IN MEMORIAM
BERNARD MOSES

:,-

THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART

THE

MINISTRY OF FINE ART

THE HAPPINESS OF LIFE

JSSSAVS ON VARIOUS ARTS

T. GAMBIER PARRY

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1886

BERNARD

DEDICATION AND APOLOGY

To the many friends at whose desire these Essays are
published I dedicate them, with an earnest apology for
the too bold attempt to put into such limited forms sub-
jects which can only be adequately treated in volumes.

They are but sketches, and pretend to be no more,
on subjects which best minister to life's happiness by
leading it aside to look beyond it.

T. G. P.

HIGHNAM COURT,
GLOUCESTER, June 1886.

78'77'C

ERRATA

FOR

page

line READ

it is not so, an artist, &c.

8-9 it is not so. An artist, &c.

morall ight

3 moral light

overcame

. 67

last overcome

Aldebrandine

19 Aldobrandine

lithostratos

i*5

6 lithostrotos

Julio

. 147

1 8 Giulio

Tsaurian

. 168

1 8 Isaurian

St. Philibertse .

. 219

1 6 St. Philibert

Deiderius

224

3 Desiderius

movements

. 276

17 monuments

p. 160

. 3i7

note 2 pp. 186-188

thec hurch

355

note the church

CONTENTS

ESSAY I

PAGE

THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART . i

ESSAY II
THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART TO COMMON LIFE . 21

ESSAY III
THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART TO SPIRITUAL LIFE . 34

ESSAY IV
FINE ART IN ARCHAEOLOGY 51

ESSAY V

THE MINISTRY OF COLOUR TO SCULPTURE AND

ARCHITECTURE 62

Part I COLOUR AND SCULPTURE . . . 62
Part II ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING . 97

VI 11 CONTENTS

ESSAY VI

PAGE

A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF MOSAIC . . . 114

Part I ANCIENT . . . . . .114

Part II CHRISTIAN . . . . .160

ESSAY VII

THE ART AND THE ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING,

ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL . . . . .211

ESSAY VIII

THE ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS . . . 263

Part I PURPOSE EARLY CHRISTIAN EXAMPLES

PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST CRUCIFIXION . 263
Part II EMBLEMATIC FIGURES STYLE MOTIVE 314

ESSAY IX

THE BUILDERS AND BUILDINGS OF THE ABBEY OF ST.

PETER AT GLOUCESTER, NOW THE CATHEDRAL . 338

APPENDIX
THE METHOD OF SPIRIT FRESCO PAINTING . 363

ESSAY I

THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART

T^INE ART comes of the union of love and labour,
for without love it has no sufficient motive, and
without labour it can have no success. As all ideas
cannot be put in words, art is in some form or other
a human necessity ; and in the general estimate of
human happiness, the result is perhaps not to be de-
plored that there is no other subject that in theory and
practice is treated with so much liberty. It is so easy
to talk about it, and so easy and pleasant to produce a
modicum of effect in it, that it is the world's favourite ;
as an amusement to the multitude, who care not to look
below the surface of anything, and as a bright refresh-
ment for the many who are wearied by the hardness of
busy life.

So for these, and for much higher purposes than
these, Fine Art may be said to have a mission in the
world ; at least, if by that we understand the employ-
ment of cultivated faculties, such as in eloquence, poetry,
or any other combination of soul and sense by which
men affect each other ; and as each one's talent may
be, his mission is to do that talent's work. Thus genius
finds its purpose, and had best follow its own bent,
whether in prose or poetry. The genius of the artist
needs both, for the real and the ideal, which in their
general meaning answer to them, are the body and

2 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

soul of all art ; for in the broad sense of its require-

ments, realism is but fidelity to nature's laws, without

which all would be distortion and discord, and idealism

'!' : :'-. is fyut : ,ttie; play of imagination, drawing fresh notes from

the great instrument of nature's music. But all the

'. i ':' vX^orld -ne.ecj -not-'be critics, and for their

happiness they
had better not ; for the strife over the real and ideal,
inflamed by the differences of taste and temper, can
never be fought out till the inherent and misleading
varieties of thought and sense cease to exist in human
character.

Art is no light matter for those who would really
master it. Its science is as needful as its poetry ; for
its works may be ideally conceived, but they need to
be produced as things of reality to bring them within
reach of comprehension. It is this compound nature
that gives them all their charm and power ; on their
material side as things of skill, on their spiritual side as
the interpreters of the intellect, the emotions, and the
passions of men ; and thus it is that art approaches so
closely to our affections, and can become the companion
of our lives. The soul of art may sound a mere poetical
expression, but it is as true as the plainest prose ; for
just as in ourselves the life of the soul is the invisible
source of all that gives value to our outward forms, so
that mysterious life which glows from within the cold
marble of the sculptor, or gleams from beneath the
surface of the painter's art, is that without which their
works are worthless, but before which we bow in
acknowledgment of that soul in them which claims
sympathy with our own.

A writer on Art has difficulties unknown to scien-
tific literature. Without precision science would become
a wilderness ; so its language is simple, clear, and
definite ; but in art, of which the first element is liberty,
language can only hope to express its elasticity by

i THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART 3

adopting a pliancy suited to it. Words must often
be taken on trust. If science were to demand of her
sister a rigid definition of grace or beauty, and to
require their comparison without confusion of terms,
or the difference between power and vigour, in their
artistic sense, or the definition of such qualities as
freshness, purity, harmony, all which have equally and
distinctly a moral as well as a material signification,
the answer would, at least, not be easy. A wide
margin must be allowed ; and, lastly, there is the
word " art " itself, a very bane of letters, with a signifi-
cation wide enough to embrace every work of hand or
brain, and yet so utterly inadequate as to be useless
without an adjective. The art of the mechanic is the
embodiment of his skill ; the art of the artist is the
embodiment of his ideas : but the best artist needs to be
half mechanic, for though his genius is a thing of spirit,
his labour is upon things of material ; and as his work is
to give form and consistency to what is ethereal and ideal,
he needs as much the mechanic's skill as the poet's fire.

The first step in a student's life is to divest his mind
of all idea that genius can dispense with labour. Art-
feeling is not sentimentality nor art-practice ingenuity.
A good eye and nimble fingers are great natural advan-
tages ; but let him beware of them, for they are the
qualities of a talent that is painfully likely to run away
with itself, and without training can only come to grief.
Let him approach nature as something to love and work
with, as something so deep and full as takes a life to
learn. Be his disposition what it may, be the ultimate
object of his study what it may, the same devotion, the
same labour, the grasp of the same great principles by
which his mind is trained to master what his hand is
trained to do, make the one and only grammar of suc-
cess for all.

The student's next step is to learn all about his

4 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

materials, and not to leave them haphazard on trust, as
though such mechanical and material things were be-
neath his notice. He has some good examples to the
contrary from men who, valuing their talents as worthy
of fame, and their works worthy of durability, mastered
and supervised the whole detail of their art, from
the times of Apelles, who painted the portrait of Alex-
ander the Great, with his lads all about him working up
his colours, to those of Pietro Perugino surrounded by
his pupils, training them to their business, in what he
called not his studio but his shop. The third step is a
long one from youth to age, to realise to himself the
dignity of an artist's office and duty to the world ; and
to cultivate a manly vigour as the tone of mind, and a
pure freshness as the disposition of heart, with which he
will certainly be best able to perform it. Manliness is
the corrective of that sentimentality which is art's bane ;
and clear and fresh is the atmosphere that invigorates
an artist's life, breathing health into all his impressions,
thoughts, and works. The tenderest subject, the most
exalted strain of religion, the utmost refinement of
poetry, are no exceptions. ' Morbid humour and weak
sentiment mar them ; but just as a strong man's fingers
touch an instrument of music with the surest delicacy,
the sculptor and the painter prove the same result, that
the manliest mind, in the purity of its health, as tender
as it is strong, is best able to stir to anger or to melt to
tears.

