Two fanes were commenced in the thirteenth century near the Tiber, which became conspicuous as shrines equally of Christian devotion and Christian art. The cathedral of Orvieto for two hundred years attracted from all parts of Italy many of the best artificers in sculpture and painting, some of whom, arriving from Umbria, carried back new inspirations to their homes. The sanctuary of St. Francis, at Assisi, coeval with the dawn of Italian art, borrowed its earliest embellishments from Tuscany,[*125] where Giotto and his followers were ingrafting on design two novel ingredients--dramatic composition and allegorical allusion. The former of these elements distinguished the Florentine from contemporary schools, and carried it beyond them in variety and effect, preparing a way for the pictorial power which Raffaele and Michael Angelo perfected. To the inspirations of Dante it owed the latter element, and to the enthusiastic though tardy admiration which his fellow-citizens indulged for his wildly poetical mysticism, may be ascribed the abiding impress of a tendency which not only authorised but encouraged new and varied combinations. The rigid outlines, monotonous conventional movements, and soulless countenances of Byzantium gradually were mellowed into life and beauty; but it is curious to observe how much sooner genius caught the spirit than the form,--how it succeeded in embodying expression long before it could master the more technical difficulties of design, action, and shadow. The credit claimed for Giotto of introducing physiognomical expression is, however, only partially true. Compared with the Greek works, or even with those of his immediate antecedents, Cimabue, Guido, and Margaritone, his heads, indeed, beam with animated intelligence, and feel the movement which he first communicated to his groups. Yet not less was the still and unimpassioned, but deep-seated emotion which the Umbrian painters embodied in their miniatures and panels, an improvement upon the lifeless and angular mechanism of the Byzantine artificers, although these very opposite qualities are generally condemned to the same category of contemptible feebleness by our pretended connoisseurs, glibly discussing masters whose real works they never saw, or are unable from ignorance and prejudice to appreciate. Such a state of art could not, however, remain wedded to a few fixed types. It was inherently one of transition, and necessarily led to a gradual abandonment of the Giottist manner of representation, while it enlarged the principles of composition introduced by Giotto. Beato Angelico, the first Florentine who successfully departed from that style, reawakening the old religious spirit, and embodying in it forms of purity never before or since attained, forsook not wholly the Dantesque spirit. His passing influence yielded to a manner more in unison with the times, which was formed and nearly perfected by Masaccio; but still Dante was not left behind. Luca Signorelli,