Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll.
- Anna Brownell Jameson
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll. Source: Wellcome Collection.
101/335 page 65
![MASACCIO Bokn [1402], Died [aijout 1428] It is easily conceivable that, during the forty years which Lorenzo Ghiberti devoted to his great work, and to other un- dertakings on which he was employed at intervals, the assist- ance he required in completing his own designs, in drawing, modelling, casting, polishing should have formed round him a school of young artists who worked and studied under his eye. The kind of work on which they were employed gave these young men great superiority in the knowledge of the human form, and in effects of relief, light and shade, etc. The applica- tion of the sciences of anatomy, mathematics, and geometry to the arts of design began to be more fully understood. This early school of painters was favorably distinguished above the later schools of Italy by a generous feeling of mutual aid, emu- lation, and admiration among the youthful students, far removed from the detestable jealousies, the stabbings, poisonings, and con- spiracies which we read of in the seventeenth century. Among those who frequented the atelier of Lorenzo were Paolo Uc- cello, the first who applied geometry to the study of perspec- tive ; he attached himself to this pursuit with such unwearied assiduity that it had nearly turned his brain, and it was for his use and that of Brunelleschi that Manetti, one of the earli- est Greek scholars and mathematicians in modern Europe, translated the “ Elements of Euclid ; ” Maso Eihiguerra, who invented the art of engraving on copper; Pollajuolo, the first painter who studied anatomy by dissection, and who became the instructor of Michael Angelo ; and Masolino, who had been educated under Stamina, the best colorist of that time. Paolo Uccello was one of the first of the early painters who studied the imitation of animals, particularly birds ( Uccelli, — whence he derived his surname) and horses. He assisted Ghiberti in modelling the animals and foliage introduced into his first set of gates, and by him there is a curious picture [acquired 1857] in our National Gallery, “The Battle of Sant’](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24877888_0101.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
