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with a tendency to imitate the mere outer show of the antique or an unselect nature. We shall not say that the painters of this time deserve more blame than praise. In so far as they had aims, their efforts were meritorious. The religious school which preceded them was doubtless more in the path of the truth; but had heen without many of the advantages which the later labourers in the field were enabled to glean. Such as may think that art is not an emanation or expression of the feeling of its time, or do not appreciate the old simplicity which made every thing subordinate to a sublime Christian idea, may be right in preferring the more realistic, or naturalist school, as it has been called, of the fifteenth century. There are beauties and excellence in both. The first painter of Florence who displayed the charac teristic features which have been thus rapidly sketched, is Paolo Doni, or Uccelli. Born at the close of the four teenth century (c. 1396 *)> he was apprenticed to Lorenzo Ghiberti and, as “garzone di bottega”, (1407) no doubt fagged for Donatello and the other assistants who worked the second gate of the Baptistery of S. Giovanni. 2 It was thus his fortune to live at a period when Brunelleschi and Ghiberti carried on their memorable feud; when Donatello was preparing to startle his countrymen with the originality of his vehement style. It was an age in which the science of perspective was already an object of ceaseless research; in which Brunelleschi was to teach Masaccio the rudiments of that science; Ghiberti was to introduce it, in spite of all previous experience, into bas- reliefs; and Donatello was preparing to show its use in altering the natural forms of statues to suit the position 1 In 4 tax papers, of 1427, 1433, 1442, and 1446, Paolo gives him self a different age. In the 2 first he says he was horn in 1397. In the 3 d he gives the date of 1402, in the last that of 1390. A record of 1469 contains a declaration of his age and infirmities. He there again states that he was born in 1396. Gaye, Carteggio. Vol. I. p.p. 146—7. 2 Thomas Patch, ub. sup. La porta del Battistero di S. Giovanni.