Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/56

Rh HAL DECORATION 14th century wall -spaces unoccupied by figure -subjects were often covered by graceful flowing patterns, drawn with great freedom of hand and rather avoiding geome trical repetition. Fig. 13, 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, fill ing 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 con taining an heraldic lion. This i English 14th-century Wall- mutative notion occurs during p ai, till(T 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 prin ciple that shams were wrong, but because the good taste of the mediaeval painters taught them that a flat unrealistic treatment gave the best and most decorative effect. Thus in the 15th and 16th centuries the com monest 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 &quot;pine-apple&quot; or rather &quot;arti choke&quot; pattern being the favourite (fig. 14), a design 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, FIG. 14. loth-century Wall-Painting, taken from a Genoese or Florentine velvet 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. 15 is a specimen of 15th-century English decorative painting, copied from a 14th-century Sicilian silk damask. Diapers, powderings 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. 16). Subjects tf Mcdiseml IVall- Paintings.- In churches and domestic Flu. 15. 15th-century Wall-Painting, the design copied from a 13th- century Sicilian silk damask. or, lastly, symbolical representations setting forth some important theological truth, such as figures of Virtues and Vices, or the Scala Humanse, 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 per fection by Dante in his Com/media. A fine example of this subject exists on the walls of Chaldon Church, Sur rey. 1 In the selection of saints for paintings iu England, those of English origin are na turally most frequently represented, and dif ferent districts had cer tain local favourites. St Thomas of Canter bury was one of the most widely popular ; but few exam] iles 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 ob literated. Methods of Execu tion. Though Erac- FlG _ 1 6. Powderings used in 15th-century bus, who probably Wail-Painting. 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 ap plied on dry stucco ; even when a smooth stone surfac e was to be painted a thin coat of whitening or fine gesso was laid as a 1 See Collections of Surrey Archasol. Soc., vol. v. part ii., 1871. A useful though necessarily incomplete list of English mediaeval mural paintings has been published by the Science and Art Depart., S. Kens. Mus. Fresh wall-paintings are constantly being discovered under later coats of whitewash, so that any list needs frequent additions.