Civilisation1969

Narrator:
It may be good for us to leave our daily chores and move in high company for a short time, but this convention by which the events in biblical or secular history could be enacted only by magnificent physical specimens, handsome and well-groomed, went on for too long, till the middle of the 19th century in fact. Only a very few artists, perhaps only Caravaggio and Rembrandt in the first rank, were independent enough to stand against it. And I think that the convention, which was an element in the so-called grand manner, became a deadening influence on the European mind. It deadened our sense of truth, even our sense of moral responsibility, and led as we see in modern art to a hideous reaction.