DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68796#0130
I IO
Mediceval Florence and Her Painters part i
devices, in which sculpture and painting are set to some of
their earliest tasks. Meanwhile the dance, no longer
merely emotional, becomes expressive of ideas ; it is seen
how pose and gesture can become significant as well as
beautiful, and the attempt to make these permanent leads
to the rapid development of the art of sculpture. In
Greece the popular religion made incessant demands for
service from the arts, and as soon as sculpture had forced
the marble and bronze to express character and thought,
religion called for the creation in external form of divine
and heroic types. In no very different spirit did mediaeval
theology press the sister art of painting into her service, and
set it to reproduce the sacred scenes so dear to the pious
hearts of the people ; till finally painting, taught in this way
to be a mirror of human life, went on to reflect clearly and
copiously all the gay and brilliant life of those festal scenes
in which, from the first, art had found its most congenial
atmosphere. Whatever, in a word, were the forms of
artistic expression, they came straight out of the heart of
the people ; and from the flagstaff of the rustic feast to the
solemn temple on the Acropolis, from the gaudily dressed
doll to the austere deity in marble or in bronze, from the
civic procession to the monumental fresco which ennobled
and fixed it for ever, art in every shape was the child of
the community at large.
In the next chapter the arts must be dealt with from
quite another point of view.
Mediceval Florence and Her Painters part i
devices, in which sculpture and painting are set to some of
their earliest tasks. Meanwhile the dance, no longer
merely emotional, becomes expressive of ideas ; it is seen
how pose and gesture can become significant as well as
beautiful, and the attempt to make these permanent leads
to the rapid development of the art of sculpture. In
Greece the popular religion made incessant demands for
service from the arts, and as soon as sculpture had forced
the marble and bronze to express character and thought,
religion called for the creation in external form of divine
and heroic types. In no very different spirit did mediaeval
theology press the sister art of painting into her service, and
set it to reproduce the sacred scenes so dear to the pious
hearts of the people ; till finally painting, taught in this way
to be a mirror of human life, went on to reflect clearly and
copiously all the gay and brilliant life of those festal scenes
in which, from the first, art had found its most congenial
atmosphere. Whatever, in a word, were the forms of
artistic expression, they came straight out of the heart of
the people ; and from the flagstaff of the rustic feast to the
solemn temple on the Acropolis, from the gaudily dressed
doll to the austere deity in marble or in bronze, from the
civic procession to the monumental fresco which ennobled
and fixed it for ever, art in every shape was the child of
the community at large.
In the next chapter the arts must be dealt with from
quite another point of view.