And this is no less the case in subjects altogether
apart from any direct human interests, or any such as
appeal to the emotions stirred by the incidents of daily
life or history ; but in such as external nature affords
to those with capacity to comprehend them, it is by the
healthy strength of deeply human thought that its effects
are best apprehended and illustrated. Ask the artist,
ask the poet, sensible to such impressions, what it is in

I THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART 5

his pursuits that so absorbs him, and he will reply that
in all the things and circumstances of existence he
traces the presence of a hidden life : that if he studies
with so deep devotion the forms and features of the
material world, it is so because in them he reads the
great character of a language to which the depth of his
own nature responds. The universe seems his own,
overwhelming him by its sublimity, encouraging him by
its beauty, and thus he loves to write or paint these
things, that he may clothe in tangible, visible, enduring
forms the deep thoughts which all these things sug-
gested to him ; and to interpret to men with less
insight than himself those signs of power and beauty,
wisdom and beneficence, which God's creative finger-
marks have left traced and tinted, engraved and
stamped on everything.

Here is a great motive which suggests the question,
"What is the purpose of fine art?" i.e. is any purpose
assignable as the basis of its existence that distin-
guishes it from all other subjects ? The arts which
compose it are totally distinct in ideal and in execution,
and every artist appears to have a special purpose in
every work he produces. Is there then no general
purpose which binds them all together? The common
broad division of subjects into science, art, and litera-
ture, indicate some clear definition ; and of these, science
and literature appear to tell their purpose at once and
plainly, but fine art is so wide and various in its
nature and its works that it does not so. Music and
architecture are essentially constructive, painting and
sculpture are representative : . yet there is one quality
that links them all, and what is that but the expression
of the sense of beauty ?

It is the element of beauty that characterises all
fine art. Where other arts, as those of the artificer or
manufacturer, infringe upon it, as many do in many

6 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

ways, it is that element of beauty that blends their
outlines. The sense of beauty, and the desire to
express it, is the vital spark of an artist's impulse,
and it may be aroused as much by moral as by
material Nature. Some motive drawn from history,
religion, or the events of daily life, or from effects of
external nature, may have interested his imagination,
and he seizes on a subject for a picture. It is easy to
perceive how the sense of physical beauty may have
arrested him, and have engrossed his powers ; but even
where no visible beauty is present, the admiration of
his moral sense has engaged him, as by the beauty of
fidelity, the beauty of self-devotion, of heroism, of the
elements of a great character, of noble actions, of
charity, life, and truth, all of them subjects of effective
illustration, even where very little of physical or
material beauty appeared. An artist may be com-
missioned to do a work irksome to himself, and it is so
because there is no form or character of beauty in it to
which his sense, i.e. his moral or physical perception, can
respond. Where his impulse is, there is beauty. The
effect of beauty is to engage affection, and its power is
irresistible. We love what is beautiful ; we cannot love
what is hideous. Devoted love blinds the eyes where
beauty shines through some transcendent loveliness of
character, or where a great and noble one commands that
admiration which needs but one touch of nature to
kindle love. It does so where no form or feature of
external beauty may exist. So too it is the beauty of
structure in the perfect union of great forces of nature,
such as weight and equilibrium, with perfect proportion
ideally and harmoniously wrought together, as in archi-
tecture, which is the beauty of power in repose. Even
horror, fury, or desolation may be so intimately con-
nected with some form or character of beauty in the
artist's moral sense as to have impelled him to its

i THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART 7

expression ; such as the beauty of grief in view of ruin,
the beauty of intensest sympathy with either the cause
or the sufferer from the fury which agonised it, the
beauty of pathos, and even of death. So in music and
in sculpture, it is the rhythmic beauty of form and
sounds into which the artist is impelled to clothe and
to express his thoughts. In external nature, where
man has not marred it, all is beautiful, in calm or storm,
in fertility or in desert. So too in much of animal
life, and in the exquisite cosmos of all created things.
The sense of moral or physical beauty is the source of all
art's motive. That beauty gained the artist's love, and
his labour realised it. The purpose of all fine art is
tJie^expression of the sense of bea^ity.

But why and what is art's existence? what is the
mystery that lies at the bottom of that necessity for it
that all mankind has felt from the prehistoric carver of
things and ornaments to the most civilised and most
thoughtful of the modern world ? The existence of
art is at once a testimony and an appeal ; the witness
to and the appeal from that which by its irresistible
force obliges us to recognise it as a reality, a reality
irrespective of time and space, of life or death, always
urgent for attention a witness to a power beyond
mortal grasp or range of sense, a power that asserts
itself as commanding our respect, an appeal like a
voice ever sounding in our ears, as from a living
source, that we cannot refuse to listen to ; its existence
is a mystery, and is inexplicable, else it were no
mystery ; but mysteries inexplicable exist as facts,
and this one of art's existence is so ; and as a fact
it is that man in every age and in every condition
has been and is its pupil, its servant, its disciple, com-
manded by it, blessed by it, benefited by it, because
the voice of it, the voice of spiritual and physical
beauty, is one that he has no power to resist, for it

8 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

comes from the divine source of his own self and of all
things else, and speaks, calls, appeals to him from and
for a higher life than that of sense, and stirs him in
the deepest depths of his being. It is that sense of
divine beauty that masters him ; and his art is the
feeble expression of his sense of it ; his acknowledgment
and his worship of that which has cast across his path
of mortal toil the light of its life and the shadow of its
reality.

The truism that " a poet is born, not made," is often
no more than the apology of indolence ; but the poet
must go to school, and his wings must grow by practice.
If they be exceptions which other days afford, such as
those of Homer and of Dante, as beings endowed with
genius to create at once a language and a literature,
history also records the thousand names of other men
who created the philosophy, the science, and the arts
of the world, whose genius was transcendent, but whose
trust was only in study and self-help, as the one safe
maxim of successful life. Well then may we bless the
memories and follow in the steps of those grand patri-
archs of modern sculpture and painting, Niccola Pisano,
Orcagna, Arnolfo, Giotto, who fed the enthusiasm of
their genius by lifelong study among the models and
suggestions of a living, beautiful, and inexhaustible
nature. Such were and so worked those men, and
others like them, of undying fame. They lived to
work, and they worked to live ; for it is no mere
flourish of vain rhetoric to say that it is the hand of
industry alone that can put the crown upon the head
of Genius.

One main part of an artist's study is to learn to see.
Blind men always say they see, but most people have
no idea how blind they are for any artistic purpose,
simply because they don't know what to look for, or
how to look at it. The real artist-eye is a creature of

i THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART 9

education. It does what it is told ; but there is no short
and easy way of drilling it to this obedience, but only
by thoughtful analysis and work. An artist learns both
how to see and how not to see. A student cannot see too
much for learning, but an artist can see too much for
painting. In the unlimited breadth of nature an in-
finity of detail may exist without marring the unity of
effect ; but in the very limited field of art it is not so,
an artist cannot be too conscientious ; but art is art,
and by overdoing it he may paint out all his poetry.
An overloaded work of sculpture, or of painting, or of
any other art, is as wearisome as an overloaded sentence.

Let us examine these statements by a few examples.
What is the purpose that an artist sets before him ?
What is the process in the artist's mind that culminates
in a work of highest character ? If it be merely to re-
produce the facts of what he has seen a representative
copy of some group of things or figures ; why, then, the
mechanism of his art and a good deal of patience will
do all he wants. But can it be for some such poor pur-
pose of commonplace as that ? Is there no difference
between the artist and the artisan ? Is it for such bare
portraiture of the outsides of things that men like these
are possessed by an impulse, call it passion, call it in-
spiration, call it what you will, that urges them forward
to express in outward character what their heart had
conceived ? Surely not ! Some occasion of life or
history, some accident of forms and colours, some
poetry of action, or the equal poetry of repose, some
thought, some memory of all these, heightened by asso-
ciation, has occupied their whole mind, and has fired
their imagination. It was not the image nor idea, but
the emotion which that idea aroused that urged him to
expression, and brought forth his art.

