Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/270

242 of the declining Middle Ages. Instead of heralding the advent of the Renaissance, as is generally assumed, this naturalism is rather one of the ultimate forms of development of the medieval mind. The craving to turn every sacred idea into precise images, to give it a distinct and clearly outlined form, such as we observed in Gerson, in the Roman de la Rose, in Denis the Carthusian, controlled art, as it controlled popular beliefs and theology. The art of the brothers Van Eyck closes a period.