"It is the triumph of padding and puffing, the apotheosis of fatness and sheen, and this has nothing to do with Christian art in the true sense of the word.
"If we want to understand the whole personal character of German religious painting, we must study other schools than this, the only one ever spoken of, and always with praise.

We must turn to the less familiar schools of Franconia and Swabia; there we find the very opposite.

As art it is savage and rough, but it lives--it weeps, nay it cries aloud, but it prays.

We must look at the works of these unkempt geniuses, such as Gruenewald, whose Christs, rebellious and wrathful, grind their teeth; or Zeitblom, whose 'Veronica's veil,' in the Berlin Museum, is unpleasant, no doubt; the angels have black leather crosses on their breasts, and the Saviour's head is terrible, horrible; still there is such energy in the work, such decision, such crudity, that the very sincerity of its ugliness is impressive.
"Certainly," Durtal went on, "even setting apart such daring painters as Gruenewald, I prefer many an unknown artist whose work is strange rather than beautiful, but at any rate mystical, to the honey and lard of Cologne; for instance, an anonymous painter who is to be found in the Grand Duke's collection at Gotha, as the author of one of those curious Mass-scenes which in the Middle Ages were called the 'Mass of Saint Gregory,' wherefore, we know not." Durtal turned over his note-book and read through the description he had recorded of this work, which he remembered as an instance of a sort of pious brutality.
The picture was set out on a gold background.

A little above the altar, but scarcely higher, a wooden sarcophagus, a sort of square bath, was seen, with a board over it from end to end.