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in which they were intended to rest. It was no wonder, therefore, that the bias of a youth so situated, should be, first, to imbibe the maxims which regulate the production of bas-relief next to master if possible those laws of per spective and foreshortening which seemed the great neces sity of the time. Finally it was not unnatural that, in his attempt to apply the laws whose substance he desired to master, he should fall back upon nature as the source of all truth. Uccelli, whose works are unhappily but too scarce, or damaged at the present day, still shows us that there were more of the elements of the sculptor than of the painter in him. We are puzzled, however, to point out where he learnt to paint. It is well known that the sister arts were usually practised in each atelier of Florence. Ghiberti had been a painter; but we seek in vain for pictures by him or by Donatello. Uccelli’s works point unmistakeably enough to the same source of teaching which served for Masolino and Masaccio, and is revealed in the manner of Fra Filippo. Sharing with Donatello a general contempt for select nature, he drew with a hard ness of line which betrays familiarity with sculpture. But his colour, if it may be judged from the damaged creations we still possess, was fused, careful, slightly cold in shadow, but of a rosy tone in the flesh lights. He sparingly used liquid and not unpleasant tints over the grey preparations. The effect upon the spectator’s eye is that of flatness. We possess pictures of his early and of his later time; the first, tentative, and imperfect, revealing the course of his struggle towards a true representation of fore shortened parts and perspective lines, giving us the block, without the pliant action of bodies, full of realism and detail; the last, more masterly and perfect', with figures in good form and proportions, draped so as to develop the shape with propriety, but still reminiscent of bas-relief in their plasticity, and in the peculiar distribution of the groups and episodes. In the first class are three out of four panels repres-
