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Lindsay (1847) I p.71 discusses the differing principles, at their extremes, of ‘absolute symbolism and direct dramatic representation’. The Greeks, he suggests, had shown a ‘comparative neglect of their dramatic resources for many centuries. This might arise partly from a laudable dread of transgressing the second commandment; it was at least fortunate for art that the council held at Constantinople in 692 positively enjoined its disuse and the substitution of direct representation.’
Lindsay adds a footnote:
The special object of the decree is the substitution of the human figure of Our Saviour for the symbolical lamb; but the edification of the people by the contemplation of the obedience and death of Christ, represented to the life by painting, is the principle broadly laid down, and it is clear, as MM. Raoul-Rochette and Didron observe, that the council wished an entire substitution of history for symbolism. - M.Raoul-Rochette, I may add, considers the introduction of the Crucifix in lieu of the Cross, of martyrdoms instead of the older scenes of Christian hope and joyfulness, of the idea of death, in short, instead of life, as signs and tokens of the gradual saddening of the soul of Christendom, deepening and darkening through the whole course of the middle ages. Discours, &c., pp.58, 59. Icon de Dieu, p.339. - Admitting the fact, (strictly analogous, indeed, to the similar saddening of the Individual man during his march through life,) we may read in it the gradual prevalence of the Subjective, or Teutonic, over the Objective, or Classic element of Europe.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]