orm of the basilica, in later times
working the disused amphitheatres as quarries. The sensuous expression of
conceptions which unreservedly discredit the world of sense, was the
delicate problem which Christian art had before it. If we think of
medieval painting, as it ranges from the early German schools, still with
something of the air of the charnel-house about them, to the clear
loveliness of Perugino, we shall see how that problem was solved. Even in
the worship of sorrow the native blitheness of art asserted itself; the
religious spirit, as Hegel says, "smiled through its tears." So perfectly
did the young Raffaelle infuse that Heiterkeit, that pagan blitheness,
into religious works, that his picture of Saint Agatha at Bologna became
to Goethe a step in the evolution of Iphigenie.* But in proportion as
this power of smiling was found again, there came also an aspiration
towards that lost antique art, some relics of which Christian art had
buried in itself, ready to work wonders when their day came.

*Italiaenische Reise. Bologna, 19 Oct. 1776.

The history of art has suffered as much as any history by trenchant and
absolute divisions. Pagan and Christian art are sometimes harshly
opposed, and the Renaissance is represented as a fashion which set in at
a definite period. That is the superficial view: the deeper view is that
which preserves the identity of European culture. The two are really
continuous; and there is a sense in which it may be said that the
Renaissance was an uninterrupted effort of the middle age, that it was
ever taking place. When the actual relics of the antique were restored to
the world, in the view of the Christian ascetic it was as if an ancient
plague-pit had been opened: all the world took the contagion of the life
of nature and of the senses. And now it was seen that the medieval spirit
too had done something for the destiny of the antique. By hastening the
decline of art, by withdrawing interest from it, and yet keeping unbroken
the thread of its traditions, it had suffered the human mind to repose
that it might awake when day came, with eyes refreshed, to those antique
forms.

The aim of a right criticism is to place Winckelmann in an intellectual
perspective, of which Goethe is the foreground. For, after all, he is
infinitely less than Goethe; it is chiefly because at certain points he
comes in contact with Goethe, that criticism entertains consideration of
him. His relation to mode