From the crowd[142] of obscure contemporary artists, which the neighbouring Vicenza produced, the name of Marcello, or as Ridolfi calls him Gio. Battista Figolino, deserves to be distinguished: a man of original manner, whose companion, in variety of character, intelligence of keeping, landscape, perspective, ornament, and exquisite finish, will not easily be discovered at Venice, or elsewhere in the State, at that period; and were it certain that he was anterior to the two Bellini, sufficiently eminent to claim the honours of an epoch in the history of Art: in proof of which Vicenza may still produce his Epiphany in the church of St. Bartolommeo. But the man who had the most extensive influence on Art, if not as the first artist, as the first and most frequented teacher, was Francesco Squarcione,[143] of Padova; in whose numerous school perhaps originated that eclectic principle which characterised part of the Adriatic and all the Lombard schools. Opulent and curious, he not only designed what ancient art offered in Italy, but passed over to Greece, visited many an isle of the Archipelago in quest of monuments, and on his return to Padova formed, from what he had collected, by copy or by purchase, of statues, basso-relievos, torsos, fragments, and cinerary urns, the most ample museum of the time, and a school in which he counted upwards of 150 students, and among them Andrea Mantegna, Marco Zoppo, Girolamo Schiavone, Jacopo Bellini. Of Squarcione, more useful by precept than by example, little remains, and of that little, perhaps, not all his own. From the variety of manner observable in what is attributed to him, it may be suspected that he too often divided his commissions among his scholars; such as some stories of St. Francis, in a cloister of his church, and the miniatures of the Antifonario in the temple della Misericordia, attributed by the vulgar to Mantegna. Only one indisputably genuine, though retouched work of his, is mentioned by Lanzi; which, in various compartments, represents different saints, subscribed 'Francesco Squarcione,' and conspicuous for felicity of colour, expression, and perspective. These outlines of the infancy of Venetian art show it little different from that of the other schools hitherto described; slowly emerging from barbarity, and still too much busied with the elements to think of elegance and ornament. Even then, indeed, canvass instead of panels was used by the Venetian painters; but their general vehicle was, a tempera, prepared water-colour: a method approaching the breadth of fresco, and friendly to the preservation of tints, which even now retain their virgin purity; but unfriendly to union and mellowness. It was reserved for the real epoch of oil-painting to develope the Venetian character, display its varieties, and to establish its peculiar prerogative.