also,
content with the coloured aspects and visionary shapes of things; the
other seeking their form and substance. And, as I said, the school of
knowledge, seeking light, perceives, and has to accept and deal with
obscurity: and seeking form, it has to accept and deal with
formlessness, or death.

Farther, the school of colour in Europe, using the word Gothic in its
broadest sense, is essentially Gothic _Christian_; and full of comfort
and peace. Again, the school of light is essentially Greek, and full of
sorrow. I cannot tell you which is right, or least wrong. I tell you
only what I know--this vital distinction between them: the Gothic or
colour school is always cheerful, the Greek always oppressed by the
shadow of death; and the stronger its masters are, the closer that body
of death grips them. The strongest whose work I can show you in recent
periods is Holbein; next to him is Lionardo; and then Duerer: but of the
three Holbein is the strongest, and with his help I will put the two
schools in their full character before you in a moment.

150. Here is, first, the photograph of an entirely characteristic piece
of the great colour school. It is by Cima of Conegliano, a mountaineer,
like Luini, born under the Alps of Friuli. His Christian name was John
Baptist: he is here painting his name-Saint; the whole picture full of
peace, and intense faith and hope, and deep joy in light of sky, and
fruit and flower and weed of earth. It was painted for the church of Our
Lady of the Garden at Venice, La Madonna dell' Orto (properly Madonna of
the _Kitchen_ Garden), and it is full of simple flowers, and has the
wild strawberry of Cima's native mountains gleaming through the grass.

Beside it I will put a piece of the strongest work of the school of
light and shade--strongest because Holbein was a colourist also; but he
belongs, nevertheless, essentially to the chiaroscuro school. You know
that his name is connected, in ideal work, chiefly with his "Dance of
Death." I will not show you any of the terror of that; only a photograph
of his well-known "Dead Christ." It will at once show you how completely
the Christian art of this school is oppressed by its veracity, and
forced to see what is fearful, even in what it most trusts.

You may think I am showing you contrasts merely to fit my theories. But
there is Duerer's "Knight and Death," his greatest plate; and if I had
Lionardo's "Medusa" here, which he painted when only a b