Italian history which followed the
Council of Trent and the Spanish despotism.

We have positive proofs to the contrary in the art of the Italians. The
April freshness of Giotto, the piety of Fra Angelico, the virginal
purity of the young Raphael, the sweet gravity of John Bellini, the
philosophic depth of Da Vinci, the sublime elevation of Michael Angelo,
the suavity of Fra Bartolommeo, the delicacy of the Della Robbia, the
restrained fervor of Rosellini, the rapture of the Sienese and the
reverence of the Umbrian masters, Francia's pathos, Mantegna's dignity,
and Luini's divine simplicity, were qualities which belonged not only to
these artists but also to the people of Italy from whom they sprang. If
men not few of whom were born in cottages and educated in workshops
could feel and think and fashion as they did, we cannot doubt that their
mothers and their friends were pure and pious, and that the race which
gave them to the world was not depraved. Painting in Italy, it must be
remembered, was nearer to the people than literature: it was less a
matter of education than instinct, a product of temperament rather than
of culture.

Italian art alone suffices to prove to my mind that the immorality of
the age descended from the upper stratum of society downwards. Selfish
despots and luxurious priests were the ruin of Italy; and the bad
qualities of the princes, secular and ecclesiastical, found expression
in the literature of poets and humanists, their parasites. But in what
other nation of the fifteenth century can we show the same of social
urbanity and intellectual light diffused throughout all classes from the
highest to the lowest? It is true that the sixteenth century cast a
blight upon their luster. But it was not until Italian taste had been
impaired by the vices of Papal Rome and by contact with the Spaniards
that the arts became either coarse or sensual. Giulio Romano (1492-1546)
and Benvenuto Cellini (1500-70) mark the beginning of the change. In
Riberia, a Spaniard, in Caravaggio, and in the whole school of Bologna,
it was accomplished. Yet never at any period did the native Italian
masters learn to love ugliness with the devotion that reveals innate
grossness. It remained for Duerer, Rembrandt, and Hogarth to elevate the
grotesque into the region of high art, for Rubens to achieve the
apotheosis of pure animalism, for Teniers to devote distinguished genius
to the service of the commonplace.

In any rev