FRUIT IN GARLANDS 273 



seem, like the rose gardens of Florence, to be 

 partly votive. They wished to give of their 

 best, and the cool fruit which came in high- 

 piled boats to the gardenless city among the 

 lagoons seemed infinitely precious to them — 

 more precious, for they were a practical race of 

 traders, than the fragile blossoms of ephemeral 

 flowers. Besides, except for pinks, which, 

 judging from various pictures, grew then as now 

 in pots along the balconies, flowers to serve as 

 models were rare in Venice. 



Garlands of fruit, excellently modelled but 

 somewhat wanting in softness and bloom, are 

 especially remarkable in the work of the pupils 

 of Squarcione, who taught in Padua during the 

 last half of the fifteenth century. This famous 

 School of Art is known to have been well 

 furnished with ancient marbles of Greek and 

 Roman origin, and it is to be supposed that there 

 the pupils acquired a love for the classical 

 festooned wreath. Mantegna's wreaths, and 

 those in the earlier work of Crivelli, are firmly 

 bound and formal. But later, Crivelli laid 

 classicism aside, painting fruit with a freedom 

 and profusion which is quite his own, though 



