Just as modelling is the heritage of babyhood, so painting is the delight of childhood. First come naïve little drawings, like the work of the Primitives, in which the figures of saints of high religious rank are made twice as large as those of their inferiors, or like the pictures of Perugino and his school, in which the infant Christ is depicted wearing a coral ornament similar to those put round the necks of Italian children to save them from the evil eye!
Day by day, art develops and grows more perfect, reaching its apotheosis almost simultaneously in all the countries of Europe. Yet in all their magnificence and perfection, something naïve and childlike remains even in the works of the great masters. They draw pictures from the life of Christ, for instance, with background and accessories of the Middle Ages. They represent some Pope in all his Catholic vestments and with his papal tiara kneeling humbly before the Virgin, with the Child in her arms. They are not in the least disturbed by the thought that if a Roman Pope exists at all, it is only because this Christ Child grew up, and because His Apostles founded the Church. Their childish mind does not occupy itself with such contradictions, and Michael Angelo gives to the world his famous Pièta, a magnificent marble group, in which the Virgin Mother is younger than her Son.
The defenceless child, unable to revenge himself on his tyrants and tormentors, loves to console himself with dreams of how the Divine Power—God and His angels, the Archangel Michael with a sword in his hand—will descend from heaven to help him. The wicked will be burnt in hell, and he, the offended and insulted one, will receive his reward in Paradise. Had he not this dream and this consolation, life would indeed be too heavy a burden.
But the child grows up, and reaches adolescence. He stands on the threshold of life, and the school-bench is left behind him. School has taught him but little—a few facts and some elementary information. But he has learnt to reason logically, and to examine the solid foundations on which the world rests. He begins to apply his logic to everything, and when he approaches religion, doubt trembles in his soul. The absurd improbability of the legends of the Middle Ages disgusts him, and at the same time he is obsessed by the fear of remaining without a religion, a fear which has been inculcated into his mind by his entire upbringing. Calm and cold-blooded people think it all out, and become confirmed Atheists. Not so, however, those others with fervent, burning souls! Poor Tolstoy, in the wrath of his old age, destroys and insults the very elements on which he has founded and formed his life, and, having insulted them, goes to church as before, prays humbly among beggars, throws himself into a monastery, and dies of despair on the highway.