There, as at Florence, painting was separated from ecclesiastical tradition, and a new starting-point was sought in the study of mathematical principles, and the striving after form for its own sake.
Without attempting the detailed history of painting in this period of divided energy and diverse effort, it is needful here to turn aside and notice those masters of the fifteenth century who remained comparatively uninfluenced by the scholastic studies of their contemporaries.

Of these, the earliest and most notable was Gentile da Fabriano, the last great painter of the Gubbian school.[172] In the predella of his masterpiece at Florence there is a little panel, which attracts attention as one of the earliest attempts to represent a sunrise.

The sun has just appeared above one of those bare sweeping hill-sides so characteristic of Central Italian landscape.

Part of the country lies untouched by morning, cold and grey: the rest is silvered with the level light, falling sideways on the burnished leaves and red fruit of the orange trees, and casting shadows from olive branches on the furrows of a new-ploughed field.

Along the road journey Joseph and Mary and the infant Christ, so that you may call this little landscape a "Flight into Egypt," if you choose.