I intend to deal with Italian painting as the one complete product which remains from the achievements of this period, touching upon sculpture and architecture more superficially.

Not only is painting the art in which the Italians among all the nations of the modern world stand unapproachably alone, but it is also the one that best enables us to gauge their genius at the time when they impressed their culture on the rest of Europe.

In the history of the Italian intellect painting takes the same rank as that of sculpture in the Greek.

Before beginning, however, to trace the course of Italian art, it will be necessary to discuss some preliminary questions, important for a right understanding of the relations assumed by painting to the thoughts of the Renaissance, and for explaining its superiority over the sister art of sculpture in that age.

This I feel the more bound to do because it is my object in this volume to treat of art with special reference to the general culture of the nation.
What, let us ask in the first place, was the task appointed for the fine arts on the threshold of the modern world?
They had, before all things, to give form to the ideas evolved by Christianity, and to embody a class of emotions unknown to the ancients.[2] The inheritance of the Middle Ages had to be appropriated and expressed.