not the great texts merely, but the most compendious and abbreviated Symbolism, the isolated passages and fragments of the greater designs.
It is then that we recognise the unity of motive and sentiment which runs all through Medieval Art, and see how an external unity of style is the result of a deeper spiritual unity, as the manners of individuals spring out of their whole character and way of life; it is then that antiquities, which to the common observer seem of small account, become to us full of meaning. Every object which reflects and repeats the greater art of the period, whether it be costume, or armour, or household furniture, is of interest to the Archaeologist.
The cross which formed the hilt of the sword of the warrior; the martyrology which was embroidered on the cope of the ecclesiastic, or which inlayed the binding of his missal; the repetition of the design of Raffaelle in the Majolica ware; if not in themselves the finest specimens of medieval art, are valuable as evidence of the universality of its pervading presence,—as fragments of a great whole.
In many cases the interpreter of Christian Art has an easier task than his fellow-labourer, the interpreter of Greek Art. Christian Iconography is at once more congenial, and more familiar to us, than Greek Mythography. Much of the religious feeling it embodies still exists in the hearts of men; the works of Christian art themselves afford far ampler illustration of their own language. The frescoes of Cimabue and Giotto, the great poems of Fra Angelico, Raffaelle, and Michael Angelo, have not perished like the works of the Greek painters, or been preserved to us in fragments, like the sculptures of the Parthenon. The facades of the cathedrals of Europe are still rich in statuary; the "dim religious light" still pierces through "the storied window."
We possess not only the original designs of the great sculptors and painters of the Middle Ages, but endless copies and reflections from these designs in the costume, armour, coins, seals, pottery, furniture, and other antiquities of the contemporary period. We are not compelled to seek for Art in what was meant as mere Handicraft, as we study the history of Greek painting in vase-pictures; we have not only the Art, but the Handicraft too.
