DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68796#0112
92
Mediceval Florence and Her Painters part i
features of the life about them. The characteristics of Greek
and mediaeval religion were also factors of moment. In
each there was a lofty conception of the Divine Personality,
and, besides this, a recognition of various subsidiary beings
-—in Greece, gods, heroes, nymphs etc., in the mediaeval
world, saints and angels. Where Greek religion broke
down was in the fact that it provided so little for the gods
to do. They could engage with dignity in the great contest
of Hellas against the non-Hellenic, but this, as we have seen,
did not admit of much variety in presentation. So far as
their private performances and adventures went, these were
as a rule of the most silly or disreputable kind, and excited
the indignation of the more earnest thinkers of the people.1
Archaic art represented these freely, but when sculpture
came to its maturity, they were discarded as derogatory to
the dignity of the divine nature, which monumental statuary
strove ever to exalt. Thus on the ancient works of decora-
tive art known as the ‘ Chest of Cypselus ’ and the ‘ Throne
of Apollo at Amyclae ’ described by Pausanias,2 there were
depicted all sorts of picturesque incidents of mythology
which never occur in the monumental sculpture of the great
period. There the divine beings are represented either in
the one great contest or else in the perfect calm that comes
when all strife is lulled. Such was the ideal of the divine
nature conveyed by a characteristic passage in Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics? as that of a Being enshrined in
absolute perfection, needing nothing, doing nothing, and
active only in a certain 1 energy of contemplation.’ Accord-
ing to the Christian scheme, on the other hand, the Divine
1 The philosopher Xenophanes remarked that the poets made the
gods indulge in all the actions which men regarded as most disgraceful,
in theft, adultery and fraud.—Ritter and Preller, Hist. Phil. Gr. et
Rom. § 132.
2 Descript. Gracia, v. 17, 5 and iii. 18, 9. 3 x. 8, 7.
Mediceval Florence and Her Painters part i
features of the life about them. The characteristics of Greek
and mediaeval religion were also factors of moment. In
each there was a lofty conception of the Divine Personality,
and, besides this, a recognition of various subsidiary beings
-—in Greece, gods, heroes, nymphs etc., in the mediaeval
world, saints and angels. Where Greek religion broke
down was in the fact that it provided so little for the gods
to do. They could engage with dignity in the great contest
of Hellas against the non-Hellenic, but this, as we have seen,
did not admit of much variety in presentation. So far as
their private performances and adventures went, these were
as a rule of the most silly or disreputable kind, and excited
the indignation of the more earnest thinkers of the people.1
Archaic art represented these freely, but when sculpture
came to its maturity, they were discarded as derogatory to
the dignity of the divine nature, which monumental statuary
strove ever to exalt. Thus on the ancient works of decora-
tive art known as the ‘ Chest of Cypselus ’ and the ‘ Throne
of Apollo at Amyclae ’ described by Pausanias,2 there were
depicted all sorts of picturesque incidents of mythology
which never occur in the monumental sculpture of the great
period. There the divine beings are represented either in
the one great contest or else in the perfect calm that comes
when all strife is lulled. Such was the ideal of the divine
nature conveyed by a characteristic passage in Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics? as that of a Being enshrined in
absolute perfection, needing nothing, doing nothing, and
active only in a certain 1 energy of contemplation.’ Accord-
ing to the Christian scheme, on the other hand, the Divine
1 The philosopher Xenophanes remarked that the poets made the
gods indulge in all the actions which men regarded as most disgraceful,
in theft, adultery and fraud.—Ritter and Preller, Hist. Phil. Gr. et
Rom. § 132.
2 Descript. Gracia, v. 17, 5 and iii. 18, 9. 3 x. 8, 7.