[445] La Mort d'Arthur (Wright's edition), vol. iii. p. 331.
[446] Polidori's edition, vol. i. p. 542.
[447] The greater maturity of the plastic than of the poetic arts in the fifteenth century is apparent when we contrast the Rappresentazioni with Masaccio's, Ghirlandajo's, Mantegna's, or Carpaccio's paintings. Art, as I have frequently had to observe, emancipated the human faculties, and humanized the figments of the middle age by investing them with corporeal shape and forms of æsthetic beauty. The deliverance of the Italian genius was thus effected in painting earlier than in poetry, and in those very spheres of religious art where the poets were helpless to attain true freedom. Italian poetry first became free when it turned round and regarded the myths with an amused smile. I do not say that this was absolutely necessary, that an heroic Christian poetry might not have been produced in the fifteenth century by another race. But for the Italians it was necessary.
[448] Sacre Rappr. ii. 447.
[449] Sacre Rappr. iii. 177.
[450] Ibid. ii. 163.
[451] Sacre Rappr. iii. 235. Also edited separately with an introduction by D'Ancona.
[452] Sacre Rappr. iii. 319.
[453] Sacre Rappr. iii. 362.
[454] Ibid. iii. 485.