WOMAN IN ART
by their sign; Matthew, for instance, was known by a cherub, Mark by a lion, Luke's sign the ox, John's the eagle, and so on. Such symbols have not been easy to understand in our day, but rather difficult, as Chaucer's English, requiring close study.
The second reason for the slow unfolding of early art was the lack of books. The ignorance of the common people of those centuries would have been yet more dire but for the pictured legend and story. Such was a powerful means of teaching the youth; it gripped heart and mind.
The art that first represented the legends of Saints Agnes and Ursula must have been crude in form and perspective, but it preached unselfishness, purity, helpfulness, and other virtues needful for development of character in young womanhood. The pictures were not altogether beautiful, not perfect in drawing, but they pointed out the weeds of the heart to be plucked by the roots and destroyed. Art, character, the idea and perception of beauty were all crude in early years; were it not so these pages would not be written. It is of deep interest and help to trace development in womankind; the purifying of heart, broadening of mental vision and understanding as shown in various forms of art.
The Renaissance period really was born out of the mediaeval centuries; the legends and influence of early Christian teaching, going on through the Dark Ages almost unnoticed, furnished incentive and motifs for the world's most renowned painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, giving striking examples of the evolution of art.
"Saint Barbara," by Palma Vecchio, represents for us the evolution of an idea. She was the patron saint of armorers and fortifications, an armed Pallas of ancient mythology of the far east grafted onto an early legend of a Christian martyr, and in the fifteenth century appeared as a motif for a dozen or more of the Renaissance painters, because to the mind she was a picturesque character and in the religious sense she was a martyr; to men at arms she was a divinity, to young girls and women she was an example and patron saint. To appreciate her value to various minds we will note a few interesting points in the legend, with thanks to Mrs. Jameson for her preservation of ancient legends. It gives one trend of the spread of the Christian religion.
About the year 300 A. D.—so the legend runs—a certain rich nobleman of Heliopolis had a daughter famed for her beauty. To keep her to himself he imprisoned her in a high tower where no man could see her and ask her in marriage. From her lofty window the virtuous maid looked over valley and plain, mountain, river, and sky. The fathomless depths of blue, that night after
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