Yet these great masters were isolated, neither expressing in any definite form the character of their districts, nor founding a succession of local artists.

Their influence was incontestably great, but widely diffused.

Bologna and Ferrara, Brescia and Bergamo, Cremona and Verona, have excellent painters; and it is not difficult to show that in each of these cities art assumed specific characters.

Yet the interest of the schools in these towns is due mainly to the varied influences brought to bear upon them from Venice, Umbria, and Milan.

In other words they are affiliated, each according to its geographical position, to the chief originative centres.
What I have advanced in the foregoing paragraphs is not meant for a polemic against the time-honoured division of Italian painters into local schools, but for a justification of my own proposed method of treatment.
Having undertaken to deal with painting as the paramount art-product of the Renaissance, it will be my object to point out the leading characteristics of aesthetic culture in Italy, rather than to dwell upon its specific differences.