conceited critics will venture to gauge the latter by what they feel to be displeasing in the former.  What seems lawless in him, follows the law of a profound and peculiar genius, with which, whether we like it or not, we must reckon.  His imitators were devoid of thought and too indifferent to question whether there was any law to be obeyed.  Like the jackass in the fable, they put on the dead lion’s skin of his manner, and brayed beneath it, thinking they could roar.

Correggio, again, though he can hardly be said to have founded a school, was destined to exercise wide and perilous influence over a host of manneristic imitators.  Francesco Mazzola, called Il Parmigianino, followed him so closely that his frescoes at Parma are hardly distinguishable from the master’s; while Federigo Baroccio at Urbino endeavoured to preserve the sensuous and almost childish sweetness of his style in its integrity.[399] But the real attraction of Correggio was only felt when the new barocco architecture called for a new kind of decoration.  Every cupola throughout the length and breadth of Italy began then to be painted with rolling clouds and lolling angels.  What the wits of Parma had once stigmatised as a ragout of frogs, now seemed the only possible expression for celestial ecstasy; and to delineate the joy of heaven upon those multitudes of domes and semi-domes was a point of religious etiquette.  False lights, dubious foreshortenings, shallow colourings, ill-studied forms, and motiveless agitation suited the taste that cared for gaudy brightness and sensational effects.  The painters, for their part, found it convenient to adopt a mannerism that enabled them to conceal the difficult parts of the figure in feather beds of vapour, requiring neither effort of conception nor expenditure of labour on drawing and composition.  At the same time, the Caracci made Correggio’s style the object of more serious study; and the history of Bolognese painting shows what was to be derived from this master by intelligent and conscientious workmen.

Hitherto, I have had principally to record the errors of artists copying the external qualities of their great predecessors.  It is refreshing to turn from the epigoni of the so-called Roman school to masters in whom the flame of the Renaissance still burned brightly.  Andrea del Sarto, the pupil of Piero di Cosimo, but more nearly related in style to Fra Bartolommeo than to any other of the elder masters, was himself a contemporary of Raphael and Correggio.  Yet he must be noticed here; because he gave new qualities to the art of Tuscany, and formed a tradition decisive for the subsequent history of Florentine painting.  To make a just estimate of his achievement is a task of no small difficulty.  The Italians called him “il pittore senza errori,” or the faultless painter.  What they meant by this must have been that in all the technical requirements of art, in drawing, composition, handling of fresco