sm and asceticism, it really restored to humanity the sense of its
own dignity and beauty, and helped to proved the untenability of the
mediaeval standpoint; for art is essentially and uncontrollably free, and,
what is more, is free precisely in that realm of sensuous delightfulness
from which cloistral religion turns aside to seek her own ecstatic liberty
of contemplation.

The first step in the emancipation of the modern mind was taken thus by
art, proclaiming to men the glad tidings of their goodliness and greatness
in a world of manifold enjoyment created for their use. Whatever painting
touched, became by that touch human; piety, at the lure of art, folded her
soaring wings and rested on the genial earth. This the Church had not
foreseen. Because the freedom of the human spirit expressed itself in
painting only under visible images, and not, like heresy, in abstract
sentences; because this art sufficed for Mariolatry and confirmed the cult
of local saints; because its sensuousness was not at variance with a
creed that had been deeply sensualised--the painters were allowed to run
their course unchecked. Then came a second stage in their development of
art. By placing the end of their endeavour in technical excellence and
anatomical accuracy, they began to make representation an object in
itself, independently of its spiritual significance. Next, under the
influence of the classical revival, they brought home again the old powers
of the earth--Aphrodite and Galatea and the Loves, Adonis and Narcissus
and the Graces, Phoebus and Daphne and Aurora, Pan and the Fauns, and the
Nymphs of the woods and the waves.

When these dead deities rose from their sepulchres to sway the hearts of
men in the new age, it was found that something had been taken from their
ancient bloom of innocence, something had been added of emotional
intensity. Italian art recognised their claim to stand beside Madonna and
the Saints in the Pantheon of humane culture; but the painters re-made
them in accordance with the modern spirit. This slight touch of
transformation proved that, though they were no longer objects of
religious devotion, they still preserved a vital meaning for an altered
age. Having personified for the antique world qualities which, though
suppressed and ignored by militant and mediaeval Christianity, were
strictly human, the Hellenic deities still signified those qualities for
modern Europe, now at length re-fortified by contact