Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/37

Rh the immediate successors of those times, believing all to be totally ruined, planted their vines on the site, when these chambers remained buried in the earth ; the rooms thus buried were named “grottoes” by the moderns who discovered them, while the paintings found in them were called “grotesque.” The Ostrogoths being exterminated by Narses, the ruins of Rome were again inhabited, however miserably, when a hundred years after came Constans II, emperor of Constantinople, who, though amicably received by the Romans, yet despoiled and carried away all that, more by chance than by the good will of those who had devastated her, had remained to the wretched city of Rome. It is true that he did not enjoy his prey, for, being driven by a tempest to Sicily, he was there deservedly slain by his own people, leaving his spoils, his empire, and his life, the prey of fortune. But she, not yet content with the miseries of Rome, and to the end that the unhappy city might never regain her ravaged treasures, led an army of Saracens to the conquest of Sicily, and these foes transported not only the wealth of the Sicilians, but the spoils of Rome herself, to Alexandria, to the great shame and loss of Italy and all Christendom. Thus, whatever had escaped ruin from the pontiffs, and more particularly from St. Gregory, (who is said to have decreed banishment against all statues and other ornaments remaining in the buildings) was finally destroyed by the hands of this most wicked Greek. No trace, no vestige of excellence in art, now remained ; the men who followed immediately on these unhappy times, proceeded in a rude and uncultivated manner in all things, but more especially in painting and sculpture ; yet, impelled by nature, and refined, to a certain degree, by the air they breathed, they set themselves to work, not according to the rules of art, which they no longer possessed, but each according to the quality of his own talent.

The arts of design—being reduced to this state during and after the domination of the Lombards in Italy—continued to deteriorate in all that was attempted, so that nothing could