This distinction holds in all ages, but
the distinction between the franchise of Northern, and the constancy of
Byzantine, art, depends partly on the unsystematic play of emotion in
the one, and the appointed sequence of known fact or determined
judgment in the other.
You will find in the beginning of M. Didron's book, already quoted, an
admirable analysis of what may be called the classic sequence of
Christian theology, as written in the sculpture of the Cathedral of
Chartres. You will find in the treatment of the facade of Orvieto the
beginning of the development of passionate romance,--the one being
grave sermon writing; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing: so
that the one requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive;
the one is always a parable with a meaning, the other only a story with
an impression.
211. And here I get at a result concerning Greek art, which is very
sweeping and wide indeed. That it is all parable, but Gothic, as
distinct from it, literal. So absolutely does this hold, that it
reaches down to our modern school of landscape. You know I have always
told you Turner belonged to the Greek school.
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