THE ITALIAN MIND: There is no way of explaining the Italian fondness
for form and color other than by considering the necessities of the
people and the artistic character of the Italian mind. Art in all its
phases was not only an adornment but a necessity of Christian
civilization. The Church taught people by sculpture, mosaic,
miniature, and fresco. It was an object-teaching, a grasping of ideas
by forms seen in the mind, not a presenting of abstract ideas as in
literature. Printing was not known. There were few manuscripts, and
the majority of people could not read. Ideas came to them for
centuries through form and color, until at last the Italian mind took
on a plastic and pictorial character. It saw things in symbolic
figures, and when the Renaissance came and art took the lead as one of
its strongest expressions, painting was but the color-thought and
form-language of the people.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--FRA FILIPPO. MADONNA. UFFIZI.]
And these people, by reason of their peculiar education, were an
exacting people, knowing what was good and demanding it from the
artists.
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