But there arose at Bologna a school, bent on resuscitating the traditions of an art which had already done its utmost to interpret mind to mind through mediums of lovely form and color.

The founders of the Bolognese Academy, like Medea operating on decrepit Aeson, chopped up the limbs of painting which had ceased to throb with organic life, recombined them by an act of intellect and will, and having pieced them together, set the composite machine in motion on the path of studied method.

Their aim was analogous to that of the Church in its reconstitution of Catholicism; and they succeeded, in so far as they achieved a partial success, through the inspiration which the Catholic Revival gave them.

These painters are known as the Eclectics and this title sufficiently indicates their effort to revive art by recomposing what lay before them in disintegrated fragments.

They did not explore new territory or invent fresh vehicles of expression.