ment of the greatest
ages of Egypt, Crete, and Greece.

II

GREATNESS AND DECLINE

Having glanced at the beginnings of Christian art, we must not linger
over the history of Byzantine. Eastern traders and artisans, pushing
into Western Europe from the Adriatic and along the valley of the Rhone,
carried with them the ferment. Monks driven out of the East by the
iconoclast persecutions found Western Europe Christian and left it
religious. The strength of the movement in Europe between 500 and 900 is
commonly under-rated. That is partly because its extant monuments are
not obvious. Buildings are the things to catch the eye, and, outside
Ravenna, there is comparatively little Christian architecture of this
period. Also the cultivated, spoon-fed art of the renaissance court of
Charlemagne is too often allowed to misrepresent one age and disgust
another. Of course the bulk of those opulent knick-knacks manufactured
for the Carolingian and Ottonian Emperors, and now to be seen at Aachen,
are as beastly as anything else that is made simply to be precious. They
reflect German taste at its worst; and, in tracing the line, or
estimating the value, of the Christian slope it is prudent to overlook
even the best of Teutonic effort.[11] For the bulk of it is not
primitive or mediaeval or renaissance art, but German art. At any rate
it is a manifestation of national character rather than of aesthetic
inspiration. Most aesthetic creation bears the mark of nationality; very
few manifestations of German nationality bear a trace of aesthetic
creation. The differences between the treasures of Aachen, early German
architecture, fifteenth-century German sculpture, and the work produced
to-day at Munich are superficial. Almost all is profoundly German, and
nothing else. That is to say, it is conscientious, rightly intentioned,
excessively able, and lacking in just that which distinguishes a work of
art from everything else in the world. The inspiration and sensibility
of the dark ages can be felt most surely and most easily in the works of
minor art produced in France and Italy.[12] In Italy, however, there is
enough architecture to prove up to the hilt, were further proof
required, that the spirit was vigorous. It is the age of what Sig.
Rivoira calls Pre-Lombardic Architecture--Italian Byzantine: it is the
age of the Byzantine school of painting at Rome.[13]

What the "Barbarians" did, indirectly, for art cannot be over-estimated.