The Umbrian art, of which we have attempted to trace the origin, has not hitherto met with the notice which it merits. Lanzi allowed it no separate place among the fourteen schools under which he has arranged Italian painting, and, by scattering its most important names, has lost sight of certain characteristics which, rather than any common education, link its masters together. Nor was this omission wonderful, for the Umbrian painters and their works were dispersed over many towns and villages, none of which could be considered the head-quarters of a school, and to visit these distant localities would have been a task of difficulty and disappointment. The patronage of princes and communities seems to have been sparingly bestowed in that mountain-land. Assisi, adorned by many Florentine strangers, was mother rather than nurse of its native art, and other religious houses wanted the means or the spirit to follow her brilliant example. Hence the comparatively few opportunities afforded to the Christian painters of Umbria of executing great works in fresco, the peculiar vehicle of pictorial grandeur; and alas! of these few, a considerable proportion has been lost to us under the barbarism of whitewash.[122] The revival of feeling for religious art, of late commenced by the Germans, and their persevering zeal in illustrating its neglected monuments, have established the existence of an Umbrian school in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; but its history remains to be written.[*123] The task would carry us too far from the leading subject of these volumes, yet we shall endeavour in a few pages to sketch its development, from the dreamy anchorites whose rude pencils embodied the visions of their favourite St. Francis, to Raffaele, whose high mission it was to perfect devotional painting,[*124] apart from the alloy of human passions, and to withstand for a time that influx of pagan and naturalist corruptions, which after his premature death overwhelmed it. [Footnote 122: In 1843, I saw fragments of fine frescoes in two churches at Cagli which had just been cleared of this abomination; and I was assured that the small church of Monte l'Abbate near Pesaro has but recently been subjected to it, by order of its ignorant curate. The abbey church of Pietra Pertusa at the Furlo is another of many similar instances.] [Footnote *123: It still remains to be written; but see the Essay of BERENSON, _Central Italian Painting_ (Putnams, 1904), and the valuable list of pictures appended to it.] [Footnote *124: This is an example of the taste of our fathers, almost inexplicable to-day. To consider Raffaele as a greater "devotional" painter than Duccio, Simone Martini, Fra Angelico, Sassetta, or Perugino might almost seem impossible.]