Of course there always had been fresco-painting, and here the method was quite different, for the colour had to be applied swiftly and once for all to the wet plaster. Here the technique was direct and instantaneous, quite unlike that of panel painting, and though it was no more adaptable to the vagaries of temperamental expression, it opened up new possibilities of which painters were always trying to take advantage. Giotto himself, being the greatest master of this particular mode, was always working along these lines, and later Velasquez combined them with the possibilities inherent in the development of underpainting as a thing final in itself, without the laborious and studied glazing of successive coats of pure colour. The art of painting was never a rigid and immobile system; every painter was striving for new methods and new developments, and frequently finding them; in the end, as the old artistic sense died away, virtuosity took its place, and this found its opportunity through the elimination of all the old elements of craftsmanship and a development of the qualities of breadth and swiftness inherent in fresco-painting, together with the dash and bravura that offered themselves through the clever manipulation of the thick and solid and suave material of the old underpainting. In a word, the tendency was toward combining drawing, modelling, and colour in one process, obtaining final effects in one operation; and while this meant a possible slouching of drawing, a substitution of surprise and bravado for consistent modelling, a loss of all depth and resonance of colour, and the putting of a premium on such quite unimportant (and sometimes vicious) matters as dashing brush work, it must be admitted it did permit “temperament” to express itself with a swiftness and mobility impossible before, granting always that this is desirable.