With Michael Angelo in 1564, Palladio in 1580, Tintoretto in 1594, the godlike lineage of the Renaissance artists ended; and what children of the sixteenth century still survived to sustain the nation's prestige, to carry on its glorious traditions?
The list is but a poor one.

Marino, Tassoni, the younger Buonarotti, Boccalini and Chiabrera in literature.
The Bolognese academy in painting.

After these men expand arid wildernesses of the Sei Cento--barocco architecture, false taste, frivolity, grimace, affectation--Jesuitry translated into false culture." Symonds is here speaking of the dawn of the seventeenth century, but the movement toward these conditions is quite clearly marked in the later years of the preceding cycle.

Its influence on the lyric drama is manifest in the multiplication of luxurious accessories and superficial splendors, designed to appeal to the taste of nobles plunged in sensuous extravagances and easily mistaking delight in them for a lofty appreciation of the drama and art.

The reform of the Florentine coterie conquered Italy for less than fifty years.