It has been said by way of explanation that painters must sell their work, and they must, therefore, paint what the rich and powerful will buy. Thus it is pointed out that in the Middle Ages they worked under the patronage of the Church; in the Renaissance their patrons were paganized [p095] princes and popes, and artists made pictures which, even when the theme was religious, were no longer Christian in spirit. Later in the north of Europe the bourgeoisie acquired money and station, and the Dutch painters did their portraits, and made faithful representations of their kitchens and their parlors. A little later French painters at the Court of Versailles made pictures for courtiers, and in our time John Sargent painted the wives of millionaires. To say all this is to say that the ruling classes in the modern world are no longer interested in pictures which illustrate or are inspired by the religion they profess. This attempt at an explanation in terms of supply and demand may or may not be sound for the ordinary run of painters. It leaves out of account, however, those very painters who are the most significant and interesting. It leaves out of account the painters who, by heroic refusal to supply the existing market, deserve universal respect, and in many cases have won an ultimate public vindication. These men do not fit into the theory of supply and demand, for they endured poverty and derision in order to paint what they most wanted to paint. They are not of the tribe, which Mr. Walter Pach calls Ananias, who betray the truth that is in them. But for that truth they did not draw upon the themes nor the sense of life which almost all of them must have been taught when they were children. They did not paint religious pictures. They painted landscapes, streets, interiors, still life, heads, persons, nudes. Whatever else they perceived and tried to express, they did not see their objects in the perspective of human destiny and divine government. There is no reason, then, to say that religious painting, even in the [p096] broadest sense of the term, has disappeared because there is no effective demand for it. Obviously it has disappeared because the will to produce it has disappeared. _(b) The Loss of a Heritage_