lates the practice of art against all other kinds of spiritual
exertion, not merely against any concern with active or
passive life. Further, the associations of ideas which once
played an essential part in the artistic effect are now sup-
pressed and, wherever possible, eliminated. Hence the
desired autonomy of art is most readily secured in the
decorative picture, still-life and landscape-the 'dumb'
categories, as it were. With this in mind one might ven-
ture to set up a scale of values in which landscape came
first and the historical picture last.

Though the art-lover of our day may succeed in contem-
plating the Sistine Madonna with 'disinterested pleasure',
the pious-minded in the sixteenth century certainly did
not glance up at the altar-piece with anything of the
sort.

The question remains why this pleasure has turned so
decidedly, much more decidedly than in earlier times, to
the earth, the sky, water and vegetation; also why in
those days the effect of a work of art definitely did not
rest on 'disinterestedness'. After all, one's spiritual welfare
belonged to the major interests of life. The second ques-
tion is easy to answer. In the Middle Ages and far
beyond them the visual arts served some purpose: they
were of service to the Church, and, once become profane,
they regaled people, entertained them, amused them, in-
structed them and in many ways satisfied men's intellec-
tual needs. The proud, so easily accepted cry of 'art for
art's sake' would have sounded incomprehensible or
frivolous to the Old Masters.

The first question is more difficult. The joy and thrill of
contemplating natural landscapes was there right enough
in olden times, as can be observed in literature and
poetry. But the step from verbal expression to pictorial
expression was ventured relatively late. And it was not

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