What the Vivarini began, the three Bellini,[272] with Crivelli, Carpaccio, Mansueti, Basaiti, Catena, Cima da Conegliano, Bissolo, Cordegliaghi, continued. Bright costumes, distinct and sunny landscapes, broad backgrounds of architecture, large skies, polished armour, gilded cornices, young faces of fisherboys and country girls,[273] grave faces of old men brown with sea-wind and sunlight, withered faces of women hearty in a hale old age, the strong manhood of Venetian senators, the dignity of patrician ladies, the gracefulness of children, the rosy whiteness and amber-coloured tresses of the daughters of the Adriatic and lagoons--these are the source of inspiration to the Venetians of the second period. Mantegna, a few miles distant, at Padua, was working out his ideal of severely classical design. Yet he scarcely touched the manner of the Venetians with his influence, though Gian Bellini was his brother-in-law and pupil, and though his genius, in grasp of matter and in management of composition, soared above his neighbours. Lionardo da Vinci at Milan was perfecting his problems of psychology in painting, offering to the world solutions of the greatest difficulties in the delineation of the spirit by expression. Yet not a trace of Lionardo's subtle play of light and shadow upon thoughtful features can be discerned in the work of the Bellini. For them the mysteries of the inner and the outer world had no attraction. The externals of a full and vivid existence fascinated their imagination. Their poetry and their piety were alike simple and objective. How to depict the world as it is seen--a miracle of varying lights and melting hues, a pageant substantial to the touch and concrete to the eyes, a combination of forms defined by colours more than outlines--was their task. They did not reach their end by anatomy, analysis, and reconstruction. They undertook to paint just what they felt and saw. Very instructive are the wall-pictures of this period, painted not in fresco but on canvas by Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini, for the decoration of the Scuole of S. Ursula and S. Croce.[274] Not only do these bring before us the life of Venice in its manifold reality, but they illustrate the tendency of the Venetian masters to express the actual world, rather than to formulate an ideal of the fancy or to search the secrets of the soul. This realism, if the name can be applied to pictures so poetical as those of Carpaccio, is not, like the Florentine realism, hard and scientific. A natural feeling for grace and a sense of romance inspire the artist, and breathe from every figure that he paints. The type of beauty produced is charming by its negligence and _naïveté_; it is not thought out with pains or toilsomely elaborated.[275]