House and Garden 
FIGURE 8 
work. 1 he great art of the Renaissance was not the 
copy of the art of the ancient Greeks, but the result of 
Its inspiration. It was no more possible for the Ren¬ 
aissance sculptor to embody tbe philosophic contem¬ 
plation of a virtue in godlike form than it is for us to 
represent our age as one of splendid ceremonies and 
magnificent parades and pageantries. That age 
IS dead and gone, and we are living to-day. Just as 
the Renaissance litterateur satisfied himself with 
rhetoric and well-rounded and polished sentences 
instead of the clear and limpid words of the Classic, 
so the metal worker viewed his imagination through 
decorative spectacles and mysteries, and from that 
time onward the greatest artists have been those who 
have felt most strongly this fascination, and have 
become the poets of Death rather than of Majesty 
in human shape. 
Hitherto in speaking of the Renaissance I have 
given my views more particularly on the masters of 
the Italian Renaissance, but in the North the dra¬ 
matic passion, the sublimity of the imagination, the 
energy and earnestness of purpose, and truer 
sincerity of religion, together raised the ideal from 
what I have previously said had been the result of 
well-polished scholarship; this in itself was the 
subtle influence of the vigor and robustness of tbe 
long Gothic period. 
We lose sight of the dancing girls and youths, 
crowned with the garlands, of Boccaccio, the inspira¬ 
tion to Donatello and Settignano; we lose sight of the 
shape and form and mystery of death of Petrarch, 
the subtle inspirer of Michelangelo; and see the 
fierce earnestness of Peter Vischer and his school in 
the tomb of Maximilian, or the homely wit of the 
Gerrhan sculptor who symbolised human nature 
in this lockcase (fig. 8), illustrating by the fall of man 
inherited curiosity to arrive at the forbidden; or, 
again, what truer example of religious earnestness 
than the lock to a bedchamber (fig. 14) I Can we 
not imagine the emotion of trust and confidence the 
occupant of this chamber would feel each night 
when in closing the door her patron saint would be 
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