Before these masters appeared, and before the influence we are about to refer to was felt in Europe, some efforts were made by unassisted genius to rise beyond the conventionalities of the time; in the latter half of the thirteenth century, Cimabue already surpassed his modern Greek preceptors; and his disciple Giotto was considered so natural and original, that his style could not be referred to any existing school, but was called the maniera di Giotto.  ’Instead of the harsh outline,’ says Vasari, ’circumscribing the whole figure, the glaring eyes, the pointed hands and feet, and all the defects arising from a total want of shadow, the figures of Giotto exhibit a better attitude; the heads have an air of life and freedom, the drapery is more natural, and there are even some attempts at fore-shortening the limbs.’  All this, however, although a decided improvement on mediaeval art, was rude and imperfect—­it was only the first faint dawn of a better light.  ‘As yet,’ to use the words of Roscoe, ’the characters rarely excelled the daily prototypes of common life; and their forms, although at times sufficiently accurate, were often vulgar and heavy....  To everything great and elevated, the art was yet a stranger:  even the celebrated picture of Pollajuolo exhibits only a group of half-naked and vulgar wretches, discharging their arrows at a miserable fellow-creature, who, by changing places with one of his murderers, might with equal propriety become a murderer himself.’

But the time at length came when that stimulus was to be communicated to taste which sent a thrill throughout the general heart of Europe.  The pictures of the old Greeks were lost for ever, dead and gone; but their statues were only buried—­buried alive—­and now, at the command of wealth and genius, they were dug out of their tomb of ages, and came forth, unharmed, in their enchanted life and immortal beauty.  Yes, unharmed; for in the head, the torso, the limb, the hand, the finger, the same principle of life existed as in the entire figure; and, owing to the sublime law of proportion, which bound all together, the minutest fragment indicated a perfect whole.  The palace of Lorenzo de Medici was the assembling-place, and the ideal beauty of the Greeks found a new shrine in the groves of Florence.  These became a true academia, where genius studied and taught, and where the presiding spirit of the place was Michael Angelo Buonarotti,[A] the sculptor—­painter—­architect—­poet, whose universal mind appeared to fit him, not so much to shine in any one department—­although shine he did in all—­as to give an impetus to the whole Revival.  But Michael Angelo, as a painter, excelled chiefly in design; while one who was his contemporary, and being a few years later in the field, has been supposed by some to be his imitator, was the painter par excellence of the new era—­the first great painter of the moderns.  This was Raphael.  He was the pupil of Perugino; and while such, contented himself