] glowed with
the finest forms of Greek sculpture, resuscitated from the tombs of
ages to inspire newer artists to perfection, but alas! also to debase
the aim of purely Christian art.
Baccio's calm devotional mind no doubt disliked the turmoil of this
garden, crowded with spirited youths; the tone of pagan art was not in
accordance with his ideal, and so he learned from Masaccio and Lippi
that love of true form and harmonious composition, which he perfected
afterwards by a close study of Leonardo da Vinci, whose principles of
_chiaroscuro_ he seems to have completely carried out. With this
training he rose to such great celebrity even in his early manhood,
that Rosini [Footnote: Rosini, _Storia della Pittura_, chap. xvii.
p. 48.] calls him "the star of the Florentine school in Leonardo and
Michelangelo's absence," and he attained a grandeur almost equal to the
latter, in the S. Mark and SS. Peter and Paul of his later years.
Meanwhile Mariotto was revelling in the Eden of art, drawing daily
beneath the Loggie--where the orange-trees grew close to the pillars--
from the exquisite statues and "torsi," peopling the shades with white
forms, or copying cartoons by the older masters, which hung against the
walls.
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