“The city of Florence when her liberty was lost was full of such sorrow, of such terror, of such confusion, that it can hardly be described or even imagined.... The nobles were indignant among themselves and inwardly resented being scorned and vilified by the lowest classes; the plebeians in extreme need, would not refrain at least from relieving their minds about the nobility; the rich, how they could manage not to lose their property; the poor, day and night, what they should do not to die utterly and of famine; the citizens were dismayed and desperate, because they had spent and lost a lot: the peasants, much more, because there remained for them nothing at all; the priests were ashamed of having deceived the laity; the laity grieved at having believed the priests; men had become extraordinarily suspicious and covetous; women immeasurably incredulous and distrustful: finally, every one with lowered face and staring eyes, seemed beside himself, and all without exception pallid and bewildered feared at all times every sort of ill.” From such a shell-shocked community as this, no serene or noble art was to be expected. It was much that Florence in bondage still could nurture the exquisitely morbid art of a Pontormo and the aristocratic detachment and _finesse_ of a Bronzino. [Illustration: FIG. 207. Giovanni Bellini. St. Francis receiving the Stigmata.—_H. C. Frick Coll., New York._ ] CHAPTER VII VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN On the splendor of Venice—Italo-Byzantine painters of the 14th Century—Paduan, Veronese, and Umbrian Painters at Venice—Jacopo Bellini—Squarcione’s school at Padua, Carlo Crivelli—Andrea Mantegna, mentor for Northern Italy—Antonello da Messina’s Realism—The flowering of the old Narrative School in Gentile Bellino—Giovanni Bellini—The backward Vivarini—Carpaccio and the end of the old Narrative Style—Literary background of Giorgione’s Art—Giorgione of Castelfranco.