Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/775

Rh of Mount Athos, who manufacture pictures to pattern with. "almost the rapidity of machinery." M. Didron wished to have a copy of the code of instructions "drawn up under ecclesiastical authority," but "the artist, when solicited by M. Didron to sell 'cette bible de son art,' naïvely refused, on the simple ground that 'en perdant son Guide, il perdait son art; il perdait ses yeux et ses mains'"

Concerning later stages in the rise of the lay painter, it must suffice to say that from the time of Cimabue, who began to depart from the rigidly formal style of the priestly Byzantine artists, the lay element predominated. Amid a number of apparently nonclerical painters, only a few clerics are named; as Don Lorenzo, Fra Giovanni, Fra Philippo Lippi, Fra Bartolommeo. But meanwhile it is to be observed that these secular painters, probably at first, like the secular sculptors, assistants to the priests in their work, were occupied mainly and often exclusively with sacred subjects.

Along with this differentiation of the lay painter from the clerical painter there began a differentiation of lay painters from one another; and the facts show us a gradual beginning where imagination would have suggested only an abrupt beginning. As I learn from an academician, the first form of portrait (omitting some painted under a surviving classic influence in those earliest days before art was extinguished by the barbarians) was that of the donor of a sacred picture to a church or other ecclesiastical edifice, who was allowed to have himself represented in a corner of the picture on his knees with hands joined in supplication.

Something similar happened with another form of art. Landscapes made their first appearance as small and modest backgrounds to representations of sacred personages and incidents—backgrounds the composition of which displays an artificiality congruous with that of the figure-composition. In course of time this background assumed a greater importance, but still it long remained quite subordinate. After it had ceased to be a mere accompaniment, landscape-painting in its secularized form was but partially emancipated from figure-painting. When it grew into a recognized branch of art, the title "Landscape with figures," was still generally applicable; and down to our own day it has been thought needful to put in some living creatures. Only of late has landscape pure and simple, absolutely divorced from human life, become common.

Of course various classes and sub-classes of artists, broadly if not definitely marked off, are implied by these and other specialized kinds of paintings: some determined by the natures