The works of the fifteenth century are very numerous; they crowd the churches of Rome, Florence, and the neighboring cities. Not only in Tuscany, but in Upper and Lower Italy these artists were employed, and many native artists, imitators of the school, have left sculptures on the tombs and in the churches of Venice, Naples, and Como. The subjects of artistic effort, it will be noticed, are nearly always religious. Lübke says of this period: “It was chiefly devoted to the ornamentation of tomb-monuments and altars, which, with few exceptions, were built up against the wall in the shape of a triumphal arch, and required much plastic decoration in the way of reliefs and detached figures. Pulpits, founts, holy-water basins, singing-galleries, and choir-screens were also adorned with rich carvings. This abundant supply of work necessarily called forth a corresponding amount of skill, and the nature of the subject helped the artistic and realistic taste of the time to express itself. There was a decided effort to attain a correct likeness in portrait-statues of the dead, and in the numerous reliefs there was a tendency to portray the varied scenes of life.” But a new form of plastic art was to appear in the coming century. To quote from the same author: “Italian plastic art had during the fifteenth century gained a new form from the study of the antique, and had made considerable advances in the unceasing effort after truth and life.… But hitherto, the expression of an often severe and tasteless realism was predominant, and now, under the influence of a profound and repeated study of the antique, an inspiration toward the ideal, the beautiful, and the sublime, was to assert itself; and this gave rise to a higher and freer style.… Plastic art gained a freer and nobler comprehension, a broad, bold treatment of forms, and a style simplified so as to bring out what was fundamental and essential, which might, for a moment, compete with the antique.” Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first in the list of masters of the fifteenth century, but, unfortunately, we have lost his best work. Andrea Contucci, better known as Sansovino, executed many sculptures which are unparalleled in beauty of treatment and form. In the baptistery at Florence is one of the noblest of these—the baptism of Christ. The figures of John the Baptist and Christ are life-like, free, and perfectly developed. There is nothing more interesting among what Sansovino has left than the decorations of the Holy House of Loreto. “Taken as a whole, this work is probably the most important collective creation in the sculpture of this golden age.” There are a great number of reliefs employed in the ornamentation, and the niches are filled by single statues; of the former the Annunciation and the Nativity are the most important.