Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/272

Rh the west, the ancient civilisation had retained its life and vigour. Here the country was thickly covered with Roman monuments including sculptures which, coarse and unskilful as they for the most part were, afforded models, in some measure characteristic, of ancient styles and modes of treatment.

But the productions of these schools abundantly show that other sources of instruction and inspiration were also open to them in the works of Byzantine art—an art which, in its best forms, was of a far more living and potent character than the provincial Roman art.

FIG. 165. FIG. 166.

The principal examples of Byzantine design offered to the artists of the West were the manuscript illuminations and the carvings in ivory, that were possessed in considerable numbers by the great monastic establishments, especially those of Cluny and its dependencies, which were the active centres of artistic production in the early Middle Ages.

Of these manuscripts many are still preserved in the National Library of Paris and elsewhere; and the miniatures with which they are profusely adorned are worthy of attentive examination. These miniatures afford a very different notion of Byzantine art from that which is derived from the writings of Vasari, from the formalised productions of the school of Mount Athos, or even from the splendid mosaics of Venice and Ravenna. They exhibit little of the stiffness, inelegance, and want of life and movement that are commonly conceived