Medieval Painting Had Presented Life as an Allegory; the Renaissance

Medieval painting had presented life as an allegory; the Renaissance preferred realism. The Medieval painters posed their figures frontally, impersonally; the Renaissance developed psychological characterization and the art of portraiture. Medieval painting dealt in stereotypes; the Renaissance concerned itself with individuals. Space in medieval painting was organized in a succession of planes over which the eye traveled as over a series of episodes. The Renaissance created unified space and the simultaneous seeing of the whole. It discovered landscape, created the illusion of distance, and opened up endless vistas upon the physical loveliness of the world. (Joseph Machlis and Kristine Forney, The Enjoyment of Music: An Introduction to Perceptive Listening)
This passage exemplifies a(n) _____.

A) conditional statement
B) argument
C) unsupported assertion
D) report
E) illustration