Yet the decorative prodigality of this master corresponded to the frigid and stylistic graces of the neo-Latin poets.

It was so much mannerism--adopted without real passion from the antique, and applied with a rhetorical intention.

Those acanthus scrolls and honeysuckle borders, in spite of their consummate finish, fail to arrest attention, leaving the soul as unstirred as the Ovidian cadences of Bembo.
Jacopo Tatti was a genius of more distinction.

Together with San Gallo and Bramante he studied the science of architecture in Rome, where he also worked at the restoration of newly discovered antiques, and cast in bronze a copy of the "Laocoon." Thus equipped with the artistic learning of his age, he was called in 1523 by the Doge, Andrea Gritti, to Venice.

The material pomp of Venice at this epoch, and the pride of her unrivalled luxury, affected his imagination so powerfully that his genius, tutored by Florentine and Umbrian masters among the ruins of old Rome, became at once Venetian.