The drapery of the ascending Christ is tinged with auroral colours like the earliest clouds of morning; and His level eyes, with the mystery of the slumber of the grave still upon them, seem gazing, far beyond our scope of vision, into the region of the eternal and illimitable.

Thus, with Piero for mystagogue, we enter an inner shrine of deep religious revelation.

The same high imaginative faculty marks the fresco of the "Dream of Constantine" in S.Francesco at Arezzo, where, it may be said in passing, the student of art must learn to estimate what Piero could do in the way of accurate foreshortening, powerful delineation of solid bodies, and noble treatment of drapery.[166] To Piero, again, we owe most precious portraits of two Italian princes, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta and Federigo of Urbino, masterpieces[167] of fidelity to nature and sound workmanship.
In addition to the many great paintings that command our admiration, Piero claims honour as the teacher of Melozzo da Forli and of Luca Signorelli.
Little is left to show the greatness of Melozzo; but the frescoes preserved in the Quirinal are enough to prove that he continued the grave and lofty manner of his master.[168] Signorelli bears a name illustrious in the first rank of Italian painters; and to speak of him will be soon my duty.

It was the special merit of these artists to elevate the ideal of form and to seek after sublimity, without departing from the path of conscientious labour, in an age preoccupied on the one hand with technicality and naturalism, on the other with decorative prettiness and pietism.
While the Florentine and Umbro-Tuscan masters were perfecting the arts of accurate design, a similar direction toward scientific studies was given to the painters of Northern Italy at Padua.

Michael Savonarola, writing his panegyric of Padua about 1440, expressly mentions Perspective as a branch of philosophy taught in the high school;[169] and the influence of Francesco Squarcione, though exaggerated by Vasari, was not inconsiderable.