It was the impulse of an emotion such as this which
produced the figure of the Apollo Belvedere. The

io THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

moment of the action is supreme. The head is turned ;
the eyes are intently fixed. The arrow has flown ; the
right hand is thrown back in satisfaction, and the joy
of the artist is expressed in the dignified agitation of
the god.

One needs a portion of a poet's genius to under-
stand his poetry ; and to understand a work of high art,
as such, one needs to appreciate the motive of the
artist's inspiration. When Leonardo da Vinci under-
took the commission to paint the subject of the " Last
Supper," an event was presented to his mind of which
no record had preserved the detail. Many artists had
treated that subject before his time. Some had chosen
one period of it, some another. Some, like Beato
Angelico, had selected that moment when the Eucharist
was instituted. The devotional habit of his mind was
reflected in the character of his composition. He re-
presented the Apostles in the attitude of kneeling, to
express at once the intensity of their reverence, and his
conception of the solemnity of that scene. Leonardo
da Vinci chose a totally different ideal of it. His sub-
ject is that of the moment before Judas's betrayal.
The scene, as he depicted it, was essentially that of the
Last Supper of the Hebrew Passover, as distinguished
from the Institution of the Christian Eucharist. There
was no model for such a picture. Had Leonardo seen
the agape in the Catacombs, their suggestions of a tra-
ditional ceremonial would have added nothing to those
of the few and pregnant words of Holy Scripture. His
work was to realise an ideal of his own. The vivid
picture which occupied his imagination was not merely
one of men's figures and attitudes, and forms and com-
binations of pictorial effect. His was a mental vision,
entrancing him by the conception of that scene of un-
paralleled pathos. The artist's spirit is mute in the
presence of that company ; awed by the quiet dignity

i THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART 11

and resignation of the Divine Master, and by all that
power of intellectual and moral beauty that could be
conceived in the countenance of One who said, and who
was the actor of what He said, " Greater love hath no
man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
The quiet majesty of that central figure is magnified
by the dramatic movement of the Apostles on the right
and left, each in an attitude of characteristic emotion
astonishment, remonstrance, incredulity, horror that
One so divinely holy, so perfectly lovable by all,
should declare that " One of YOU shall betray me." If
poetry be indeed, as it truly is, only another form of
art, Fine Art, I mean, here in this wondrous wall paint-
ing we realise it to perfection. The work is great,
because the depth of its poetry is great. Many others
have portrayed that scene, but who has ever concen-
trated all its interest as in this masterpiece ? Leonardo
felt it with intensity, and filled to the full with the
poetry of it, he laboured to realise not a mere repre-
sentation of the event or record of its story, but his
own ideal conception of its beauty, its religion, and its
pathos.

The impulse of all high art, be the subject what it
may, must operate in the same manner ; for, after all,
art would fail of half its mission, which is the inter-
change of human sympathies, if its works were no more
than representations of matters of fact. If it be argued
against this theory that no Art can transcend Nature,
nor exceed the beauty of natural effect (be the subject
what it may), and that this natural beauty and the
utmost intensity of expression is, in that case, " matter
of fact," I entirely assent to such a statement of the
case, but what I urge is something beside it. It is
mere waste of words to talk of allowing and insisting
that Art could not surpass the facts or the beauty of
Nature, and that the result would only be exaggeration

12 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

and deformity if it attempted to do so. But I venture
rather to insist that Nature (in the artistic sense of the
word, distinct from all scientific associations) Nature
is in the soul of men quite as truly and powerfully as
in the things and appearances of the external world.
The nature of the world within and that of the world
around the artist is the same Beauty is an abstract
quality, utterly mysterious, attributed on one side to
the actions and appearances of things, but assigned on
the other side, with equal or greater force, to the ideal
of their moral qualities and associations. For just as it
is a scientific fact that the phenomenon of noise would
not exist if ears had not been created, though all the
heavens crashed with thunder, so it is that all the
variety of natural forms which now charm our eyes
those colours, proportions, and effects which arrest and
delight us would be as though they were not, but for
the capacity of the mind to comprehend them as sym-
bols of grace or grandeur. Their forms and colours are
for themselves mere necessities of growth, and the effect
of their chemistry and light. Their movements are the
results of pressure of air, water, or their own weight.
They are in themselves items of creation, with variety
of purpose and value in the economy of Nature. They
present figures to the eyes of beasts, and by their size,
shape, and colour, they are distinguished as poisonous
or good for food ; the secluded lake attracts the heron
for its fish ; the colour and the scent of the rose attract
the insects for its honey. But bring them within reach
of that power of moral perception which is within us,
that inward vision by which those figures are received
on the retina of our mind, and then all their character
is changed; their forms become types of moral qualities,
such as power or grace ; their variety, their colours,
their very existence, become a joy till then unknown ;
their natural history is changed to poetry ; their growth,

I THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART 13

their movements, and all the living things around them,
the morning and the evening, become illumined by that
moral-1 ight which beams back upon them, reflected from
within ourselves. All Nature is seen, suffused at once
with the charm with which our moral insight perceives
it to be clothed. The moral of beauty is a concep-
tion of the soul, interpreting the address of Nature.

These thoughts were suggested by the consideration
of what was the process within the artist's mind by
which great works of art were produced.

Fine art, though in one sense it is a work of skill,
is, in the other (and the only sense that makes it
precious to the world), the mirror of the artist's mind.
Thus it has often happened that some subject unnoticed
by common eyes, or some sudden revival of memory,
has struck a chord in the music of an artist's poetry ;
and at once he grasps its transitory beauty, he throws
upon it the whole energy of his art, he rescues the
vision for life, and stamps it, in perpetuity, with the
beauty and the interest that he saw and felt in it, for
the joy of men.

It was thus that the scene of an old hulk, disfigured
by work and war, worn out and useless, fit only to be
broken up for firewood or old iron, struck upon the
imagination of our great landscape painter Turner.
What might it not have been in other hands than
his ? Probably the form of any old ship, battered into
picturesqueness by force of age, and indebted to the
work of weather and sea-water for the broken colours
of its timbers, its rusty iron and green corroded copper,
might have made a fair subject for a picture, even by
the most prosy copyist of the facts before him.

Not so Turner that devoted student, that exquisite
copier of Nature, as he was, who delighted the world,
not as the mere chronicler of Nature's facts, but, by
bringing Nature's life to Nature's surface, he drew out

14 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

all her latent beauty, he seized it by his skilful art, and
gave it permanence. His pictures are not the mere
portraits of things, but expressions of the way he loved
to think about them. He presented to the world
pictures of well-known scenes and circumstances, not
as either he himself or as any one else, perhaps, ever
saw them. He, as the accomplished student of Nature,
knew what they might appear under some pJiase of
natural effect most suited to them ; and thus, as an
artist, he knew what they ought to be, with all their
features and their character true to Nature, but with
all the prose of their commonplace transformed to
poetry.

Thus, in the illustration I have chosen, the old
disfigured hulk, being dragged away to be broken up
into the ugly rubbish of a marine storedealer, became,
through the magic of his conception of it, that perfect
poem upon canvas, the old ship (the Temeraire) towed
away to her last home. The deep glow of an autumnal
and shrouded sunset, reflected in the still waters of the
harbour, gives the tone and key to the whole scene.
About the centre of the picture lies the old ship, with
all the disfigurements of the battle and the storm veiled
from sight by the mellow twilight. It is drawn forward
slowly and heavily by a small steamboat, with rolling
smoke and gurgling wreaths of steam, and, by their
contrast to the intense quietude around, making the
silent procession of that old hero's funeral only still
more solemn. Such was Turner's conception of the
scene. A hero's epitaph written in colours.

