PAINTING
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PAINTING
C. From the Iconoclast Conlronersy to the School of
Mount Athos. — The Iconoclast controversy (725-850)
arrested the development of this powerful school at its
height. The mo\'ement originated in Islam as a fierce
outburst of the Semitic idealism of the desert. The
Iconoclast emperors were by no means barbarians, but
enUghtened princes, dilettanti in their way, very often
devotees and theologians; such in particular were Leo
the Isaurian and Theophilus. These emperors prided
themselves on being worshippers "in spirit and in
truth", and proscribed art only in its "idolatrous", or
religious, applications. Feminine devotion in the end
triumphed over these scruples. Meanwhile there had
been wide devastation; the convents had suffered
especially ; and when the veneration of images was re-
established, nearly all the churches had lost their
ornaments, the mosaics had been torn down, and the
frescoes whitewashed. As often happens, however,
the Church came out of the conflict more vigorous
than ever. A new Byzantine School, very different
from the first, and a second golden age were to com-
mence. The first Byzantine School was an historical
one, the second was wholly liturgical and didactic.
Each decorative element assumed a symbolical value.
Christ the king, surrounded by the celestial hierarchy,
looks down from the vaults; in the sanctuary, behind
the altar, reigns the Virgin, seated, holding the Child
in her lap as a figure of the Church, the "living throne
of the Almighty"; the rest of the apse presents the
precursorsof Christ, the bishops, doctors, and two great
Eucharistic scenes, the "Communion of the Apostles"
and the "Divine Liturgy " ; on the walls are developed
the lives of the saints and martyrs and that of Christ.
In the story of the Gospel the order of time is broken
and from the mass of miracles a few great scenes are
detached which the Church celebrates at the twelve
principal feasts. Two essential ideas are brought into
prominence: the Redemption and the Resurrection — •
the scene of Calvary and the Descent into Limbo. In
the narthex, the Life of the Virgin assumes a novel
importance, while the Old Testament, on the contrary,
tends to disappear.
Four important monuments in the East mark the apogee of the new style; these are: St. Luke in Phocis, the Nea Moni of Chios, the beautiful church of Daphni near Athens, and, in Russia, that of St. Sophia at Kiev. All four elate from the tenth century, but show none of the perfection of tletail and precision of execution which make the mosaics of S. Vitale a fin- ished type of painting; but the decorative effect is beyond compare. Nothing in the art of painting can surpass these cliurches encased in golden shells and peopled by a host of gaunt, colossal figures. At this date most of the Gospel compositions were virtually stamped with a iVe varietur; for each of them a group of artistic geniuses had provided a permanent type.
A more important fact is that at this time the Byzantine style conquered the West and became truly universal. At about the same time the West was undergoing a singular upheaval: the old feudal- ism was separating itself from the soil and setting itself in motion. For two centuries the exodus of the Crusades was to continue, marking the beginning of a new civilization for Europe. Byzantine colonics appeared in Italy, notably those of Venice, in the North, and of Sicily, in the South, forming hotbeds of Byzantism at the two ends of the Peninsula. Within thirty years (1063-95) Venice accompUshed the marvel of St. Mark's which she was to go on decorating and perfecting for three centuries (the narthex is of the thirteenth century, the baptistry of the fourteenth century). In the neighbourhood of \'enice there are examples at Torcello, Murano, and Trieste, while the twelfth century witnesses in Sicily, under the Norman princes, the appearance of four incomparable churches: that of Martorana (1143), that of Cefalil (1148), the
palace church at Palermo (c. 1160), and the Cathedral
of Monreale (c. 1180). Of all these masterpieces St.
Mark's is the best known, but only from the Pantocra-
tor in the apse at Cefalil is it possible to realize to
what beauties of nobility and melancholy, and to
what majesty of style, the art attained.
For the sake of completeness, mention must be made of the numerous icons, the various types of the Madonna (Panagia, Nicopceia, Hodegetria), of the miniature paintings in manuscripts (which were im- portant for the diffusion of motives), of enamels such as those in the Pala d'Oro of St. Mark's, and of the small portable mosaic pictures, Uke the valuable diptych preserved at the Opera del Duomo, at Flor- ence. The task of the Byzantine School was accom- plished, but it did not at once disappear. In the four- teenth century it produced the fine mosaic cycle of Kahrie-djami and at the beginning of the fifteenth century, within the solitude of Athos, shut in by the Mussulman world, it continued to produce and covered all Eastern Europe with countless paint- ings of the school of Panselinos. With the twelfth century, however, it had fulfilled its purpose, and the further development of religious painting was in the West.
III. Religious Painting in the West, to the Cinque Cento. — A. North of the Alps. — Through the medium of the monks and the Crusades all Europe was rendered fruitful by the Byzantine School. From the Byzantine a Western art was to develop, in which the loss in external luxury was gradually supplied by pliancy and power of expression. A distinction must here be made between the art of the countries north of the Alps, and that of the southern countries. Little need be said of the former: the Romanesque churches seem to have been very rich in paintings, but most of them are lost, and in the Gothic churches, which soon after began to be erected, there was little room for mural painting; stained glass took its place. But the personality of the artist was scarcely felt in this art, and as to drawing and subjects, stained glass is scarcely more than a reflexion of miniature painting. Its study, therefore, has but a purely iconographic interest. It began in France with the ^^^ndows of St- Denis (1140-44), and the school of St-Denis spread throughout the North, to Chartres (c. 1145), York, Le Mans (c. 1155), Angers, and Poitiers. During the fol- lowing century the school of Notre-Dame-de-Paris played the same part.
The iconography of these windows is essentially symbolic, and the allegorical spirit of the Middle Ages is nowhere more apparent. It was an old Christian idea that each person and fact of the Old Testament was an image prefiguring a person of the New. This idea only expanded with full wealth of detail in the Gothic art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. With wonderful subtlety of interpretation the attempt was made to discover the most unforeseen, and some- times the oldest, relations. Books such as those of Rabanus Maurus, or the "Speculum ecclesiae" of Ho- norius of Autun, or the "Glossa ordinaria" of Wal- afrid Strabo, must be read to obtain an idea of the spirit in which the Middle Age read its Bible and pic- tured it. In the "Be.stiaries", too, which supplied material for this art, there is a fantastic natural his- tory, a singular menagerie, each curiosity of which conceals some pious allegory. The material universe was transformed into a sort of vast psychomachia, an immense system of metaphors. No other school ever equalled this astounding idealism.
B. In Italy. — (1) Giotto and the Giottesques. — After the fall of Rome and the Empire, Italy was for centuries in a most miserable condition. In the sixth and seventh centuries the Iconoclast reaction sent in the direction of Rome a host of Orientals, principally monks, who were the chief victims of the persecution. It it probably to these Greeks that we owe the frescoes,
