Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/40

 chamber” from the rows of fine pictures with which its walls were covered. After the 13th century the “masonry pattern” was disused for the lower parts of walls, and the chevrony and other stiff patterns for the borders were replaced by more flowing designs. The character of the painted figures became less monumental in style; greater freedom of drawing and treatment was adopted, and they cease to recall the archaic majesty and grandeur of the Byzantine mosaics.

It may be noted that during the 14th century wall-spaces unoccupied by figure-subjects were often covered by graceful flowing patterns, drawn with great freedom and rather avoiding geometrical repetition.



Fig. 12 from the church of Stanley St Leonard’s, Gloucestershire, is a good characteristic specimen of 14th-century decoration; it is on the walls of the chancel, filling up the spaces between the painted figures; the flowers are blue, and the lines red on a white ground. In some cases the motive of the design is taken from encaustic tiles, as at Bengeo Church, Herts, where the wall is divided into squares, each containing an heraldic lion. This imitative notion occurs during all periods—masonry, hanging curtains, tiles and architectural features such as niches and canopies being very frequently represented, though always in a simple decorative fashion with no attempt at actual deception—not probably from any fixed principle that shams were wrong, but because the good taste of the medieval painters taught them that a flat unrealistic treatment gave the best and most decorative effect. Thus in the 15th and 16th centuries the commonest forms of unpictorial wall-decoration were various patterns taken from the beautiful damasks and cut velvets of Sicily, Florence, Genoa and other places in Italy, some form of the “pine-apple” or rather “artichoke” pattern being the favourite (fig. 13), a design which,



developed partly from Oriental sources, and coming to perfection at the end of the 15th century, was copied and reproduced in textiles, printed stuffs and wall-papers with but little change down to the present century—a remarkable instance of survival in design. Fig. 14 is a specimen of 15th-century English decorative painting, copied from a 14th-century Sicilian silk damask. Diapers, powdering with flowers, sacred monograms and sprays of blossom were frequently used to ornament large surfaces in a simple way. Many of these are extremely beautiful (fig. 15).

. 14.—15th-century Wall-Painting, the design copied from a 13th-century Sicilian silk damask.

Subjects of Medieval Wall-Paintings.—In churches and domestic buildings alike the usual subjects represented on the walls were specially selected for their moral and religious teaching, either stories from the Bible and Apocrypha, or from the lives of saints, or, lastly, symbolical representations setting forth some important theological truth, such as figures of virtues and vices, or the Scala humanae salvationis, showing the perils and temptations of the human soul in its struggle to escape hell and gain paradise—a rude foreshadowing of the great scheme worked out with such perfection by Dante in his Commedia. A fine example of this subject exists on the walls of Chaldon church, Surrey. In the selection of saints for paintings in England, those of English origin are naturally most frequently represented, and different districts had certain local favourites. St Thomas of Canterbury was one of the most widely popular; but few examples now remain, owing to Henry VIII.’s special dislike to this saint and the strict orders that were issued for all pictures of him to be destroyed. For a similar reason most paintings of saintly popes were obliterated.

. 15.—Powderings used in 15th-century Wall-Painting.

Methods of Execution.—Though Eraclius, who probably wrote before the 10th century, mentions the use of an oil-medium, yet till about the 13th century mural paintings appear to have, been executed in the most simple way, in tempera mainly with earth colours applied on dry stucco; even when a smooth stone surface was to be painted a thin coat of whitening or fine gesso was laid as a ground. In the 13th century, and perhaps earlier, oil was commonly used both as a medium for the pigments and also to make a varnish to cover and fix tempera paintings. The Van Eycks introduced the use of dryers of a better kind than had yet been used, and so largely extended the application of oil-painting. Before their time it seems to have been the custom to dry wall-paintings laboriously by the use of charcoal braziers, if they were in a position where the sun could not shine upon them. This is