[3]
    All Thy strength and bloom are faded: 
    Who hath thus Thy state degraded? 
    Death upon Thy form is written;
    See the wan worn limbs, the smitten
        Breast upon the cruel tree!

    Thus despised and desecrated,
    Thus in dying desolated,
    Slain for me, of sinners vilest,
    Loving Lord, on me Thou smilest: 
        Shine, bright face, and strengthen me!

[4] I am aware that many of my readers will demur that I am confounding Christianity with ascetic or monastic Christianity; yet I cannot read the New Testament, the Imitatio Christi, the Confessions of S. Augustine, and the Pilgrim’s Progress without feeling that Christianity in its origin, and as understood by its chief champions, was and is ascetic.  Of this Christianity I therefore speak, not of the philosophised Christianity, which is reasonably regarded with suspicion by the orthodox and the uncompromising.  It was, moreover, with Christianity of this primitive type that the arts came first into collision.

[5] Titian’s “Assumption of the Virgin” at Venice, Correggio’s “Coronation of the Virgin” at Parma.

[6] Domenichino, Guido, Ribera, Salvator Rosa.

[7] Not to quote again the Imitatio Christi, it is enough to allude to S. Francis as shown in the Fioretti.

[8] The difficulty of combining the true spirit of piety with the ideal of natural beauty in art was strongly felt by Savonarola.  Rio (L’Art chretien, vol. ii. pp. 422-426) has written eloquently on this subject, but without making it plain how Savonarola’s condemnation of life studies from the nude could possibly have been other than an obstacle to the liberal and scientific prosecution of the art of painting.

[9] See Rio, L’Art chretien, vol. ii. chap. xi. pp. 319-327, for an ingenious defence of mystic art.  The tales he tells of Bernardino da Siena and the blessed Umiliana will not win the sympathy of Teutonic Christians, who must believe that semi-sensuous, semi-pious raptures, like those described by S. Catherine of Siena and S. Theresa, have something in them psychologically morbid.

CHAPTER II

ARCHITECTURE

Architecture of Mediaeval Italy—­Milan, Genoa, Venice—­The Despots as
Builders—­Diversity of Styles—­Local Influences—­Lombard, Tuscan,
Romanesque, Gothic—­Italian want of feeling for Gothic—­Cathedrals of
Siena and Orvieto—­Secular Buildings of the Middle Ages—­Florence and
Venice—­Private Palaces—­Public Halls—­Palazzo della Signoria at
Florence—­Arnolfo di Cambio—­S.  Maria del Fiore—­Brunelleschi’s
Dome—­Classical Revival in Architecture—­Roman Ruins—­Three Periods in
Renaissance Architecture—­Their Characteristics—­Brunelleschi
—­Alberti—­Palace-building—­Michellozzo—­Decorative Work of the
Revival—­Bramante—­Vitoni’s