Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v1.c4.48

v1.c4.48

It is a strange thing that nearly all the great religious art of the world is the work of races to whom this religion was foreign, not native, in its origin. To the painters of Europe, Christ and his apostles are figures whom they must picture with an effort of imagination, beings whose earthly life and natural surroundings were perfectly unknown to them; and, therefore, while clothing these sacred figures in garments of convention, the painters have set them in a background familiar to themselves, among peasants or townsfolk of their own time: the Arno Valley or the foothills of the Alps, the Franconian hills or green pastures of Flanders. It is not different with the Buddhist painters of China and Japan.