Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/810

 796 PAINTING passages in the Old Testament, as devoid of all beauty, "not like the gods of the Pantheon catching the eye by outward attractions, but conquering the heart by the power of his word." It was not until the close of the 8th century that Adrian I. decreed, in a papal bull, that Christ should be represented with all the attributes of divine beauty which art could lend him. Nearly a century previous, in 692, the council of Constantinople had authorized the direct human representation of the Saviour in place of the symbolical. The most interesting monuments of Christian art during the first three centuries are to be found on the walls or ceilings of the catacombs of Rome. In the catacomb of St. Calixtus were discovered many representations of Scriptural stories, parables, and symbols, intermingled occasionally with some of the more innocent pagan allegories, and also a portrait of Christ as the Good Shep- herd, the earliest known to have been painted, and which probably formed the type for others. Kugler ascribes to these works "much gran- deur of arrangement" and "a peculiar solem- nity and dignity of style." As distinguished from pagan work of the same or an earlier period, they may be said to exhibit more spir- ituality in the conception of the human form, holiness of expression and strength of character being preferred to beauty of features or body, and a strong predilection for natural objects, as animals, leaves, or flowers. When the estab- lishment of Christianity by Constantine enabled the pious decorators of the early church to emerge from the gloom of the catacombs, they transferred their labors to the numerous edi- fices dedicated to the new religion. But before Christian art had time to attain a healthy ex- pansion or assume a distinctive form, civil com- motions and barbaric invasions checked its de- velopment in Italy, and in the 6th century Constantinople became its principal seat. Mural painting in fresco or distemper now gave way to mosaic work, and for four or five centuries the most interesting remains of pictorial art are the mosaics in the churches and the miniature illuminations of Bibles and other sacred books. (See MOSAIC, and MINIATURE PAINTING.) Du- ring the 8th and 9th centuries the iconoclasts of the eastern church pursued a systematic de- struction of works of art; but notwithstand- ing the disfavor into which Greek artists and their works thereby fell, Constantinople re- mained from the 7th to the 13th century the great capital of the arts, and during that period the Byzantine style was predominant in every branch of them. Byzantine painting was prac- tised almost exclusively for religious purposes, and about the commencement of the 9th centu- ry assumed a hierarchical stiffness of type which has descended unaltered to the present day, although genuine Byzantine pictures are now produced only in a few places in Russia and Greece. The characteristics of the school are length and ineagreness of limbs, stiffness of figure, features almost void of expression, long and narrow eyes, a disagreeable blackish green coloring of the flesh, various conventional atti- tudes and accessories having no foundation in nature, and a profusion of gilding. The colors, though bright, were raw and crude, and com- monly painted on a gold background. The painters were monks or persons connected with monasteries, who formed a sort of perpetual craft or guild for the manufacture of pictures ; and the subjects were almost as fixed as the style, consisting of the Madonna and child throned, and representations of sacred history or allegory. The capture of Constantinople by the Venetians in 1204, by promoting a greater intercourse between the Byzantines and Ital- ians, is considered to have given the first im- pulse toward the revival of the arts in Italy and the West. Many Byzantine painters passed into Italy and Germany, carrying with them their technical methods and their types of form and color, which were followed more or less ser- vilely by the Italians who studied under them ; and at Venice, Pisa, and Siena were planted early in the 13th century the germs of what subsequently became the leading schools of Italy. But while in the eastern empire the influence of a slowly expiring faith was still manifest in the manners, the literature, and the art of the people, in Italy, after centuries of turmoil, a new and vigorous civilization, large- ly impregnated with the Gothic element, but inspired and directed by Christianity alone, had appeared, under which it was impossible that art should not show a new development. The artist, sharing in the religious fervor with which every occupation was pursued, painted for the glory of Christianity and the good of his fellow men, and, finding the shrunken and withered forms of the Byzantine school insufficient for the purposes of his art, was led to a closer imi- tation of nature. One by one the familiar con- ventionalisms, which centuries of use had sanc- tified, were thrown off by bold innovators, un- til in the early part of the 16th century the culminating glory of the art was reached. The successive steps were slow, and not until the commencement of the 14th century can paint- ing be said to have freed itself in any con- siderable degree from its Byzantine trammels. Sculpture, under the lead of Nicolo Pisano, the greatest artist of the 13th century, considerably preceded painting in the order of development. The painters were hampered by a mode of treatment handed down to them for centuries, from which it was difficult at once to emanci- pate themselves ; while the sculptors, ignorant as yet of the marbles of the Greeks, were obliged to employ as models the every-day ob- jects which surrounded them. Hence of neces- sity there grew up among the latter a system of observation and study of nature which soon ?ave an original character to their works. To Giovanni Cimabue of Florence, who died about 1302, it has been customary to ascribe the revival of painting in Italy. Giunta da Pisa, who preceded him, was a painter of some