284 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



relations altogether to the art before them. These twenty- 

 five include, I say, all the great masters of Christian art. 



Before them, the art was too savage to be Christian ; after- 

 wards, too carnal to be Christian. 



Too savage to be Christian ? I will justify that assertion 

 hereafter ; but you will find that the European art of 1200 

 includes all the most developed and characteristic conditions 

 of the style in the north which you have probably been ac- 

 customed to think of as NORMAN, and which you may always 

 most conveniently call so ; and the most developed condi- 

 tions of the style in the south, which, formed out of effete 

 Greek, Persian, and Roman tradition, you may, in like man- 

 ner, most conveniently express by the familiar word BYZANTINE. 

 Whatever you call them, they are in origin adverse in temper, 

 and remain so up to the year 1200. Then an influence ap- 

 pears, seemingly that of one man, Nicholas the Pisan, (our 

 first MASTER, observe,) and a new spirit adopts what is best 

 in each, and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own, 

 namely, this conscientious and didactic power which is the 

 speciality of its progressive existence. And just as the new- 

 born and natural art of Athens collects and reanimates Pelas- 

 gian and Egyptian tradition, purifying their worship, and 

 perfecting their work, into the living heathen faith of the 

 world, so this new-born and natural art of Florence collects 

 and animates the Norman and B}'zantine tradition, and forms 

 out of the perfected worship and work of both, the honest 

 Christian faith, and vital craftsmanship, of the world. 



67. Get this first summary, therefore, well into your minds. 

 The word ' Norman ' I use roughly for North-savage ; 

 roughly, but advisedly. I mean Lombard, Scandinavian, 

 Frankish ; everything north-savage that you can think of, 

 except Saxon. (I have a reason for that exception ; never 

 mind it just now.) * 



* Of course it would have been impossible to express in any accurate 

 terms, short enough for the compass of a lecture, the conditions of op- 

 position between the Heptarchy and the Northmen ; between the By- 

 zantine and Roman ; and between the Byzantine and Arab, which form 

 minor, but not less trenchant, divisions of Art-province, for subsequent 



