No; the temperaments of the artists at this period were not differentiated nationally. They are, moreover, not so at the present day either, and if analogies are established between artists of the same origin, they may, in all cases, be naturally explained otherwise than by a common descent. The influence of strong personalities, who influence as prototypes, external successes, which form a current of fashion and incite to imitation, or simply a tenaciously held tradition of a school, in which in a long series of artist generations has grown up, suffice to impress on the art of a country through extensive epochs, a certain family physiognomy, which only a mystically inclined mind will be tempted to refer to race and blood. Topographical and national classifications have in fact no inward spiritual justification in art, but at most a value of convenience, in so far as they render possible external groupings, which facilitate a survey. The whole art of Europe is one. It has developed from the Greek, the tradition of which has remained living through all the centuries, and has crept, from country to country, connecting inseparably all separate national developments with their common origin. The Greeks were the teachers of the Romans, and their inspirations and rules were carried down into the Christian catacombs, and from them blossomed the art of the Middle Ages. Byzantine artists from the Roman empire of the East itself or from Italy, initiated, at the Court of Charlemagne, the barbarians of the Frankish kingdom in the mysteries of their craft, and carried the Promethean spark, however weakly it glimmered, from Attica to the banks of the Seine and Scheldt, where it did not expire, but, later on, was fanned again to bright flame by the fresh breeze of the Renaissance. The Eastern branch of Greek art withered into actual Byzantism, whose last off-shoots are the Russian icons of to-day. The Church in the East, to suit the fetish-loving views of her superstitious semi-barbarians, attributes to the picture the meaning and value of an idol, and opposes mistrustfully every deviation from the canon which, according to her conception, might weaken the power of the idol. In the West less credence was given to the picture’s magical virtue, its form obtained no dogmatic consecration, the Church allowed the artist freer movement, and thus development was possible, which broke through the stiff, lifeless rule of the school, and found its way back to the inexhaustible primitive source of Greek art itself, namely, nature.