Excerpt from Historical Handbook of Italian Sculpture
Greek sculpture of the fifth century before the Christian era, and Italian marble work of tho tenth century after it, are re* selectively the extremes of what is highest and what is lowest in plastic art, for the first belongs to a period of aesthetic culture never since reached, and the last to one of artistic ignorance greater perhaps than any elsewhere met with in the history of a civilized nation. Varying between Byzantinism, which regulated all forms of art by strictly conventional rules, and Medievalism, which regarded them solely as a means of conveying doctrinal instruction through symbolic or direct representation, sculpture in Italy had dragged out a feeble existence for many centuries before the year 1000 when the end of the world was confidently expected, and had then almost ceased to be. As the dreaded moment approached, men thought only of how they could save their souls or drown their anxieties, and not until it had passed did they breathe freely enough to occupy themselves with life and its activities.
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