For a moment, indeed, Padua and Mantegna quite efface Venice in interest. For ten years before this lucky marriage, Padua had been the scene of intense artistic activity. Donatello, the most powerful realist sculptor of Florence, was at work on the bronze reliefs for the altar of Sant’ Antonio, and on the Gattamelata statue. He gave young Mantegna a strong impulse in the direction of constructive realism. Such Florentine realists as Paolo Uccello and Fra Filippo Lippi were also transient visitors at this time. And Padua, ever an academic city, saw the first systematic art school started by a shrewd and able master, Francesco Squarcione. Squarcione collected Roman marbles and bronzes, concerned himself with the new mysteries of perspective, foreshortening and precise anatomy. He made his students acquire a line with the resiliency of bronze. He made them copy minutely veined marbles and sculptured reliefs. He insisted that every picture should have garlands of laurel mixed with vegetables and fruits. The whole surface had to be brought to the lustrous surface of an enamel. Severe teaching usually attracts good pupils. So it was in Squarcione’s case; he had scores of pupils from all of the Venetic region and even from Dalmatia beyond the Adriatic. He was too sensible to paint much himself; it didn’t pay so successful a teacher. So the few pictures ascribed to him are either of small importance or of dubious authenticity. But his stamp is on all his pupils. What his teaching meant may be grasped in early Mantegna and even better in a painter who never emancipated himself—Carlo Crivelli, of Venice, “Eques Aureatus.” [Illustration: FIG. 214. Carlo Crivelli. Madonna. Angels bearing Symbols of the Passion.—_Verona._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 215. Carlo Crivelli. Pietà.—_Boston._ ]