Henry VII invited Italian
sculptors to England; Louis XII patronized the great Leonardo da Vinci,
and Francis I brought him to France. The tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella
in Spain was fashioned in classic form. The new sculpture was famous in
Germany before Luther; in fact, it was to be found everywhere in
sixteenth-century Europe.
[Sidenote: Painting]
Painting accompanied sculpture. Prior to the sixteenth century, most of
the pictures were painted directly upon the plaster walls of churches
or of sumptuous dwellings and were called frescoes, although a few were
executed on wooden panels. In the sixteenth century, however, easel
paintings--that is, detached pictures on canvas, wood, or other
material--became common. The progress in painting was not so much an
imitation of classical models as was the case with sculpture and
architecture, for the reason that painting, being one of the most
perishable of the arts, had preserved few of its ancient Greek or Roman
examples. But the artists who were interested in architecture and
sculpture were likewise naturally interested in painting; and painting,
bound by fewer antique traditions, reached a higher degree of
perfection in the sixteenth century than did any of its allied arts.
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