An artist who claims a third place beside Mino and his friend, “il bravo Desider si dolce e bello,"[108] is Benedetto da Majano.  In Benedetto’s bas-reliefs at San Gemignano, carved for the altars of those unlovely Tuscan worthies, S. Fina and S. Bartolo, we find a pictorial treatment of legendary subjects, proving that he had studied Ghirlandajo’s frescoes.  The same is true about his pulpit in S. Croce at Florence, his treatment of the story of S. Savino at Faenza, and his “Annunciation” in the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples.  Benedetto, indeed, may be said to illustrate the working of Ghiberti’s influence by his liberal use of landscape and architectural backgrounds; but the style is rather Ghirlandajo’s than Ghiberti’s.  If it was a mistake in the sculptors of that period to subordinate their art to painting, the error, we feel, was aggravated by the imitation of a manner so prosaic as that of Ghirlandajo.  That Benedetto began life as a tarsiatore may perhaps help to account for his pictorial style in bas-relief.[109] In estimating his total claim as an artist, we must not forget that he designed the formidable and splendid Strozzi Palace.

It will be observed that all the sculptors hitherto mentioned have been Tuscans; and this is due to no mere accident—­nor yet to caprice on the part of their historian.  Though the other districts of Italy produced admirable workmen, the direction given to this art proceeded from Tuscany.  Florence, the metropolis of modern culture, determined the course of the aesthetical Renaissance.  Even at Rimini we cannot account for the carvings in low relief, so fanciful, so delicately wrought, and so profusely scattered over the side chapels of S. Francesco, without the intervention of two Florentines, Bernardo Ciuffagni and Donatello’s pupil Simone; while in the palace of Urbino we trace some hand not unlike that of Mino da Fiesole at work upon the mouldings of door and architrave, cornice and high-built chimney.[110] Not only do we thus find Tuscan craftsmen or their scholars employed on all the great public buildings throughout Italy; but it also happens that, except in Tuscany, the decoration of churches and palaces is not unfrequently anonymous.

This does not, however, interfere with the truth that sculpture, like all the arts, assumed a somewhat different character in each Italian city.  The Venetian stone-carvers leaned from the first to a richer and more passionate style than the Florentine, reproducing the types of Cima’s and Bellini’s paintings.[111] Whole families, like the Bregni—­classes, like the Lombardi—­schools, like that of Alessandro Leopardi, worked together on the monumental sculpture of S. Zanipolo.  In the tombs of the Doges the old Pisan motive of the curtains (first used by Arnolfo di Cambio at Orvieto, and afterwards with grand effect by Giovanni Pisano at Perugia) is expanded into a sumptuous tent-canopy.  Pages and genii and mailed heroes take the place of angels,