Thoughts on Art and Life

INTRODUCTION

THE long obscurity of the Dark Ages lifted over Italy as it awakened to a national, though divided, consciousness. Already two distinct tendencies were apparent. On one hand, the practical and rational spirit was soon to be reflected outwardly in the middle-class citizen life of Florence and the Lombard cities; at Rome, this spirit had even then created the civil organization of the curia The administrative body and court of the Pope.. The novella A short, realistic prose narrative, such as those found in Boccaccio's Decameron. was its literary triumph. In art, this practical spirit expressed itself simply, directly, and with vigor.

Opposed to this was the other great undercurrent in Italian life—mystical, religious, and speculative—which had run through the nation from the earliest times. It received fresh strength from medieval Christianity, encouraging an ecstatic mysticism that drove the populations of its mountain cities into a religious frenzy. Umbrian painting was inspired by this spirit, and the glowing words of Jacopone da Todi A Franciscan friar and poet (c. 1230–1306) known for his intense religious poems or "laude." expressed in poetry the same religious fervor that the life of Florence and Perugia witnessed in action.

Italy developed out of the relationship and conflict between these two forces: the rational and the mystical. Their later union in the greatest men was to—