You may remember that just now I said that one
phase in the art of seeing Nature was to train the eyes
what not to see. For that purpose I have drawn your
attention to two works of totally different character ;
each, regarded as the work of human skill employed for
the expression of human feeling, perfect. And if you

i THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART 15

analysed the composition of those great works, you
would find that their power of expression depended as
much on the artifice of omission as on what was repre-
sented ; just as in the drama, where the author pro-
duces a climax of effect by skilful omission, leaving the
last deed of tragedy to the excited imagination of the
audience. The principle is the same in sculpture as in
painting. It is simply the avoidance of all that would
disquiet the design, or contribute nothing to its expres-
sion. The qualities of repose and dignity, which are
among the greatest characteristics of the greatest art of
all times, are mainly obtained by the artifice of selection
and omission. Its extreme use is shown in the Assyrian
and Egyptian sculptures. The extreme opposite is only
too apparent at all periods of depraved and fallen arts,
where ornament attempts to mask the absence of idea.

In no case in modern art (meaning by that all that
is not classical or mediaeval) is this great principle of
artistic effect more completely illustrated than in the
figure of Lorenzo dei Medici by Michael Angelo in the
Medicean Chapel at Florence. The design is the em-
bodiment of one great conception. Not one scrap of
detail embarrasses the sight. The great sculptor knew
well what to avoid as well as what to accentuate for the
expression of his idea. There is no intrusion there
upon the solemnity of that awful figure. That statue is
the perfect ideal of a troubled mind, occupied in the
silent horror of its thoughts.

I hope that I am not fatiguing you with too many
illustrations. You will find, the deeper you pursue
your study, that the perfected skill of the trained eye
and hand in the employment of this apparently simple
artifice is the last attainment of the greatest artist, and
the secret of the breadth and power of his works. In
this too lies the secret charm of all good conventional
art. We may notice it in many ways. For instance,

1 6 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

it explains the peculiar beauty which the very imperfect
works of early and mediaeval art possess. But any one
who failed to read the undercurrent of their poetry
(which he would, if he had none in himself), would be
likely to condemn them by a criticism which has much
truth on the surface of it. He would say that the
omissions in them were not the meritorious omissions
of good work, but the omissions of ignorance, producing
blemishes and deformities. But these works, with all
their evident defects, are a mine of religious poetry, and
all their excellence is in the expression of it. Suppose
it to be a group of figures on panel, on glass, or in mosaic.
The group is that of a mother, a child, a bird, a wreath,
a crown, a golden halo : but the features are incorrectly
drawn, not a finger has a knuckle, the perspective is
wrong, the draperies are false ; but who cares ? Why
criticise that which makes no pretension ? What critic
worthy of his name would look for what was not known
to Art at the time the work was executed ? No ; look
rather for what does pretend to be there ; a holy family ;
a mother wrapt in contemplation of her own Child :
that Child's majesty indicated by the crown it wears,
its divinity by the aureole, its innocence and tenderness
by its simple attitude. Let the technical defects be
allowed, and let the generosity of educated criticism
pass them over, but see beneath the poor surface of
that frail art the earnest genius of the artist, and the
fervent devotion of his religious poetry ; such as all the
training of modern art would fail to approach, unless,
indeed, the same spirit were there to guide the more
educated hand.

The greatest scope for the exhibition of these great
principles is where the arts of sculpture and painting
combine with architecture, that great art which embraces
all others within herself. So true is this, that the
safest advice to a young architectural student is to let

I THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART 17

all specialities of architecture wait till he has mastered
the great principles which underlie all art composition,
design, contrast, the construction and meaning of
ornament, the use and power of colour, shadow, mass,
and the treatment of detail. All these must first be
known, for architecture is no mere thing of capitals
and columns, groined roofs or sculptured cornices ; but,
in a word, it is the focus of all mechanical and artistic
knowledge, science, and genius, brought together by
one grasp of comprehensive intelligence. All its styles,
technicality, and mathematics, can be learnt by rote
but a great architect must be first an artist.

Those works which ultimately affect us the most
powerfully are those which suggest rather than define,
and leave our thoughts room to expand. Architecture
has a special power to effect this, for its character is
essentially abstract. Breadth of effect is as much the
excellence of one art as of another ; and just as it is
that none but a great architect dares to build an
expanse of bare wall (for he knows well the power of
its effect when used rightly), so the great artist painter
will afford, in all his works, areas of quietude, that our
eyes may wander about or rest at will, and thus come
fresh upon his points of interest and emphasis, charmed
by the alternation of action and repose. Treated by
this plain artifice, the commonest things may become
objects of interest and beauty. What, for instance,
could be less attractive under ordinary effects than a
Cambridgeshire fen or a Dutch plain ? And yet what
can be more charmingly poetical than some landscapes
by such men as Cuyp or Both, with their simple com-
position of a subject where all the incidents are per-
haps little more than a willow-tree and a cow or two ?
But the air is so pure and full of light, the villages
clustering round their church steeples on the horizon
lie so quiet in the happy rest of evening, the contrast

1 8 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

of the rounded forms of summer clouds with the level
lines of the landscape, and the long cool shadows of
the setting sun, make a lovely poem out of nothing.
Our interest demands no more, and our eyes can feast
on it in charmed repose.

But I need trouble you with no more examples.
I have spoken of students, but the greatest artist has
ever been the keenest student to his dying day.
Nature has been to him his unfailing resource and
relief, and is to him as the very food of his life ; his
heart and mind are occupied in the contemplative
study of it ; he sees, he feels, he marvels at its beauty ;
he asks what is this power that so entrances him ?
Here are qualities, properties of external nature totally
distinct from any action of the physical phenomena
about him : forms and colours are physical necessities ;
but it is by no means with them alone that he is con-
cerned ; it is that extraneous quality belonging to
them, beauty, physically useless and materially unac-
countable, that occupies his whole mind. Here is a
power as universal as material existence, but utterly
free and independent of its laws. How is it then that
we, if we be but creatures of material, can be affected by
it ? By what capacity, by what faculty of our nature
do we perceive it, know it, love it, and by its irresistible
influence we love all things that possess it ? Here is a
power in weak, perishable, insensate things, which is
itself imperishable. If beauty be not a hallucination, it
must of necessity be accepted as a fact. Call it a
quality of things, call it a phenomenon, call it an
attribute, but it remains a fact ; and all the more
marvellous as a property of material things, and yet
possessing no phenomena in common with them. It
is a power without force, a reality without measure of
its existence.

By all the experience, by all the evidence of the

THE PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF FINE ART 19

moral and physical world, beauty is a thing of life.
In ourselves the very recognition of beauty is an
earnest of immortality. Our moral sense of it is in
unison with our physical sense. We measure things
by its formula, because all that is good appears beauti-
ful, and evil is but a negation, the moral deformity of
what once was good.

The measure of the human soul can be taken only
by the measure of its moral faculties. In the contem-
plation of beauty, and in the cultivation of our know-
ledge of it, we are feeding the highest faculties of our
nature. In that image the human soul recognises
some elements of its own nature. The height of its
aspirations offer to it a criterion for its estimate of
itself, and it possesses through that element of beauty
a communion with all nature, deep and intimate as by
no other means is possible.

