com). There was nothing obscene about the beauty of David, not even in the eyes of Catholic Italy, and long after the wars of the Italian city-states have ended, the glory of David lingers in the mind.

Chapter 3: Islamic detour

It must not be forgotten that many great, artistically-inclined civilizations existed beyond that of the borders of West: for example, remember the Islamic world during the Middle Ages. But upon gazing at the works of this great civilization it is essential to remember that artistic conventions differ greatly than from their Western counterparts -- pictorial and figurative representations of individuals were not prized as they were in Italy, for example, because of the Islamic injunction against perfect reproductions. But this does not mean that human likenesses were not represented at all, as can be seen in a typical depiction of a tympanum, from a fifteenth-century tombstone of the town...
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