[The Book of Art for Young People by Agnes Conway]@TWC D-Link bookThe Book of Art for Young People CHAPTER II 3/15
They thought of themselves as under the protection of some saint, who would plead with God the Father for them if they asked him, for God Himself seemed too high or remote to be appealed to always directly.
He was approached with awe; the saints, the Virgin, and the Infant Christ, with love. We must realise this difference before we can well understand a picture painted in the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries, nor can we look at one without feeling that the artist and the people for whom he painted, so loved the holy personages.
They thought about them always, not only at stated times and on Sundays, and never tired of looking at pictures of them and their doings.
It is sometimes said that only Catholics can understand medieval art, because they feel towards the saints as the old painters did.
But it is possible for any one to realize how in those far-off days the people felt, and it is this that we must try to do.
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