The source of art's immortal fire is in the hearts of
men ; and the beauty of external nature is the symbol
of that Divine light which illuminates both it and them.
It is not the poetry of the artist that clothes Nature
with those Divine attributes but by that precious gift
implanted in him, he sees them as others cannot, and
so reflects them from his own mind as to make them
at once comprehensible to others and their delight.
Indeed, one of the most precious duties that fine art
can perform is so to present Nature to men's eyes as to
make them love that Nature more. Nature is the
embodiment of the thoughts of God : and Fine Art is
the embodiment of the thoughts of men, to which that
Nature has afforded the motive and expression a
treasury of things and thoughts most precious to
human life, as inexhaustible by the hopeful enthusiasm
of youth, as by the meditative memory of age.

Such is the character of art's best ministry to the
intellectual health and happiness of life. Imagination

20 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY i

and those emotions that art expresses may act and
react on each other, as the impulse of character directs
them ; but let an artist remember that the value of
his skill is not merely in the writing of his own
thoughts well, but in teaching others to read them.
Incomprehensible art is only so much rubbish, and
selfish and sensual art is only worthy of the flames.
Under an impulse, well - nigh irresistible, an artist's
mind is carried onward as by a passion, without
thought of self or others ; but the heart of the man
for light or darkness, sympathy or selfishness, good or
evil, underlies it all, and is its own unconscious witness
to the world of the real worth of all he does. Earnest-
ness, ability, and skill are, of course, the elements of
all success ; and with these the noblest heart will
always do the noblest work, to dignify the aims of
life, to fill its waste places with strength, and to satisfy
its best desires. There is thus a fire that burns within
a man's breast, kindling heart, mind, and imagination,
raising memory to idea, and inspiring material with
life : but the man is stopped in his upward career by
the barriers of his earthly state ; he battles with the
irksomeness of his mortal bonds ; he knows that his
work is but a flash from the light which shines within
him ; that his weak hands can never reach, nor can
their poor tools realise the full greatness of his burn-
ing thoughts. He bows, obeys, and works. What can
he more?

The highest and the purest art is that which is fed
at the fountain of healthy imagination, for the food of
that is Truth.

ESSAY II

THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART TO COMMON LIFE

TJ*INE art cannot make but ministers to life's happi-
ness by contributing to the elements of its enjoy-
ment, spreading its works freely before the world for
acceptance or rejection, and leaving the pleasure and
the profit of them dependent on the capacities it
approaches and the sympathies it meets. Without
them its work and office is but a blank. Without
capacity to appreciate or sympathy to endear them,
its loveliest works are as worthless as food is to sight
or music to the sense of smell ; and all its offers and
appeals fall profitless, as sunshine on the desert or
eloquence on the ears of the dead. Art may contribute
to the luxury of life, but luxury does not make life's
happiness. Art's delight is in the individual mind that
opens to it ; and its contribution to the brightness of
public life is its result on many minds, affording that
sense of pleasure and contentment that the multitude
receives, acknowledging the enjoyment without caring
to comprehend. It needs no knowledge of how such
pleasure comes ; but, as freely as it breathes the air,
that multitude enjoys and loves the arts that cheer its
homes and embellish its cities, where the lust of the
eye is not a sin, nor the pride of life other than a
patriotic virtue.

There is a closer relationship between prose and

22 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

poetry, romance and reality, in the course of common
life about us than many, who are deeply versed in the
dry business of it, care to take account of. But if the
incidents were brought to light, and the tales were told
of all the suffering and heroism, the misfortunes, the
infirmities, and the struggles of humanity that, with all
their lights and shadows of noble virtue and uncommuni-
cable sadness, compose the real pictures of those social
states about which statistics are registered and philo-
sophic schemes are formed, the volumes would read like
romances, and the records would be subjects more fit for
poets and artists than for the statist or the politician.

In the cold, mechanical routine of life that necessity
may have forced upon them, our people need heart-
relief as much as rest of head and muscle. They have
souls to satisfy and sympathies that crave response ;
and to many such as they art offe/s, as naught else can
with equal ease, the resources of cheering and congenial
enjoyment. In whatever way it be regarded, whether
for its practice or its pleasure, its poetry or its prose,
as an object of pursuit or an element of education, it
would be hard to find, unless in the equally wide and
fascinating interest of natural sciences, aught else that
opens the way to so many issues of healthy pleasure
or of solid benefit. But it pretends to no panacea for
all the ills of life. A power it is, but one which rather
follows than leads ; for its forces depend on what they
find to act upon, and the wills and ways that are open
to them. There is indeed a power greater than it, and
art can be its effective servant to tell through faithful
eyes the truths that ears are often dull to. But there
is another power also greater than it that loves to deck
out evil in the garb of beauty, and would pervert its
course from purity to shame ; such heights does it
open to those who will to rise, such depths to those
who choose to fall.

TO COMMON LIFE 23

It needs no artist's eye or sentiment to perceive
how greatly life is affected by the aspects of things
around it. Climate and race may decide the national
lines and features of it, but its accidents and aspects
are the influences that sway its tone and temper, to
brighten or depress, to exalt or barbarise.

Our national arts had flourished once, but they were
wrecked some centuries ago. Since then the demand
for any sort of art at all, for many long years, came
only from the wealthy few, and mainly for their vanity's
sake. The things that surrounded the daily life of our
people gradually lost all that had given a colour of
blitheness or artistic sense to it. The national char-
acter, which had been reflected in the aspect of all
around them, and had been the secret of all the charm
in the incidents of public and private life, had gradually
disappeared. Things had once been lovable for their
national individuality. The old narrow street, with all
its interest of home endearment, with its pleasant out-
line of overhanging roofs and gables, quaint dormers,
turrets, and spires of shining shingle carved woodwork
and painted panelling, and all the cheery sense of
friendship, warmth, and comfort that they gave the
deep chimney corner, the pleasant open porch, with
their associations of rest, of refreshment, of warm-
hearted hospitality and all else that could nourish
in our people the last and least sense of the poetry of
common life, gave way before the desolating hand of
social and political change. National taste and feeling
became a blank. A foreign form of art in its repulsive
character of bleak unsuggestiveness came into vogue.
Stiffness and meanness took the place of the old-
fashioned pleasantness and elasticity, and all forms of
art endeared by national sympathy died away. So
had all great and good art everywhere, and what
remained was forced, unnatural, and frivolous. All

24 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

over civilised Europe no art but that of lowest type
was presented to the people, and in our own country
so deep had been the fall of public feeling, that con-
tempt for art was regarded as a virtue akin to manli-
ness. But the craving for beauty is irrepressible. It
may be for awhile kept still by inevitable events of
national or individual life ; it may be poisoned by
calamity, misdirected by vice, chilled by oppression,
and dormant for the very want of all healthy food :
but the hunger for it is a part of our nature, because
beauty is a natural element of life, and is inseparable
from it. It was from the very weariness of the national
and individual heart for want of things beautiful that
the cry arose that awoke the dormant spirit of the
arts.

If in one more than in another, it has been rather
in town than in country life that their aid has been
most needed and their benefit most evident. Country
life brings with itself its own opportunities of refresh-
ment in pure Nature's beauty spread lavishly around
it, with its varying phases that change with every
mood of mind, as though the very air were in-
habited by some sympathising spirit that received and
responded to all that humanity might feel or tell ; but
town life, especially for such as necessity binds closely
within it, has no such ever-present restoratives. Some
change of interest or occupation is their main resource,
but rarely such as to relieve them from themselves ;
and the aspect of life about them is heavy with fatigue.
Wide and delightful opportunities are opened to them
by the pursuits of literature and science, though not
without exertion ; but the pleasure and profit that pure
art brings to such as they are too often worn with
toil or jaded with artificiality are like the balmy fra-
grance of a mountain breeze, or such light and refresh-
ment to weary minds as a spring morning spreads upon

TO COMMON LIFE 25

the weary world, when all things seem bright and
blithe, as though winter were gone for ever.

