At Florence these inverted notions about art were especially prevalent because it was a school of art with a score of men of genius and a thousand mediocrities all egging each other on to exhibitions of dexterity
Even Masaccio was driven to exhibit his mere skill, the much admired and by itself wonderfully realised figure of a naked man trembling with cold being not only without real significance, but positively distracting
A weaker man like Paolo Uccello almost entirely sacrificed what sense of artistic significance he may have started with, in his eagerness to display his skill and knowledge as for the rabble has now interest
Men without feeling for the significant may yet perfect a thousand matters which make rendering easier and quicker for the man who comes with something to render and when Botticelli and Leonardo
This increase, however, was due not at all so much to the sons of dexterity, as to the intellectually much nobler, but artistically even inferior
A man with a native gift for science who has taken to art. His purpose is not to extract the material and spiritual significance of objects
To distinguish clearly, after the lapse of nearly five centuries, between Uccello and Castagno, and to determine the precise share
The scantiness of his remaining works makes it more than difficult, makes it almost impossible, to come to accurate conclusions
They follows that the essential in the art of painting as distinguished from the art of colouring
Reader to observe to stimulate consciousness of tactile values
Picture's have power as the object represented to our imagination.
Well it was the power to stimulate tactile consciousness of essential
His everlasting claim to greatness make him a highest æsthetic
Giotto’s paintings on the contrary, have not only as much power of appealing to the tactile imagination as is possessed by the objects represented human figures in particular but actually more, with the necessary result
We whose current knowledge of anatomy is greater, who expect more articulation and suppleness in the human figure, who, in short, see much less naïvely now than Giotto’s contemporaries
At the risk of seeming to wander off into the boundless domain of æsthetics, we must stop at this point for a moment to make sure that we are of one mind regarding the meaning of the phrase
Artists belonged entirely to new era and stand at beginning of Renaissance as two tendencies in Florence throughout the fifteenth century
Uccello had a sense of tactile values and a feeling for colour, but in so far as he used these gifts at all, it was to illustrate scientific
Accordingly he composed pictures in which he contrived to get as many lines as possible leading the eye inward prostrate horses dead or dying
Conscious effort is given to means of rendering that he talks to others and because his triumphs here are hard-earned
Noahs are used scarcely an attempt at disguise to serve his scheme of mathematically converging lines. In his zeal he forgot local colour he loved to paint his horses green or pink
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From the brief account just given of the four dominant personalities in Florentine painting it results that the leanings of the school during this interval were not artistic alone
The extent however that took sides and were conscious of a distinct purpose these also sided with Uccello and not with Filippo. It may be agreed therefore, the main current of Florentine
Masaccio was naturalistic, and that consequently the impact given to the younger painters who during this period were starting, was mainly toward naturalism. Later, in studying Botticelli
