328 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

Philip Van Ness Myers in the following words :

"The earlier Italian painters drew their subjects chiefly from
Christian sources. They literally covered the walls of the
churches, pakces, and civic buildings of Italy with pictorial re-
presentations of all the ideas and imaginings of the mediaeval
ages respecting death, the judgment, heaven and hell. The later
artists, more under the influence of the classical revival, mingled
freely Pagan and Christian subjects and motives, and thus became
truer representatives than their predecessors of the Renaissance
movement, one important issue of which was to be the blending
of Pagan and Christian culture." *

1. General History, p. 484.