As in ancient Greece, so also in Renaissance Italy, the fine arts assumed the first place in the intellectual culture of the nation.

But the thought and feeling of the modern world required an aesthetic medium more capable of expressing emotion in its intensity, variety, and subtlety than sculpture.

Therefore painting was the art of arts for Italy.

Yet even painting, notwithstanding the range and wealth of its resources, could not deal with the motives of Christianity so successfully as sculpture with the myths of Paganism.

The religion it interpreted transcended the actual conditions of humanity, while art is bound down by its nature to the limitations of the world we live in.