[23] With the pictures of Venice, those of many neighbouring towns--Brescia, Bergamo, Treviso, and Verona--are associated. All these local schools have certain peculiarities of their own, and some of them are well represented here. Nowhere, for instance, out of Brescia itself can the Brescian School be so well studied as in the National Gallery. But above these local peculiarities there are common characteristics in the work of all these schools which they share with that of Venice. It is only these common characteristics that can here be noticed. (Some interesting remarks by Dr. Richter, on the independence of the Veronese School, will be found in _The Art Journal_, February 1895.) [24] It should, however, be remembered that "before the Venetian School of painting had got much beyond a lisp, Venetian artists were already expressing themselves strikingly and beautifully in _stone_, in architectural and sculptural works" (see Morelli's _German Galleries_, p. 5). [25] Now ascribed, however, to Catena. THE PADUAN SCHOOL "Padovani gran dottori" (the Paduans are great scholars) _Italian Proverb._ Padua, more than any other Italian city, was the home of the classical Renaissance in painting. It was at Padua, that is to say, that the principles which governed classical art were first and most distinctly applied to painting. The founder of this learned Paduan school[26] was Squarcione (1394-1474). He had travelled in Italy and Greece, and the school which he set up in Padua on his return--filled with models and casts from the antique--enjoyed in its day such a reputation that travelling princes and great lords used to honour it with their visits. It was the influence of ancient sculpture that gave the Paduan School its characteristics. Squarcione was pre-eminently a teacher of the learned science of linear perspective; and the study of antique sculpture led his pupils to define all their forms severely and sharply. "In truth," says Layard, "the peculiarity of this school consists in a style of conception and treatment more plastic than pictorial." This characteristic of the school is pointed out below under some of Mantegna's pictures, but is seen best of all in Gregorio Schiavone (see especially 630). A second mark of the classical learning of the school may be observed in the choice of antique embellishments, of bas-reliefs and festoons of fruits in the accessories. For a third and crowning characteristic of the school--the repose and self-control of classical art--the reader is referred to the remarks under Mantegna's pictures. With Mantegna the school of Padua reached its consummation. Crivelli's pictures are hung with those of the Paduan school, for he too is believed to have been a pupil of Squarcione. But after Mantegna the learning of Padua must be traced not in native painters, but in its influence on other schools. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: