them as existing solely in order to demonstrate a scientific problem. But at the time the young painter’s exhibition of skill excited the utmost admiration, and both Daniele Barbaro and Lomazzo praise him as the first artist who opened men’s eyes to the true principles of perspective. If we are to believe Vasari, Squarcione, who till now had been as proud of his pupil’s growing fame as if it were his own, suddenly altered his tone and openly blamed Mantegna for the stony rigidity of his figures, declaring that they were mere copies of marble statues, altogether devoid of life and expression. The reproach, although not wholly undeserved, was a curious one in Squarcione’s lips, but the real cause of the breach which took place between the master and scholar was Andrea’s connection with the rival workshop of Jacopo Bellini. The Venetian painter, with his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni, had lately taken up his abode at Padua, and a strong friendship had sprung up between Mantegna and the members of his family which before long led to the marriage of the young Paduan with Jacopo’s daughter Niccolosia. Their union took place while Mantegna was actually engaged on the Eremitani frescoes—probably about 1454 or 1455, since in 1458 he had already two or three children—and becomes an important fact in art history as strengthening the ties between these distinguished artists. The influence each was to exercise on the other was destined to prove great and lasting. Jacopo Bellini, who had spent some time in Florence, was probably instrumental in leading Mantegna to follow Donatello and Uccelli’s models, while from Giovanni, Andrea would learn the softer colouring and delicate feeling that impart so pure a charm to those well-known Madonnas which fill the churches of Venice. Mantegna, on his part, gave back at least as much as he took, and no one can doubt that Gian Bellini owed to his brother-in-law in a great measure his knowledge of classical architecture and perspective, as well as the sculptural cast of drapery, that distinguish his pictures from those of earlier Venetian masters. In all probability this new influence, rather than Squarcione’s jealous reproaches, was the cause of the marked improvement visible in the later frescoes. The principal figures in the “Execution of St. James” are more life-like; there is less hardness in the modelling and laying on of shadows, while the background, with its winding road and rocky terraces crowned with olive-trees, is an exact copy of a Lombard hill-side. Nothing, indeed, is more striking in these frescoes than the close attention to natural objects, which shows how strongly realistic was the bent of our painter’s genius, in spite of his Squarcionesque training and love of antique statuary. He not only fills his backgrounds with faithful reproductions of Italian landscape and streets, with red roofs, arched loggias, or vine-trellised arbours, but