Art is serious work indeed, as those know well who
know it best ; but art must have its holiday, and no
phase of it, however light it be, is to be despised if it
do but keep its self-respect. The very object of it all
is happiness; so no art worthy of its name is despicable.
What is despicable comes not of the effusion of hearty
feeling as the grotesque often does, and good carica-
ture does always but of vicious affectation.

Beside those grander forms of art which represent
the scenes of history and religion, and are precious for
the fame of noble deeds and national honour, there are
many less serious modes of interest and expression that
throw sunshine over life. Among them the art of
landscape is like a perpetual holiday. Fresh and free,
with emotions of vague pleasure, far from the cares of
life or thoughts of trouble and fatigue, it borrows the
poetry of Nature's transient charms, that come like a
breath and vanish like a ray, but staying their flight
and making them a lasting joy.

It seems strange that landscape painting should
have so long delayed its development as to have reached
its maturity only in modern times ; for if there be any
form of art that is universal in its relation to human
feeling, it is that of landscape an art which addresses
itself not merely to those who have the poetic sense to
perceive the moral of its beauty, but to the homeliest
sentiments and commonest interests of daily life. It
was the universal recurrence to Nature for the power of
its illustration and the tenderest touches of its sentiment
that, from earliest times, endeared poetry to mankind ;
and yet the representative arts paid no regard to it but
for the general purpose of a background, nor to its
features but for their symbolism, as emblems of personal
or moral attributes. These were the notes only, with

26 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

here and there a phrase, but not the full chorus of
Nature's universal hymn : its figures were idealised ; its
powers were deified, but the power of its beauty was
not comprehended, nor the depths of Nature's nature
touched by it. It needed a new ideal of thought and
aspiration to train the faculties so to perceive the
elements of poetry in the effects of the external world,
and so to embrace the union of its moral and material
beauty as to translate its impressions into the language
of art. Music, the latest of the arts to attain its highest
development in our own time, has an intimate relation-
ship with this art of landscape in the sources of its
inspiration, and even in some cases a greater power
than it in portraying the surrounding scenery of life.
Human passion does not exhaust the range of musical
expression as it breaks out in the power and loveliness
of song, but the whole poetry of Nature is open to it.
Music can pursue the storm, and follow the passing
hours, the changing aspects of earth, sea, and sky, of
day and night ; and, with profounder sympathy than
any other art, music can bring within the range of
sense the echo of those whispers that, from the depths
of Nature's mystery, arrest and overwhelm the soul ;
while landscape art, though its range seems infinite,
and its charms as inexhaustible as Nature, can do no
more than seize upon some transient effect, the action
or the sentiment of one passing scene, and perpetuate
only the beauty of a moment

But there is another sphere of art the very opposite
of this, wilful and artificial indeed, but most pleasant,
that must not be omitted among the many forms of it
that contribute to life's happiness ; for if art is to be
entertained as a means to that beneficent result, the
wider range, within reason and respect, that we can
give it, the more approaches will be open to the many
varying capacities of mind it has to reach. Lyric art

TO COMMON LIFE 27

has always had its place, and ought to have it still.
Lyric painting, no less than lyric poetry and music, is
lovely ; lyric sculpture is the very embodiment of grace
and happiness ; and even lyric architecture is possible,
not merely in those studied forms of which the choragic
monument of Lysicrates in ancient classic, or the fagade
of the Ca d'Oro at Venice in mediaeval domestic, or the
chapel of Rosslyn in northern Gothic, may suggest ideas,
but in its lighter and more wayward forms among the
pleasant and graceful buildings that mingle with the
sylvan scenery of our parks and gardens, and add by their
brightness to the charm of the picturesque. If some-
times the strains of lyric art need apology, they have it
in their playfulness ; but to avoid offence such play
needs to be like that of Leonardo da Vinci's caricatures,
that, in all their exuberance of whim, never transgressed
anatomy. It is a possible but confessedly a dangerous
experiment, for there are borders and precipices in art
as in nature and in morals ; but it is possible to
approach the brink without falling over. Within these
limits then let lyric art have free play for all the poetry
of its gay inventiveness ; for, so long as the freshness
of wit and whim breaks out in genial happiness from
the human heart, it would be but morbid temper and
sour criticism to mar the passing joy. Let the world
be free and happy ; only, when it plays with art, let it
play within the bounds of natural enthusiasm and self-
respect. Transgress that limit, and all beyond it is but
a wilderness of offensive, unreal, untrue, and vulgar
vanity.

But it needs no wandering into the byways of the
arts to afford brightness to common life. In the busy
struggle of our English life it has been a blessing to
have found such resource of real pleasure and benefit
to our people as the arts afford.

Even if our experience or witness of actual life be

28 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

insufficient, it needs but little stretch of imagination to
picture to ourselves realities which, in every class of our
social state, are hidden from the outside world by the
tender care, the refinement, the self-sacrifice of those
who labour on, though irksomely, for others from whom,
through age and trouble, all hope and resource has
been cut off. Many are they, to whom Nature has
denied strength for severer work, who thus occupy
themselves in the simpler spheres of art persons of
whom the world might well be proud if it did but
know them : angelic lives in dreary homes ; a living
smile where all else is sad.

But art's highest sphere is one of intellectual interest
and attainment, apart from all private or individual
value the sphere of national service, by which the
cultivation of a whole people is affected ; and, whether
observed or unobserved by themselves, their interests
and pursuits, their labour and their recreation are
supplied and enlightened by it.

But we have a very mixed multitude to deal with.
There are classes among our fellow-men over whom
shadows seem to have settled impenetrably, and the
dulness of their dreary homes has driven them to drown
their weariness in vice. It would be a worthy work to
open the eyes of such as they are to their own relief,
and to show them how close it is within their reach.
We believe that by the narrow wedge of counter-
attractions we may introduce elements of interest and
occupation that will raise the tone and purify the
motives and habits of our people, and shaming them
away from evil, may induce some brighter thought and
hopefulness of life to disperse its shadows.

I passed two cottages, and, by the aspect of their
windows side by side, the thought was forced on me
how strong must be the contrast in character and life
of those within them. One window was bright with its

TO COMMON LIFE 29

pots of simple flowers, and, like the door beside it, it
was shaded by wreaths of clustering rose and honey-
suckle. The other was broken, dirty, and neglected,
with a tattered rag hung up within to hide all behind
it. I ventured to enter them. One family met me
with a smile, the other with a frown. Not long after I
learnt that a child from that forlorn abode brought
home a simple prize from school ; it was a coloured
print. Her mother pinned it to the dirty wall, and the
cobwebs were brushed away. Its bright colours and
clean border seemed a pleasure, and made the disorder
and raggedness around it painful. The child had felt
the happiness of encouragement. Next year another
bright-looking prize was added to the stock. Some
pride then touched the heart of the family. Those
small treasures became precious to them as things of
beauty. Insensibly other little ornaments accumulated,
and the other walls were cleaned to receive them. The
seed was sown, and the infection spread. After a while
the whole cottage became orderly as it never used to
be. The garden, once but a wilderness, was tended,
and flowers were in the windows, and, as time wore on,
a bright and cheery gleam seemed to shine where all
before had been sad and shadowy. Another year I
passed those cottages again, no more contrasted as in
former days ; both bright and clean and cheery ; and,
entering them, I was met with frowns no more.

It was no development of artistic sense in that
family that turned their wretched home into a com-
parative paradise. It was the gradual influence of
educating beauty falling on ground capable of receiving
it ; and that influence, the educating influence of experi-
ence, must be the basis of all that we can hope to do,
to undermine the degradation and disgrace around us,
and by the narrow edge of better things to introduce with
patience the materials of a higher and a happier life.

