Wackenroder's book, which, as it were, indicates the attitude of Romanticism to music, also indicates what its attitude is to be towards art. Just as Winckelmann, with his first enthusiastic writings, had awakened the desire to study antique art, now Wackenroder enlists men's sympathies for medievalism. In his naïve enthusiasm he begins by translating and paraphrasing those portions of Vasari's old biographies of the famous painters which describe the greatness and nobility of mind of the Italian masters. Amongst others he extols Leonardo; but he neither grasps the characteristics of the man nor gives us intelligent criticism of his art; he simply eulogises him under the heading: _Das Muster eines kunstreichen und dabei tiefgelehrten Malers, vorgestellt in dem Leben des Leonardo da Vinci_ (The Gifted and Erudite Painter, as exemplified in the Life of Leonardo da Vinci). The essay begins with the following impulsive assertion: "The period of the resurrection of the art of painting in Italy produced men to whom the generation of to-day should look up as to glorified saints." The fact, actually chronicled by Vasari, that the great painters of the Italian Renaissance led singularly unsaintly lives, is entirely ignored. In its very germ the Romantic conception of art is poisoned by the reaction towards sentiment. The critic folds his hands to worship, and forgets to open his eyes to see. Amongst the translated fragments Wackenroder introduces a short original essay, entitled _Longing for Italy_, in which we have the first appearance of that enthusiasm for Italy which afterwards becomes not only general, but almost obligatory. Love and longing for Italy was nothing new in Germany. Goethe's father, who was no enthusiast, had known this feeling; but now idolatry of an Italy which had no resemblance to the real one became a necessary clause in the creed of every genuine Romanticist. In poetry the longing for Italy found expression in a profusion of lyrical poems, dilutions and attenuations of that divine song of Mignon's, which is a picture as well as a poem. Mignon is content with saying: