Mediæval painting perfected itself in the same way as ancient sculpture. The imperfect but severe and characteristic representations of primitive art became types, which later ages were slow to alter; they were copied and recopied until a great revolution in popular thought broke the fetters of conventional control. Such, in the olden times, was the victory over the Persians, the triumph of Greek independence; in the middle ages it was the struggle between the secular and sacred powers. As Æschylus and Phidias mark that epoch in the Periclean age, so Dantè and Giotto, with the Rhenish masters, form, in this respect, the great symbols of the age of Leo X. With them pure religious feeling is the most pervading impulse, and a sense of divinity habitually directs their hands; but the perception of the latter was more comprehensive, and rising above the narrow horizon of their predecessors, they soared beyond the periphery of actual life, and embraced the infinite. All leading spirits, like Dantè and Giotto, stood before the world, and, with the power of their genius, surveyed the whole extent of what was required by their age, religiously and politically. They were inspired by the belief which they glorified, and participated in benevolent struggles, not more by their writings than by their paintings. They extended the boundaries of the realm of art; its representations became richer and broader; the composition was rendered dramatical, the drawing and coloring natural; and a loftier development was occasioned by the discovery of monuments of the old civilization, which had been buried and forgotten for centuries. Art-elements which had before existed in a mummified state, now fell like over-ripe fruit; but not before the soil of the western world was sufficiently fitted to receive the precious seed.