Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/316

290 of Cimabué, who was the first who painted the feet of Christ placed one upon the other and affixed by one nail only.

The legend is in intaglio, and consists of the following words thus arranged:—

It is remarkable that these characters are completely of Roman form, because the back of this crucifix has the date mcccxii, but this M. Bard says is undoubtedly a date denoting the addition to it of a circle enclosing the figure of the Lamb, and four other circles, circumscribing the four evangelistic symbols, like those on the external stone of the prepositorium of the apsis of the ancient church at Serigny in the diocese of Dijon.

This interesting crucifix, which M. Bard assigns to the latter part of the fifth century, is an evidence of the gradual triumph of artistic feeling over popular repugnance, by first half-clothing the figure before venturing to represent it in that naked state to which we have now been so long accustomed. He compares the mosaic crucifix in St. Clement's church at Rome, which has arabesques of a Romano-Byzantine type, with some crucifixes in the South of France of the thirteenth century, with one in St. Martin's church at Lucca, and with the magnificent crucifix in the library at Sienna, which are all of the same date, and all, except about the middle, quite naked.

Alluding to the ancient Hieratic Paintings formerly in the catacombs and crypts, but now mostly removed to the Vatican, M. Bard says that the earliest portraitures of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and of the Apostles, were brought from the East and adopted without any variation by all artists until the beginning of the eleventh century, when a few ventured to depart from them. He states also that very early paintings were destitute of chiaroscuro or any blending of their tints; and that although in the sixth century, the mechanical process of painting had been greatly modified, artists of every kind continued faithful to this traditional portraiture and hard oriental type until after the tenth century—the third period of Romano-Byzantine art—which it is easy to perceive by carefully comparing the mosaics of various periods contained in the several edifices above mentioned.

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