In respect to a yet further advance towards the middle of the fifteenth century, we have to lay exceptional stress on two names, Masaccio and Fiesole. In the progressive steps through which the religious content was vividly carried into the living forms of the human figure and the animated expression of human traits Herr von Rumohr[357] draws attention to two essential aspects as of most importance. The one is the increase of rondure in all forms to which it applies; the other he indicates as "a profounder penetration into the articulation, the consistency, the most varied phases of the charm and significance of the features of the human countenance." Masaccio and Angelico da Fiesole between them were the first to contribute effectively to the solution of this artistic problem, the difficulty of which in its entirety exceeded the powers of any one artist of that period. "Masaccio was mainly occupied with the problem of chiaroscuro, and the rounding and effective articulations of groups of figures. Angelico da Fiesole, on the other hand, devoted himself to sounding the depths of ideal coherence, that indwelling significance of human features, the mine of whose treasure he was the first to open to painting[358]." The effort of Masaccio was not so much one in the direction of grace as in that of imposing conception, manliness, and under the instinctive need for unity of the entire composition. The impulse of Fra Angelico was that of religious intensity, a love severed from the world, a cloistral purity of emotion, an exaltation and consecration of the soul. Vasari assures us in his account of him that he never commenced work without prayer, and never depicted the sufferings of the Redeemer without bursting into tears[359]. We have, then as aspects of this advance of painting a more exalted vitality and realism: but, on the other hand, the depth of piety, the ingenuous devotion of the soul in its faith overran itself and overpowered the freedom, dexterity, naturalism, and beauty of the composition, pose, drapery, and colour. If the later development was able to attain to a far more exalted and complete expression of the spiritual consciousness, yet the epoch we are now considering has never been surpassed in purity and innocence of religious feeling and serious depth of conception. Many pictures of this time may very well, by reason of the fact that the forms of life, which are used to depict the religious intensity of soul-life, do not appear fully adequate to this expression, give us something like a repulse; from the point of view, however, of spiritual emotion, which is the most vital source of these works of art, we have still less reason to fail to acknowledge the naive purity, the intimacy with the most profound depths of the truly religious content, the assuredness of faithful love even under oppression and in grief, and oft, too, the charm of innocence and blessedness, inasmuch as the epochs that