Spain, the same reflection is still forced upon us:  how could Italy have done what she achieved within so short a space of time?  What must the houses and the churches once have been, from which these spoils were taken, but which still remain so rich in masterpieces?  Psychologically to explain this universal capacity for the fine arts in the nation at this epoch, is perhaps impossible.  Yet the fact remains, that he who would comprehend the Italians of the Renaissance must study their art, and cling fast to that Ariadne-thread throughout the labyrinthine windings of national character.  He must learn to recognise that herein lay the sources of their intellectual strength as well as the secret of their intellectual weakness.

It lies beyond the scope of this work to embrace in one inquiry the different forms of art in Italy, or to analyse the connection of the aesthetic instinct with the manifold manifestations of the Renaissance.  Even the narrower task to which I must confine myself, is too vast for the limits I am forced to impose upon its treatment.  I intend to deal with Italian painting as the one complete product which remains from the achievements of this period, touching upon sculpture and architecture more superficially.  Not only is painting the art in which the Italians among all the nations of the modern world stand unapproachably alone, but it is also the one that best enables us to gauge their genius at the time when they impressed their culture on the rest of Europe.  In the history of the Italian intellect painting takes the same rank as that of sculpture in the Greek.  Before beginning, however, to trace the course of Italian art, it will be necessary to discuss some preliminary questions, important for a right understanding of the relations assumed by painting to the thoughts of the Renaissance, and for explaining its superiority over the sister art of sculpture in that age.  This I feel the more bound to do because it is my object in this volume to treat of art with special reference to the general culture of the nation.

What, let us ask in the first place, was the task appointed for the fine arts on the threshold of the modern world?  They had, before all things, to give form to the ideas evolved by Christianity, and to embody a class of emotions unknown to the ancients.[2] The inheritance of the Middle Ages had to be appropriated and expressed.  In the course of performing this work, the painters helped to humanise religion, and revealed the dignity and beauty of the body of man.  Next, in the fifteenth century, the riches of classic culture were discovered, and art was called upon to aid in the interpretation of the ancient to the modern mind.  The problem was no longer simple.  Christian and pagan traditions came into close contact, and contended for the empire of the newly liberated intellect.  During this struggle the arts, true to their own principles, eliminated from both traditions the more strictly human elements, and expressed them