not simple. The painters, following the masters of mosaic, began by
setting forth the history, mythology, and legends of the Christian Church
in imagery freer and more beautiful than lay within the scope of treatment
by Romanesque or Byzantine art. So far their task was comparatively easy;
for the idyllic grace of maternal love in the Madonna, the pathetic
incidents of martyrdom, the courage of confessors, the ecstasies of
celestial joy in redeemed souls, the loveliness of a pure life in modest
virgins, and the dramatic episodes of sacred story, furnish a multitude of
motives admirably pictorial. There was, therefore, no great obstacle upon
the threshold, so long as artists gave their willing service to the
Church. Yet, looking back upon this phase of painting, we are able to
perceive that already the adaptation of art to Christian dogma entailed
concessions on both sides. Much, on the one hand, had to be omitted from
the programme offered to artistic treatment, for the reason that the fine
arts could not deal with it at all. Much, on the other hand, had to be
expressed by means which painting in a state of perfect freedom would
repudiate. Allegorical symbols, like Prudence with two faces, and painful
episodes of agony and anguish, marred her work of beauty. There was
consequently a double compromise, involving a double sacrifice of
something precious. The faith suffered by having its mysteries brought
into the light of day, incarnated in form, and humanised. Art suffered by
being forced to render intellectual abstractions to the eye through
figured symbols.

As technical skill increased, and as beauty, the proper end of art, became
more rightly understood, the painters found that their craft was worthy of
being made an end in itself, and that the actualities of life observed
around them had claims upon their genius no less weighty than dogmatic
mysteries. The subjects they had striven at first to realise with all
simplicity now became little better than vehicles for the display of