But in what other nation of the fifteenth century can we show the same of social urbanity and intellectual light diffused throughout all classes from the highest to the lowest?
It is true that the sixteenth century cast a blight upon their luster.

But it was not until Italian taste had been impaired by the vices of Papal Rome and by contact with the Spaniards that the arts became either coarse or sensual.

Giulio Romano (1492-1546) and Benvenuto Cellini (1500-70) mark the beginning of the change.

In Riberia, a Spaniard, in Caravaggio, and in the whole school of Bologna, it was accomplished.

Yet never at any period did the native Italian masters learn to love ugliness with the devotion that reveals innate grossness.