30 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Of all the vices which pollute the source and thwart
the progress of fine art, the striving after novelty is
among the worst. No one versed in his art could be
guilty of it. But it is no uncommon thing to hear
complaints of the trammels of old principles ; and
arguments are warm and numerous that it is but a
miserable slavery to be tied down to follow in the steps
of generations whom we have altogether surpassed in
civilisation and intelligence ; that our ideas and habits
of life are different ; that we are capable of striking
out new principles ; and that art, like other things,
must be changed to meet them. They say that people
are wearied with the everlasting sameness, that art
used on its old system is used up ; but that it is infinite
in its capabilities, that a new standpoint is possible,
and then, all trammels being removed, fresh ideas, fresh
principles, fresh effects would rise fresh, beautiful, and
complete as Minerva from the head of Jove, or Aphro-
dite from the foam of the sea. But, in truth, art is no
more than the representative of human thoughts and
feelings, and it is they that must first be changed.

Originality is a precious, but a perilous talent, with
a good and a bad side to it, like many other worse and
better things, the best being that which is ignorant of
its own existence. Original ideas are not got by looking
for them. The most true and precious originality is
that which venerates the humanity from which it sprang,
and loves the old things and ways that generations of
human hearts and poetry have consecrated, and then,
with warmth and brilliancy all its own, breaks forth
with beauty born afresh, and age transformed into the
bloom of youth.

But it needs the touch of supreme refinement to
play with novelty. All that we poor mortals can do
by mental labour is but little otherwise than that which
is the sum total of the labour of our hands the moving

TO COMMON LIFE 31

of old things into new places. The course of human
genius is like that of a river ; at one time sleeping in
the quietude of deep pools, losing all identity with the
running stream, and reflecting all things from its lucid
surface ; at another time impulsive, rapid, and irresistible.
Originality may turn the old river into a new channel,
but it is only the channel that is new. The genius
most precious to mankind is continuous : if not in
itself, at least in the vitality it imparts to others, as
trees which seed themselves and yet are always different.
Originality that is sudden and spasmodic fascinates,
but is of little use. Our poet -artist Blake was the
master of it. He wrote and drew with marvellous
genius, but I doubt whether any one has or would care
to follow in his steps. Nature allows no break. The
river's meandering course is the solution of all our
riddle ; and though enthusiasm may disturb, and
aspiring youth may fret, Nature, whether that around
us or that within us, will ever guide the ceaseless stream.
If any nation ever had to begin its arts again, it
was England nearly a century ago. A few great names,
like Wren and Inigo Jones, Hogarth, Reynolds, Gains-
borough, Flaxman, Wedgewood, and some others, seemed
to stand out like tops of mountains above the mist.
Such names cast a halo of glory on their age, but the
public was but half alive to it. If, a few hundred
years ago, the fanatics and panoclasts of the coun-
try had been instructed to smash everything that was
hideous, instead of destroying everything refined and
beautiful that the care and intellect of ages had
produced, we should still have in England models of
national arts to our incalculable advantage. In spite
of that, however, art began again in earnest ; but with
it sprang up a new difficulty, not by the want but by
the plethora of models, making the education of public
taste all but hopeless. The confusion of all the styles

32 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

of art of the habitable world, ancient and modern, was
cast before it like a flood, and public taste broke down,
like an overworked linguist, under the multitude of his
languages, jumbling his words and idioms into nonsense.
But experience will cure all this.

The poetry of art is no mere transient sentiment,
except to minds incapable of no more ; nor is the
artist's study of sounds, forms, and colours mere super-
ficial dealing with Nature's accidents. They are to
him realities for which he acknowledges responsibility.
For the purpose of his art, and of all that is to result
from it, he cannot know too much nor feel too deeply ;
for feeling without knowledge can produce no science,
and knowledge without feeling can produce no art.
With him the real and the ideal are in close contact.
His work is to make ideal things realities and realities
ideal. There is a perpetual movement within his mind
between the material and spiritual world. Sounds,
forms, and colours are not things the musician, the
sculptor, or the painter cares to rest on but for the
expression of his thoughts. The poet, the musician,
the artist are all one in relation to the world of things
and of their fellow-men. The whole realm of nature
is theirs but not for themselves. It is a large patri-
mony to -inherit ; and it is the free possession of all
who have sense and power to perceive and appreciate
it a noble inheritance, without dispute of title, equally
for the humble and the noble, the rich and the poor ;
the home of that beneficent power that ministers to the
happiness of their life. Nature has been art's nursery,
art's school, art's workshop, art's council chamber. In-
firmity may dull its sight and bar its upward course,
but the goal to which Nature points its way is a lofty
one a pure ideal where the human and divine life
meet.

The perception of beauty is one of the most pre-

TO COMMON LIFE 33

cious endowments with which God has blessed humanity.
The wise and benevolent do well to foster it in their
fellow-men ; and we do well to bless God for the
inestimable gift, so far as we possess it ourselves,
accepting the ministry of art as the surest means for
its cultivation to enlighten and refresh the world, and
accepting, in relation to it, the fundamental testimony
of Nature, that God has spread man's path with beauty
because He has consigned his life to work.

ESSAY III

THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART TO SPIRITUAL LIFE

F all the services that Fine Art has rendered to man-
kind the most valuable is that by which it has
evoked and cultivated the spirit-born faculty of the im-
agination. It has done so by the power of that element
in Nature that we know as beauty, an element that per-
vades the universe, exhibiting itself both morally and
materially, not merely in the outward guise of things,
but in the whole order of their being. Beauty is a
reality most evident and most mysterious, of which
science may explain the intermediary action, but can-
not touch either its beginning or its end ; but which the
human soul, looking both farther back and farther for-
ward, perceives as an element of divine life, and through
it is conscious of the silent witness of Himself, by the
Creator, to the spiritual comprehension of His creatures.

But as Nature is art's prototype and the source
from which all external effects of beauty are derived,
one might have inclined to attribute to it all the power
requisite for this beneficent influence ; but it is not so.
The effects of external Nature upon many minds is
too direct; they receive from them no more than im-
mediate and ordinary impressions ; and in many cases
the circumstances of life and their own dispositions
disqualify them for any refined perception. Nature
may seem beautiful to them and pleasant, but only

ESSAY in THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART 35

so as an affair of daily occurrence, and too familiar to
arouse any special feeling. It is possible on the con-
trary for the effect of art upon such minds to be very
different, for art is Nature with humanity superadded,
and thus bringing with it the human idea of Nature's
beauty, it helps them by the power of an unconscious
sympathy to perceive what otherwise would have passed
unheeded.

But like many other things fine art is a power for
evil as well as good, and its attractiveness makes that
power great. For evil, we find it in works of vanity
and vice ; for good, we see it in the fire which shines
from beneath the surface of good men's works. Will
and genius are the sources of its power, and thus a
work of marble or of colours becomes a thing of pur-
pose and of life ; and a more true and clear exponent
than language of men's nature and men's thoughts, for
language may hide and pervert truth, but art would
convict itself of the lie it would try to tell.

The impulse of art comes the artist knows not
whence. An irresistible and untraceable ideal haunts
him ; its imagery falls on him like a reflection from
another state of being ; the mystery of it engages
him, the beauty of it fascinates him ; its power in-
creases in his search to realise it ; his heart and mind
are oppressed at the sense of it, and the expression of
it by his art alone affords the means of their relief. A
work of art comes forth because it must.

The first rude sculptor may well have started back,
agitated before the embodiment of his soul's concep-
tion. Whence that conception ? Forms of an unsought
imagery had passed before him. The breath of a
strange influence had impinged upon his thought as
mysteriously as the light air wafts across his forehead.
Whence came it and whither it went he knew not ; but
now it stands before him a reality, startling in its

36 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

reality, an embodied shadow, an emanation from his
own life, a film of thought that had flashed out from
the unknown, and was the next moment lost, like a
fragrance from the earth or the gloss upon the dew,
but caught up, recovered, reproduced by his rude skill.
Whence was the birth of that first image ? Was it in
an agony of grief or terror, or throb of conscience, or
in emotion aroused by the sublime effects of Nature's
awful grandeur, that an ideal of unearthly majesty had
struck and stamped itself on his imagination ? He
looked blindly into infinity, conscious of a light he
could not see, and the reality of the unseen had forced
upon him the idea of Deity. He felt the divine ele-
ment in life, he felt the divine life in things, he
fashioned the symbols of them, he realised their
forms, his own impassioned life transfused them, and
the people called them Gods.

