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.