Excursions in Art and Letters

The overthrow of the pagan religion was the deathblow of pagan Art. The temples shook to their foundations, the statues of the gods shuddered, a shadow darkened across the pictured and sculptured world, when through the ancient realm was heard the wail, Pan, great Pan is dead. The nymphs fled to their caves affrighted. Dryads, Oreads, and Naiads abandoned the groves, mountains, and streams that they for ages had haunted. Their voices were heard no more singing by shadowy brooks, their faces peered no longer through the sighing woods; and of all the mighty train of greater and lesser divinities and deified heroes to whom Greece and Rome had bent the knee and offered sacrifice, Orpheus alone lingered in the guise of the Good Shepherd. Christianity struck the deathblow not only to pagan Art, but for a time to all Art. Sculpture and Painting were in its mind closely allied to idolatry. Under its influence the arts slowly wasted away as with a mortal disease. With ever-declining strength they struggled for centuries, gasping2 as it were for breath, and finally, almost in utter atrophy, half alive, half dead,a ruined, maimed, deformed presence, shorn of all their glory and driven out by the world,they found a beggarly refuge and sufferance in some Christian church or monastery. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 54773
Author: Story, William Wetmore
Release Date: May 23, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English