Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/59

Rh grew up from the mixture of two traditions, two sentiments, the sacred and the profane. Classical story was regarded as a mere datum to be received and assimilated. It did not come into men's minds to ask curiously of science concerning its origin, its primary form and import, its meaning for those who projected it. It sank into their minds to issue forth again with all the tangle about it of mediæval sentiments and ideas. In the Doni Madonna in the Tribune of the Uffizii, Michelangelo actually brings the pagan religion, and with it the unveiled human form, the sleepy-looking fauns of a Dionysiac revel, into the presence of the Madonna, as simpler painters had introduced other products of the earth, birds or flowers, and he has given that Madonna herself much of the uncouth energy of the older and more primitive mighty Mother.

It is because this picturesque union of contrasts, belonging properly to the art of the close of the fifteenth century, pervades in Pico della Mirandula an actual person, that the figure of Pico is so attractive. He will not let one go; he wins one on in spite of oneself to turn again to the pages of his forgotten books, although we know already that the actual solution proposed in them will satisfy us as little as perhaps it satisfied him. It is said that in his eagerness for mysterious learning he