Pictures became symbolically connected with the religious feelings of the people, formulae from which to deviate would be impious in the artist and confusing to the worshiper.
Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy the almond eyes and stiff joints of the saints whom he had adored from infancy; and, even had it been otherwise, he lacked the skill to imitate the natural forms he saw around him.

But with the dawning of the Renaissance, a new spirit in the arts arose.

Men began to conceive that the human body is noble in itself and worthy of patient study.

The object of the artist then became to unite devotional feeling and respect for the sacred legend with the utmost beauty and the utmost fidelity of delineation.

He studied from the nude; he drew the body in every posture; he composed drapery, invented attitudes, and adapted the action of his figures and the expression of his faces to the subject he had chosen.