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 Christ and the Virgin Mary are sitting, clad
in mystical white raiment, half shroud, half priestly linen. Our Lord,
with rosy nimbus and the long pale hair--tanquam lana alba et tanquam
nix--of the figure in the Apocalypse, sets with slender finger-tips a
crown of pearl on the head of his mother, who, corpse-like in her
refinement, is bending forward to receive it, the light lying like snow
upon her forehead.
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