Renaissance miracles

Most art forms – like Miss Jean Brodie (and the rest of ) – have their primes.

They may then stagger on, growing gradually more feeble, while still enjoying occasional highs that match their former glories, but their best days are behind them.

Very occasionally, as with the epic poem, their reign can last for millennia. But as a rule, managing to hang in there for two or three hundred years is pretty usgood going.

Take the symphony, which held sway from Haydn and Mozart in the second half of the 18th century until Sibelius and Vaughan Williams in the first half of the 20th.

The heyday of the altarpiece lasted roughly from the late-13th century until the