Before concluding an examination of this section of the poem which has suggested, as was inevitable, a comparison between the pagan and the Christian conception of life; between an estimate into which physical and intellectual considerations alone enter, and that in which spiritual also find place, it may not be unprofitable to recall the method by which Browning has treated the same subject elsewhere, in a different connection. _Old Pictures in Florence_, published originally in the volume of the _Men and Women Series_, which likewise contained _Cleon_, is one of the few poems in which the author may be assumed to speak in his own person. The contrast there drawn is that between the products of Greek Art which "ran and reached its goal," and the works of the mediaeval Italian artists. Having pointed to the Greek statuary, to the figures of Theseus, of Apollo, of Niobe, and Alexander, the speaker recognizes therein a re-utterance of The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken, Which the actual generations garble, ... Soul (which Limbs betoken) And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble.[32] Here all is perfection, man sees himself as he wishes he were, as he "might have been," as he "cannot be." In such finished work no room is left for "man's distinctive mark," progress,--growth. When, then, according to Browning, did growth once more begin? When was the depression of Cleon's day out-lived? Vitality, he asserts, once more became apparent when the eye of the artist was turned from externals to that which externals may denote or conceal, not outwards but inwards, from the form betokening the existence of Soul to Soul itself. The mediaeval painters started on a new and endless path of progress when in answer to the cry of Greek Art, and what more wish you? they replied, To become now self-acquainters, And paint man man, whatever the issue! Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray, New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters: To bring the invisible full into play! Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?[33] Browning's estimate of Art, as of all departments of work, was necessarily one which would lead him to sympathize with that form which strives, however imperfectly, to bring "the invisible full into play," though the achievement must be effected, not by neglect of, but rather by the fullest treatment of the visible. The avowed function of Art, in the most comprehensive acceptation of the term, was with him to achieve "no mere imagery on the wall," but to present something, whether in Music, Poetry, or Painting, which should Mean beyond the facts, Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.[34]