ch Europe was perpetually
plunged retarded this development for ages; but it steadily and
gradually prevailed, working from the eighth to the eleventh century
like a seed in the ground, showing little signs of life, but still, if
carefully examined, changing essentially every day and every hour: at
last, in the twelfth century the blade appears above the black earth;
in the thirteenth, the plant is in full leaf.

82. I begin, then, with the thirteenth century, and must now make to you
a general assertion, which, if you will note down and examine at your
leisure, you will find true and useful, though I have not time at
present to give you full demonstration of it.

I say, then, that the art of the thirteenth century is the foundation of
all art--nor merely the foundation, but the root of it; that is to say,
succeeding art is not merely built upon it, but was all comprehended in
it, and is developed out of it. Passing this great century, we find
three successive branches developed from it, in each of the three
following centuries. The fourteenth century is pre-eminently the age of
_Thought_, the fifteenth the age of _Drawing_, and the sixteenth the age
of _Painting_.

83. Observe, first, the fourteenth century is pre-eminently the age of
thought. It begins with the first words of the poem of Dante; and all
the great pictorial poems--the mighty series of works in which
everything is done to relate, but nothing to imitate--belong to this
century. I should only confuse you by giving you the names of marvelous
artists, most of them little familiar to British ears, who adorned this
century in Italy; but you will easily remember it as the age of Dante
and Giotto--the age of _Thought_.

The men of the succeeding century (the fifteenth) felt that they could
not rival their predecessors in invention, but might excel them in
execution. Original thoughts belonging to this century are comparatively
rare; even Raphael and Michael Angelo themselves borrowed all their
principal ideas and plans of pictures from their predecessors; but they
executed them with a precision up to that time unseen. You must
understand by the word "drawing," the perfect rendering of forms,
whether in sculpture or painting; and then remember the fifteenth
century as the age of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and
Raphael--pre-eminently the age of _Drawing_.

[Illustration: PLATE XIII. (Fig. 20., Fig. 21.)]

The sixteenth century produced the f