that, in the main, mediaeval
love was not virtuous, and mediaeval peasantry not admired by poets; and
none the less certain, I think, also, that in describing the
characteristics and origin of an abstract thing, such as mediaeval love,
or mediaeval feeling towards the country and country folk, it was my
business to state the rule and let alone the exceptions.

There is another matter which gives me far greater concern. In creating
and dealing with an abstraction, one is frequently forced, if I may use
the expression, to cut a subject in two, to bring one of its sides into
full light and leave the other in darkness; nay, to speak harshly of one
side of an art or of a man without being able to speak admiringly of
another side.

This one-sidedness, this apparent injustice of judgment, has in some
cases been remedied by the fact that I have treated in one study those
things which I was forced to omit in another study; as, in two separate
essays, I have pointed out first the extreme inferiority of Renaissance
sculpture to the sculpture of Antiquity with regard to absolute beauty
of form; and then the immeasurable superiority of Renaissance over
antique sculpture in the matter of that beauty and interest dependent
upon mere arrangement and handling, wherein lies the beauty-creating
power of realistic schools. But most often I have shown one side, not
merely of an artist or an art, but of my own feeling, without showing
the other; and in one case this inevitable one-sidedness has weighed
upon me almost like personal guilt, and has almost made me postpone the
publication of this book to the Greek Kalends, in hopes of being able to
explain and to atone. I am alluding to Fra Angelico. I spoke of him in a
study of the progress of mere beautiful form, the naked human form
moreover, in the art of the Renaissance; I looked at his work with my
mind full of the unapproachable superiority of antique form; I judged
and condemned the artist with reference to that superb movement towards
nature and form and bodily beauty which was the universal movement of
the fifteenth century; I lost patience with this saint because he would
not turn pagan; I pushed aside, because he did not seek for a classic
Olympus, his exquisite dreams of a mediaeval Paradise. I had taken part,
as its chronicler, with the art which seeks mere plastic perfection, the
art to which Angelico said, "Retro me Sathana." It was my intention to
close even this volume with a