[Footnote 1: The tendency to portraiture, in early Florentine and
German art, is observable from an early period. The historical sacred
subjects of Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, and Van Eyck, are crowded with
portraits of living personages. Their introduction into devotional
subjects, in the character of sacred persons, is far less excusable.]

In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the constellation of living
genius in every department of art, the riches of the Church, the
luxurious habits and classical studies of the churchmen, the decline
of religious conviction, and the ascendency of religious controversy,
had combined to multiply church pictures, particularly those of a
large and decorative character. But, instead of the reign of faith,
we had now the reign of taste. There was an absolute passion for
picturesque grouping; and, as the assembled figures were to be as
varied as possible in action and attitude, the artistic treatment, in
order to prevent the lines of form and the colours of the draperies
from interfering with each other, required great skill and profound
study: some of these scenic groups have become, in the hands of great
painters, such as Titian, Paul Veronese, and Annibale Caracci, so
magnificent, that we are inclined to forgive their splendid errors.
The influence of Sanazzaro, and of his famous Latin poem on the
Nativity ("_De Partu Virginis_"), on the artists of the middle of the
sixteenth century, and on the choice and treatment of the subjects
pertaining to the Madonna, can hardly be calculated; it was like that
of Dante in the fourteenth century, but in its nature and result how
different! The grand materialism of Michael Angelo is supposed to have
been allied to the genius of Dante; but would Dante have acknowledged
the group of the Holy Family in the Florentine Gallery, to my feeling,
one of the most profane and offensive of the so-called _religious_