Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/198

176 debonair, with his unbroken daylight, always opposed to the sad Chthonian divinities, is the aspiring element, by force and spring of which Greek religion sublimes itself. Religions have sometimes, like mighty streams, been diverted to a higher service of humanity as political institutions. Out of Greek religion under happy conditions arises Greek art, das Einzige, das Unerwartete, to minister to human culture. The claim of Greek religion is that it was able to transform itself into an artistic ideal. Unlike that Delphic Pythia, old but clothed as a maiden, this new Pythia is a maiden, though in the old religious vesture.

For the thoughts of the Greeks about themselves and their relation to the world were ever in the happiest readiness to be turned into an object for the senses. In this is the main distinction between Greek art and the mystical art of the Christian middle age, which is always struggling to express thoughts beyond itself. Take, for instance, a characteristic work of the middle age, Angelico's 'Coronation of the Virgin,' at San Marco, in Florence. In some strange halo of a moon sit the Virgin and our Lord, clad in mystical white raiment, half shroud, half priestly linen. Our Lord, with rosy