In the last chapter we have dealt chiefly with innovators and reformers. Whether in art or life, these are not always the most agreeable companions. The charming person is generally a traditionalist, or a tactful profiteer by other men’s discoveries. So the popular favor has ever gone not to the strenuous artists of Masaccio’s type or Castagno’s, but to devotees of the charm of common folk and things, like Fra Filippo Lippi; to masters of pageantry and incident, like Benozzo Gozzoli; or to chroniclers of the festal richness of Florence in her short prime, like Domenico Ghirlandaio. These artists, while by no means giants, are highly representative of their times. They one and all aimed to please, and amply succeeded. Their importance in the history of art is rather slight; in the history of taste, on the contrary, they are very important. And it is from that point of view that we shall do well to consider them. These three masters cover the last two-thirds of the fifteenth century. They exemplify the taste of the new-rich merchants who flourished under the benevolent tyranny of the Medici. Alongside of these gracious and adaptable spirits, struggled the continuers of the realistic reform—Antonio Pollaiuolo, who first systematically studied the anatomy and dynamics of the human form; Andrea Verrocchio, who imbued accuracy and power with grace; Sandro Botticelli, who explored solitary roads of sentiment and wrought out of the ruggedness of the realists strange forms of recondite beauty. At all times we find the endeavor for artistic adaptation running alongside the passion for sheer discovery, and producing its own triumphs. It is this complicated, dual process which makes the richness and continuity of the Early Renaissance. If we compare the seventy-two years between the beginnings of Masaccio, say 1422, and the death of Ghirlandaio, in 1494, with the century and a half preceding, we shall note an extraordinary acceleration both of production and progress. There are no gaps and rests; each generation makes its discoveries and cashes them in. Architecture, sculpture, classical scholarship develop with a whirling rapidity which by no means precludes taste and reflection. In an almost reckless expansion of emotion, experience, and creative activity, Florence keeps her head though she risks losing her soul. And the true harbinger of this intoxicating new life is one who often lost his head and whose soul remains enigmatic, the wayward and fascinating painter-monk, Fra Filippo Lippi.[39] [Illustration: FIG. 102. Filippo Lippi. Madonna in Adoration.—_Berlin._ ]