but merely the general
shape of the limbs and the general fall of the garments: the anatomical
science and technical processes of Antiquity were being used to produce
the most intensely un-antique, the most intensely mediaeval works. Thus
matters stood in the time of Giotto. His followers, who studied only
arrangement, probably consulted the antique as little as they consulted
nature; but the contemporary sculptors were brought by the very
constitution of their art into close contact both with Nature and with
the antique; they studied both with determination, and handed over the
results of their labours to the sculptor-taught painters of the
fifteenth century.

Here, then, were the two great factors in the art of the
Renaissance--the study of nature, and the study of the Antique: both
understand slowly, imperfectly; the one counteracting the effect of the
other; the study of nature now scaring away all antique influence, the
study of the antique now distorting all imitation of nature; rival
forces confusing the artist and marring the work, until, when each could
receive its due, the one corrected the other, and they combined,
producing by this marriage of the living reality with the dead but
immortal beauty, the great art of Michael Angelo, of Raphael, and of
Titian: double, like its origin, antique and modern, real and ideal.

The study of the antique is thus placed opposite to the study of nature,
the comprehension of the works of Antiquity is the momentary antagonist
of the comprehension of the works of nature. And this may seem strange,
when we consider that antique art was itself due to perfect
comprehension of nature. But the contradiction is easily explained. The
study of nature, as it was carried on in the Renaissance, comprised the
study of effects which had remained unnoticed by Antiquity; and the
study of the statue,--colourless, without light, shade, or perspective,
hampered, and was hampered by, the study of colour, of light and shade,
of perspective, and of all that a generation of painters would seek to
learn from nature. Nor was this all; the influence of the civilization
of the Renaissance, of a civilization directly issued from the Middle
Ages, was entirely at variance with the influence of antique
civilization through the medium of ancient art; the Middle Ages and
Antiquity, Christianity and Paganism, were even more opposed to each
other than could be the statue and the easel picture, the fresco and