A History of Italian Painting

A History of Italian Painting is by Frank Jewett Mather, Professor of Art and Archaeology in Princeton University. The preface says the book has grown out of lectures which were delivered at the Cleveland Art Museum, where the writer had ideal hearers, beginners who wanted to learn and were willing to follow a serious discussion. The text says that Sebastiano del Piombo was born at Venice in 1487 and, like most of his generation, emulated the smouldering harmonies of Giorgione.

The text says the placing of the head of the serpent between the tree and the figures is a perfect example of the new art of aerial perspective, and that no painter but Masaccio had even the notion of such an effect at this moment. The text says that old Gentile, after 1500, being in the seventies and ailing, acquired the ominous habit of frequently making and unmaking wills, and that his last one left to his vigorous brother, Giovanni, the precious paternal sketch books.