Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/21

 THE PAINTERS OF FLORENCE

I

CIMABUE

1240-1302

origin of Florentine painting still remains wrapt in obscurity. But it is certain that in the dark and troubled times that followed the barbarian invasion and the fall of the Roman Empire, the practice of art never wholly died away in Italy. After the dissolution of Charlemagne's Empire, in the ninth century, it probably reached the lowest ebb, and it is only in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that signs of renewed activity, both among painters and mosaic-workers, can be traced. Two chief influences are apparent in the rude style of the native artists of mediæval Italy. On the one hand we have the Roman tradition that lingered on in the early mosaics of Ravenna, and in the remains of painting and sculpture which adorn the Catacombs. The civilisation of ancient Rome had sunk too deeply into the heart of Italy to be quite forgotten. Not only in the Eternal City, but all through Italy, remnants of classical art, temples and sarcophagi, still kept alive the spark of