Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/366

 348 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. of the Italian people ; new inspirations had come to them, and new faculties were ripening. Pictures having more distinctive Italian traits were painted. Italy was now to be the sun of art herself, and no mere mirror to the Greek. Her own genius had reached the stage where, having used its Byzantine lessons, it could overcome and pass beyond them. Her art remembers its past knowledge, yet turns from precedent to life. The artists begin once more to bring nature into art. With Cimabue art is neither barbarous nor Byzantine. With Giotto and Ducio art is Italian ; it is national and great, as once had been the art of Greece.^ IV. The Antique in MedicBval Art The art of pagan antiquity is carried over to the Middle Ages through the Christian antique art of Italy and the Romanized countries of western Europe, and through the art called Byzantine. Aside from its novel subjects, the antique Christian art is first an humble branch, then a revival and ennoblement, and finally a barbarization of pagan art. In the East, pagan art is distinctly altered in its Christian use, and there results a definite new style, the Byzantine. As may readily be imagined, the question of the debt and relationship of mediaeval to antique art is complicated 1 Speaking of Torriti's mosaics (1295) in the apse of S. Maria Maggiore, and of the contemporary work of Cavallini in the lower zone of the apse of Sta. Mar. in Trastevere, De Rossi says both rep- resent " la scuola italiana ancora pregna dello tradizione dell' arte greca, ma nella sua transizione al nuovo stile, del quale Giotto era allora famoso maestro ed iuiziatore."