So far indeed did the latter of these carry enthusiastic mysticism, that he never resumed his labours without purifying his imagination and sanctifying his thoughts by a vigil of austere fasting, and by taking the blessed sacrament in the morning. In like manner did one of his comrades gain the appellation of Simon of the crucifixes. A century later, Gentile Bellini painted three of his noblest works for a confraternity in Venice, who possessed a relic of the True Cross, and chose for his subject various miracles ascribed to its influence. Refusing all remuneration, he affixed this touching record of his pious motives: "The work of Gentile Bellini, a knight of Venice, instigated by affection for the Cross, 1496." Similar anecdotes might be quoted of Giovanni da Fiesole, better known in Italy as Beato Angelico, whose life and pencil may well be termed seraphic, and to whom we shall again have occasion to allude; while parallel cases of a later date are found in Spain, where religion, and religious fervour, influenced by the self-mortification of dark fanatics and dismal ascetics, generally assumed less attractive forms. A Christian ideal was thus the aim of the early masters; and most surviving works of the Umbrian and Sienese schools carry in themselves ample evidence of intensely serious sentiment animating their authors. But to those who have not enjoyed opportunities of observing this peculiar characteristic of a style of art almost unknown in England, it may be acceptable to trace the same spirit in a language legible by eyes unaccustomed to the delicacies of pictorial expression. This confirmation is found in the rules adopted by guilds of painters, incorporated in different towns of Italy, which are upon this point more important, as proving how entirely devotional feeling was systematised, instead of being left to the accident of individual inspiration. The statutes of the Sienese fraternity, confirmed in 1357, are thus prefaced: "Let the beginning, middle, and end of our words and actions be in the name of God Almighty, and of his Mother, our Lady the Virgin Mary! Whereas we, by the grace of God, being those who make manifest to rude and unlettered men the marvellous things effected by, and in virtue of, our holy faith; and our creed consisting chiefly in the worship and belief of one God in Trinity, and of God omnipotent, omniscient, and infinite in love and compassion; and as nothing, however unimportant, can have beginning or end without these three necessary ingredients, power, knowledge, and right good-will; and as in God only consists all high perfection; let us therefore anxiously invoke the aid of divine grace, in order that we may attain to a good beginning and ending of all our undertakings, whether of word or work, prefacing all in the name and to the honour of the MOST HOLY TRINITY. And since spiritual things are, and should be, far preferable and more precious than temporal, let us commence by regulating the fête