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Strictly speaking, the Renaissance had been accomplished before the
year 1500, but so great was its impetus that, in the arts at least, it
extended half-way through the sixteenth century. Then it began to fail
through exhaustion.
MOTIVES AND METHODS: The religious subject still held with the
painters, but this subject in High-Renaissance days did not carry with
it the religious feeling as in Gothic days. Art had grown to be
something else than a teacher of the Bible. In the painter's hands it
had come to mean beauty for its own sake--a picture beautiful for its
form and color, regardless of its theme. This was the teaching of
antique art, and the study of nature but increased the belief. A new
love had arisen in the outer and visible world, and when the Church
called for altar-pieces the painters painted their new love,
christened it with a religious title, and handed it forth in the name
of the old. Thus art began to free itself from Church domination and
to live as an independent beauty.


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