Out of Greek
religion, under happy conditions, arises Greek art, to minister to
human culture. It was the privilege of Greek religion to be able
to transform itself into an artistic ideal.
For the thoughts of the Greeks about themselves, and their
relation to the world generally, were ever in the happiest
readiness to be transformed into objects for the senses. In this
lies the main distinction between Greek art and the mystical art of
the Christian middle age, which is always struggling to express
thoughts beyond itself. Take, for instance, a characteristic work
of the middle age, Angelico's Coronation of the Virgin, in the
cloister of Saint Mark's at Florence. In some strange halo of a
moon Jesus and the Virgin Mother are seated, clad in mystical
white raiment, half shroud, half priestly linen. Jesus, with rosy
nimbus and the long pale hair--tanquam lana alba et tanquam
nix--of the figure in the Apocalypse, with slender finger-tips is
setting a crown of pearl on the head of Mary, who, [205] corpse-
like in her refinement, is bending forward to receive it, the light
lying like snow upon her forehead. Certainly, it cannot be said of
Angelico's fresco that it throws into a sensible form our highest
thoughts about man and his relation to the world; but it did not do
this adequately even for Angelico. For him, all that is outward or
sensible in his work--the hair like wool, the rosy nimbus, the
crown of pearl--is only the symbol or type of a really
inexpressible world, to which he wishes to direct the thoughts; he
would have shrunk from the notion that what the eye
apprehended was all.
Pages:
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212