“What does it matter?” he said. “We should not ask⁠—for in the time when it was made they never did. It was not created by some wonderful and well-advertised single genius. It is an anonymous product, anonymous and communal. Moreover, it is very advanced Middle Ages⁠—Gothic, signum mortificationis . No more of the palliating and beautifying that the Roman epoch thought proper to a depiction of the Crucifixion: here you have no royal crown, no majestic triumph over martyrdom and the world. It is the most utter and radical declaration of submission to suffering and the weakness of the flesh. Pessimistic and ascetic⁠—it is Gothic art alone which is truly that. You are probably not familiar with the work of Innocent III , ‘ De miseria humanae conditionis ’: an exceedingly witty piece of writing⁠—it was written at the end of the twelfth century, but this was the earliest art to furnish an illustration to it.”