he attempted to adopt later, serenely unconscious, apparently, of their
incompatibility. Filippo's strongest impulse was not toward the
pre-eminently artistic one of re-creation, but rather toward expression,
and within that field, toward the expression of the pleasant, genial,
spiritually comfortable feelings of ordinary life. His real place is
with the _genre_ painters; only his _genre_ was of the soul, as that of
others--of Benozzo Gozzoli, for example--was of the body. Hence a sin of
his own, scarcely less pernicious than that of the naturalists, and
cloying to boot--expression at any cost.


VII.

[Page heading: NATURALISM IN FLORENTINE ART]

From the brief account just given of the four dominant personalities in
Florentine painting from about 1430 to about 1460, it results that the
leanings of the school during this interval were not artistic and
artistic alone, but that there were other tendencies as well, tendencies
on the one side, toward the expression of emotion (scarcely less
literary because in form and colour than if in words), and, on the
other, toward the naturalistic reproduction of objects. We have also
noted that while the former tendency was represented by Filippo alone,
the latter had Paolo Uccello, and all of Castagno and Veneziano that the
genius of these two men would permit them to sacrifice to naturalism
and science. To the extent, however, that they took sides and were
conscious of a distinct purpose, these also sided with Uccello and not
with Filippo. It may be agreed, therefore, that the main current of
Florentine painting for a generation after Masaccio was naturalistic,
and that consequently the impact given to the younger painters who