Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/22

2 antique culture in the heart of the people, and debased pagan types figured in the earliest representation of Christian subjects. This influence was always re-appearing in one form or another—in the classical architecture of churches, such as the Baptistery or San Miniato of Florence, and the decorative sculpture which we still see on twelfth century façades in Umbria, or again in the antique forms adopted by the Cosmati artists and mosaic-workers of mediæval Rome. On the other hand there was the influence of Byzantium, which from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries supplied not only Eastern but Western Europe with its art, and became the medium through which classical traditions were handed on to the masters of France, Germany and Italy. This influence was chiefly felt in Venice and in Sicily, but at one time it held considerable sway in Tuscany, especially at Siena, where Byzantine traditions still prevailed in Giotto's time. To a certain extent the same influences were apparent in the Florentine art of the day, although here they were mingled with other elements, and the lifelike feeling and spontaneous vivacity of native art asserted itself more fully at an earlier period. But even in Florence, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the technique of artists was, for the most part, learnt at Constantinople, and the types in use were those laid down by the second Council of Nicea, and rigidly followed in the representation of Christian subjectssubjects. [sic] It was only towards the close of the thirteenth century that the great revival came, and the strong tide of the new Christian art swept away the lingering remnants of decadent classicism and effete