RENAISSANCE AND MANNERISM C. 142O-C. l6oO
climate was clear, keen and salutary, and the people's minds clear,
keen and proud, it was here that the clear, proud and worldly spirit
of Roman Antiquity could be rediscovered, that its contrast with
Christian faith did not bar its way, that its attitude to physical
beauty in the fine arts and beauty of proportion in architecture
found an echo, that its grandeur and its humanity were understood.
The fragments of the Roman past in art and literature had been there
all the time, and had never been entirely forgotten. But only the
I4th century reached a point that made a cult of the Antique possible.
Petrarch—the first Poet Laureate of modern times, crowned on the
Capitol in 1341—was a Tuscan; so was Boccaccio, so was Leonardo
Bruni who translated Plato. And as the Medici honoured the philoso-
phers and called them into their innermost circle, as they honoured
the poets and wrote poetry themselves, so they regarded the artists
in a spirit quite different from that of the Middle Ages. The modern
conception of the artist and the respect due to his genius is again of
Tuscan origin.
Seven years before Petrarch was crowned in Rome, the civic
authorities responsible for the appointment of a new master-mason
to the cathedral and city of Florence decided to elect Giotto, the
painter, because they were convinced that the city architect should
be "a famous man" above all. So for the sole reason that they be-
lieved that "in the whole world no one better could be found in this
and many other things" than Giotto, they chose him, although he
was not a mason at all. Now this marks the beginning of a new
period in the professional history of architecture, just as Petrarch's
crowning marks a new period in the history of the social status of
authors. Henceforth—this is especially characteristic of the Renais-
sance—great architects were not usually architects by training. And
henceforth great artists were honoured and admitted into positions
outside their craft simply because they were great artists. Cosimo
Medici is probably the first who called a painter, in recognition of
his genius, divine. Later this became the attribute universally given
to Michelangelo. And he, sculptor, painter and architect, a fanatical
worker and a man who never spared himself, was deeply convinced
that it was his due. When he felt slighted by some of the pope's
servants in an ante-room of the Vatican, he fled from Rome, desert-
ing his post without hesitation and leaving a message that the pope
could look for him elsewhere, if he wanted him. Leonardo da Vinci
at the time when this happened evolved the theory of the ideal nature
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