87. 



DECAY OF ART. 319 



connected with religion; and paintings attain the most 

 elevated character through that sentiment. But though 

 sacred subjects are those that belong most properly to the 

 highest branch of art, still they are not the only ones in which 

 great artistic genius may be displayed ; nor in Greek sculp- 

 ture are the finest statues confined to the representation of 

 the gods. 



What the paintings of the Greeks may have been, which 

 treated of heroic, and other noble, actions, we are unable to 

 decide ; but it is certain that one of the finest statues 

 (which too is not of an old Greek period, and is open to the 

 same objection as all other painful subjects), the Dying 

 Gladiator, is not connected with religion ; and others of no 

 ordinary pretensions might be mentioned which are quite 

 independent of mythological belief. And the same may be 

 said of the Laocoon, as well as some other groups, and single 

 statues. 



Of Italian paintings, the grandest are certainly sacred 

 subjects, which were constantly called for by churches and 

 convents ; and as the Franciscans and Dominicans encouraged 

 the labours of a Giotto and a Fra Angelico, and the churches 

 and convents continued at a later period to require paintings 

 of a religious character, so the theocratic establishments of 

 Spain employed the skill of a Zurbaran, a Murillo, and 

 other artists of that country. The number too of those sub- 

 jects painted by the best masters is greatly in favour of their 

 being superior to others ; but the fact of their possessing this 

 superiority does not confine perfection to them alone. For 

 no one will deny the merits of Eaphael's School of Athens, 

 and other subjects not, strictly speaking, sacred; and those 

 taken from poetry and history claim a sufficiently important 

 place in high art to convince us that an artist may attain 

 excellence, even if he quits the range of religious composi- 

 tions. Other subjects may not be capable of an equally 



