no special
mention has been made because they are comprised within what has been
said about the greater artists.

But happily art is too great and too vital a subject to be crowded into
any single formula; and a formula that would, without distorting our
entire view of Italian art in the fifteenth century, do full justice to
such a painter as Carlo Crivelli, does not exist. He takes rank with the
most genuine artists of all times and countries, and does not weary even
when "great masters" grow tedious. He expresses with the freedom and
spirit of Japanese design a piety as wild and tender as Jacopo da
Todi's, a sweetness of emotion as sincere and dainty as of a Virgin and
Child carved in ivory by a French craftsman of the fourteenth century.
The mystic beauty of Simone Martini, the agonized compassion of the
young Bellini, are embodied by Crivelli in forms which have the strength
of line and the metallic lustre of old Satsuma or lacquer, and which are
no less tempting to the touch. Crivelli must be treated by himself and
as the product of stationary, if not reactionary, conditions. Having
lived most of his life far away from the main currents of culture, in a
province where St. Bernardino had been spending his last energies in the
endeavour to call the world back to the ideals of an infantile
civilisation, Crivelli does not belong to a movement of constant
progress, and therefore is not within the scope of this work.

To make the essay useful as a handbook to Venetian painting, lists have
been appended of the works, in and out of Italy, by the principal
Venetian masters. These lists do not pretend to absolute completeness.
Only such private collections have been mentioned as are well known and
accessible to students, although in the case of very rare painters all
of their known works are given, and even such as are of doubtful
authenticity are alluded to. The author has seen and carefully
considered all the pictur