And it is not surprising that the
little Umbrian hill-city should have become a special home for this
particular branch of art; for it contains some of the most remarkable
works of the kind extant, the product of some of the most renowned
masters of the craft in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a
mistake to suppose, as many persons do, that the fine works of this kind
which we still admire were the product of men who were considered in
their day as mere artisans, and whose names were not known beyond the
boundaries of their native provinces. They were recognized as true
artists, whose names were known from one end of the Peninsula to the
other, and who were sent for from distant cities to execute works of
importance. In many cases their names have perished: in more they are
unknown to the present generation of art-lovers--_caruerunt quia vate
sacro_. And in some cases--as a very notable instance, to be mentioned
presently, will show in a remarkable manner--the higher portion of the
merit which was wholly their own--the conception of their designs, with
all the grace of fancy and cultured knowledge of the principles of the
beautiful which it implies--has been assigned to others to whom the
modern world has exclusively given the title of artists. But the
increased and still increasing attention which the world is paying to
all the details and all the branches of cinque-cento art--to good
purpose, for it is due to it that we have emerged or are emerging from
the eighteenth-century depths of ugliness in all our surroundings--has
induced the useful Dryasdusts, whose nature and function it is to burrow
in corporation and conventual muniment-rooms and the like promising
covers, to search out with a very considerable degree of success a mass
of facts, not only as to the real authorship of the work in question,
but curiously illustrative of the status these artists held and the
manner in which they lived and worked.
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