V.

Masaccio's death left Florentine painting in the hands of three men
older, and two somewhat younger than himself, all men of great talent,
if not of genius, each of whom--the former to the extent habits already
formed would permit, the latter overwhelmingly, felt his influence. The
older, who, but for Masaccio, would themselves have been the sole
determining personalities in their art, were Fra Angelico, Paolo
Uccello, and Andrea del Castagno; the younger, Domenico Veneziano and
Fra Filippo. As these were the men who for a whole generation after
Masaccio's death remained at the head of their craft, forming the taste
of the public, and communicating their habits and aspirations to their
pupils, we at this point can scarcely do better than try to get some
notion of each of them and of the general art tendencies they
represented.

[Page heading: PAOLO UCCELLO]

Fra Angelico we know already as the painter who devoted his life to
picturing the departing mediæval vision of a heaven upon earth. Nothing
could have been farther from the purpose of Uccello and Castagno.
Different as these two were from each other, they have this much in
common, that in their works which remain to us, dating, it is true, from
their years of maturity, there is no touch of mediæval sentiment, no
note of transition. As artists they belonged entirely to the new era,
and they stand at the beginning of the Renaissance as types of two
tendencies which were to prevail in Florence throughout the whole of the
fifteenth century, partly supplementing and partly undoing the teaching