With their respective founders, the schools of Rome and Florence may be said to have terminated; at least the mantle of their teacher rested with very unequal inspiration upon the disciples of both. The death of Raphael, in 1520, proved an irremediable loss to the arts, the extent of which never can indeed be known. His pure and natural style, had it been more firmly engrafted by longer life, would probably have delayed, perhaps prevented, the sudden extravagance and mannerism which overspread the united schools of Tuscany and Rome, at the head of which Michael Angelo survived upwards of forty years.
Among the various pursuits of taste, painting alone exhibits this singular fortune, that the noblest and most intellectual of its principles, as also those which speak most directly to sense, and are merely alluring, were invented at the same time, but in different places, and separately practised. It is worthy of remark, also, that in each respect the first inventors remained the most accomplished professors of their own discoveries. While in Rome and Florence, design and expression were receiving their perfection, forming the almost exclusive subjects of study, in Venice, the seductions of coloring, in Lombardy, the illusions of light and shadow, were adding unknown pomp and magic to the art.
The school of Venice, though one of the earliest in Europe to cherish reviving arts, has added little of intellectual or noble to their progressive culture. Here they have never flourished in the genial soil of popular institutions. A haughty and jealous, yet luxurious and unpatriotic aristocracy, converted the arts into instruments of private gratification--instead of turning them to national ornament. Hence sculpture has been little cultivated, architecture more, though in peculiar style, and painting most of all. But while the sacredness of religion, or the manliness of history, has occupied the Italian pencil generally, of the older masters especially, Venice has sent forth her lordly senators, splendid banquets, and naked beauties. From the twelfth century, we have already seen, a movement might be discerned in the arts of Venice. Her school of painting begins to attract notice under Antonello da Messina, who introduced oil colors. The Bellinis carried out his improvements; and as pupils of the youngest, we discover Giorgione and Titian, who, with Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Sebastian del Piombo, Schiavone, and Bassano, were the chief masters of this school.