Greek and Gothic, Progress and Decay in the Three Arts of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting #250928

Original works of art are documents, in short, whatever they look like. They may be rude or shattered, or have been always beautiless, or have lost their beauty; or what is left of it may only irritate minds untaught to feel it; as with so much early Christian work. But there they are, and the student must gain by a certain knowledge, first, of what they are at present, secondly, of what they were in their first glory. He will need all the help he can get in the study of Dark Age History, to support him with sense of truth and reality, through his necessary perusal of painfully written and dubious chronicles. What an impulse it would give to the history of this period, if an illustrated Ammianus, or a Paul the Deacon, pictured like the Vatican Virgil (of perhaps nearly the same date) could turn up in some Italian library! It will hardly do to dwell on great supposed results in this matter, or some new Simonides will go straightway and discover what we are calling for.