CHAPTER V.
PAINTING Mediaeval Motives exhausted--New Impulse toward Technical Perfection--Naturalists in Painting--Intermediate Achievement needed for the Great Age of Art--Positive Spirit of the Fifteenth Century--Masaccio--The Modern Manner--Paolo Uccello--Perspective--Realistic Painters--The Model--Piero della Francesca--His Study of Form--Resurrection at Borgo San Sepolcro--Melozzo da Forli--Squarcione at Padua--Gentile da Fabriano--Fra Angelico--Benozzo Gozzoli--His Decorative Style--Lippo Lippi--Frescoes at Prato and Spoleto--Filippino Lippi--Sandro Botticelli--His Value for the Student of Renaissance Fancy--His Feeling for Mythology--Piero di Cosimo--Domenico Ghirlandajo--In what sense he sums up the Age--Prosaic Spirit--Florence hitherto supreme in Painting--Extension of Art Activity throughout Italy--Medicean Patronage.
After the splendid outburst of painting in the first half of the fourteenth century, there came a lull.

The thoughts and sentiments of mediaeval Italy had been now set forth in art.

The sincere and simple style of Giotto was worked out.

But the new culture of the Revival had not as yet sufficiently penetrated the Italians for the painters to express it; nor had they mastered the technicalities of their craft in such a manner as to render the delineation of more complex forms of beauty possible.

The years between 1400 and 1470 may be roughly marked out as the second period of great, activity in painting.