ull of valuable materials." Yet when it is said, that he was
"not ignorant of expression," and that "his Burial of Christ furnished
Raffaelle with composition, and even "some figures and attitudes," the
severity of the opinion seems somewhat mitigated. Luca Signorelli, more
indebted to nature than the study of the antique, "seems to have been
the first who contemplated with a discriminating eye his object; saw
what was accidental, and what essential; balanced light and shade, and
decided the motion of his figures. He foreshortened with equal boldness
and intelligence." It was thought by Vasari, that in his "Judgment,"
Michael Angelo had imitated him. At this period of the "dawn of modern
art, Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour which distanced
former excellence; made up of all the elements that constitute the
essence of genius; favoured by education and circumstances--all ear, all
eye, all grasp; painter, poet, sculptor, anatomist, architect, engineer,
chemist, machinist, musician, man of science, and sometimes empiric, he
laid hold of every beauty in the enchanted circle, but without exclusive
attachment to one, dismissed in her turn each." "We owe him chiaroscuro,
with all its magic--we owe him caricature, with all its incongruities."
His genius was shown in the design of the cartoon intended for the
council-chamber at Florence, which he capriciously abandoned, wherein
the group of horsemen might fairly rival the greatness of Michael Angelo
himself; and in the well-known "Last Supper," in the refectory of the
Dominicans at Milan, best known, however, from the copies which remain
of it, and the studies which remain. Fra Bartolomeo, "the last master of
this period, first gave gradation to colour, form and masses to drapery,
and a grave dignity, till then unknown, to execution." His was the merit
of having weaned Raffaelle "from the meanness of Pietro Perugino, and
prepared for the mighty style of Michael Angelo Buonarotti." Mr Fuseli
is inspired by his admiration of that wonderful man, as painter,
sculptor, and architect.

"Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are
the elements of Michael Angelo's style. By these principles, he selected
or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as
architect, he attempted--and above any other man, succeeded--to unite
magnificence of plan, and endless variety of subordinate parts, with the
utmost simplicity and breadth. His line i