Goethe on Italian Art: Real but Heavenly

In the church of the Eremitani I have seen pictures by Mantegna, one of the older painters, at which I am astonished. What a sharp, strict actuality is exhibited in these pictures! It is from this actuality, thoroughly true, not apparent, merely and falsely effective, and appealing solely to the imagination, but solid, pure, bright, elaborated, conscientious, delicate, and circumscribed—an actuality which had about it something severe, credulous, and laborious; it is from this, I say, that the later painters proceeded (as I remarked in the pictures of Titian), in order that by the liveliness of their own genius, the energy of their nature illumined at the same time by the mind of the predecessors, and exalted by their force, they might rise higher and higher, and elevated above the earth, produce forms that were heavenly indeed, but still true. Thus was art developed after the barbarous period.