For the painters of the full Renaissance, Roman martyrs and Olympian deities--the heroes of the _Acta Sanctorum_, and the heroes of Greek romance--were alike burghers of one spiritual city, the city of the beautiful and human.

What exquisite and evanescent fragrance was educed from these apparently diverse blossoms by their interminglement and fusion--how the high-wrought sensibilities of the Christian were added to the clear and radiant fancies of the Greek, and how the frank sensuousness of the Pagan gave body and fulness to the floating wraiths of an ascetic faith--remains a miracle for those who, like our master Lionardo, love to scrutinise the secrets of twin natures and of double graces.

There are not a few for whom the mystery is repellent, who shrink from it as from Hermaphroditus.

These will always find something to pain them in the art of the Renaissance.
Having co-ordinated the Christian and Pagan traditions in its work of beauty, painting could advance no farther.

The stock of its sustaining motives was exhausted.