As with that primitive sculptor, so art, in all time, has
been and is the creature and the producer of emotion ;
and most natural therefore is it that the subject which
produces the deepest emotions produces the greatest
art. The impulses of poetry, simplest or most sublime,
and the emotions of religion are its congenial elements.
Its strength is in their strength. The eloquence of
literature and of speech may have more power to repel,
but attraction is art's own prerogative. Wickedness and
horror may be pictured in vain, but by appeals to the
heart and conscience through what is lovely, pure, and
true, it wins every cause it pleads. Illustrations of
agony, vice, and shame are themselves as repulsive as
the evils they wish to cure. It is hard to believe that
Hogarth's pictures of the Rake's progress ever stopped
the course of vice, or that Morland's illustrations of the
fall and ruin of Letitia ever stayed the folly of a frivolous
girl. But there can be no doubt of art's power to
clench a conviction once received, from whatever source

in TO SPIRITUAL LIFE 37

derived, or to add force equally to superstition or to
truth ; for the arts of all times have illustrated this,
from the idol and fetich of the savage, which was but
the embodiment of the demon of his dread, to the per-
fected arts of both Pagan and Christian civilisation.

The embodiment of the religious ideal, and deeper
far than that, the Impersonation of that ideal, has been,
through all ages, a longing desire of mankind, approach-
ing a necessity. The irresistible conviction of spiritual
existence, the idea of the power and beauty of invisible
things, has so possessed the minds and imaginations of
men, that the whole material universe has been peopled
with them, from the gods and goddesses who reigned in
the starry heavens, to those bright and graceful beings
with which mythology has filled the woods and foun-
tains, the rocks, the ocean, and the very air itself. Im-
personation of deity in human form was the highest
ideal on which the Pagan arts had been perfected.
Those arts had swayed the emotions of men ; but yet,
with all their beauty and with all their power, an im-
penetrable shadow hung over them. There was a sad-
ness in their joy ; satisfaction was incomplete. The
impersonation was inanimate. The story of Pygmalion
was but the common dream of men ; they felt after
divine life, and longed for it with a certainty of its
reality and truth of which their unaided senses were
incapable. Human sense had vainly grasped at what
the human spirit had yearned to see ; but only the
material of an inanimate symbol was all that art could
give in reply. Neither intellect nor sense were satis-
fied. The heart, the mainspring of humanity, was not
relieved. A great ideal in philosophy, in literature,
and in art had for ages occupied the mind and imagi-
nation of mankind. But whence its power if it were
but a thing of fancy or a dream ? The whole fabric of
it would have long since perished but for the uncon-

38 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

querable conviction of its inward truth. That convic-
tion was the forecast of a great reality. From remotest
antiquity all art had strained its eyes to that subject of
mankind's unconscious prophecy. The loftiest music of
all poetry had raised its voice to it. What the hearts
of all nations had longed for was the Impersonation of
Life ; and at length, and in the fulness of time, that
Life was manifested ; that Life was the light of men,
and the heart of humanity was satisfied.

The Christian artist is like the sower who went
forth to sow : and art is truly a divine seed, whose fruit
is for the sweetness of man's life, and with it he need
not sow in tears to reap in joy. Art has many func-
tions in the world, for use, for livelihood, for enlighten-
ment, for honour ; but the artist's highest commission
is to teach the world, through the evidence of the uni-
verse, in the mystery of beauty, the provision of the
Creator for the happiness of His creatures. The divine
attributes of power and infinity might overwhelm the
world with fear, but the attribute of love reassures it.
Beauty is the symbol of divine love. Reason cannot de-
fine nor imagination fathom it ; and he that bears the
commission of that message can do no more than, by
the simple eloquence of truth, to win the sympathies of
men, and to train them, as he has trained himself, to see
in the lineaments of beauty not the mere fancy of a
fascinated sense, but a power overlying, underlying, per-
vading all things the mystery of Beauty ; not a mere
quality of material, but an element of life ; not a mere
accident in Nature, but a designed purpose of its
existence.

But if the hand of its Creator is to be sought in
Nature, it must be upward and not downward. The
destructive process of analysis would only dig deeper
the grave of spiritual sense, if conviction were sought
among the scientific tests of material evidence. There

in TO SPIRITUAL LIFE 39

is evidence most rich and precious in such phenomenal
analysis ; but the perception of the truth to which it
witnesses varies according to the animus with which it
is approached. To seek God in Nature, and to test
His dealings with men as though He were a force, a
quality, a machine, a thing obedient to the search or
subject to speculation, which if wrong would fail, but
if right would " find out God," would be to reverse the
order of existence, and to make man, not God, the
master.

Nor can intellectual analysis by the tests of philo-
sophy succeed any better, for the same reason. The
Master must be first acknowledged before he is sought.
It is their Master and not man that must bow the
heavens if He is to come down. So the search by hard
reasoning stultifies itself, because on these most certain
grounds it is unreasonable. The gist of the whole
matter had been misconceived, and the scaling ladder
had been placed on a wrong foundation, and against a
wall where nothing was to be gained. But another
mode of approach is possible, where reason would be
right ; for, on the ground of mere consistency, if spiritual
Being is the object of inquiry, the evidence must be
spiritual, no matter through what means it is conveyed,
and its discernment must be spiritual also ; and reason
directed thus upward, and not downward, would then
reach "the mind of God." So too Nature, the out-
come of its Maker's inscrutable intentions, is incompre-
hensible unless similarly approached. The discoveries
of science in material and life surpass all art and
poetry in the sublimity of that view of Nature's per-
fect cosmos which they spread before the imagination.
Whether they be her recorded facts, or theories so
firmly based as to be accepted certainties, the revelations
of science are precious stepping-stones, capable of lead-
ing to invaluable evidence ; but, again, it is the animus

40 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

that takes those steps that leads either to light or dark-
ness, if the attempt be to elucidate the ideal of what
Nature is.

With such purpose in view, to study Nature's things
without reference to that Master power whose will they
unconsciously represent, would be to deviate at its very
source the stream of all intelligence and response, to
pervert and to befool the highest faculties of humanity,
which have no worth in themselves nor meaning beyond
themselves, except in relation to Him whose purposes,
known or unknown, are the causes of their existence,
and the only assignable reason of their being. The
illimitable conceptions of which mind is capable are
themselves a sufficient evidence that, in the sphere of
human existence, material is but the method, not the
end of life ; and that steps of progress, if there be steps
at all, must be steps trodden on sense for the very pur-
pose of reaching things beyond sense. The beauty of
the universe, which comes of the union of material and
life, tells with irresistible evidence of an authorship and
a rule of supreme Will ; and that is a power inconceiv-
able unless associated with personality of individual
being. The unity of Nature implies the unity of that
Will ; but such supremacy as this surpasses govern-
ment, for government is not an originating authority,
but an intermediary power to continue order initiated
by another, and therefore only sharing a divided allegi-
ance. A supremacy compatible with perfection must
therefore reach from beginning to end, and origin and
destiny, no less than present rule, must be among its
prerogatives.

But the upward steps which lead to such conviction
as this do not stop here. We find here not only the
action of one supreme and undivided Will, without
which cosmos would be chaos, but beyond this the con-
sideration of its perfect work forces upon our conviction

in TO SPIRITUAL LIFE 41

the complex character of that Will a triple power, the
power of initiative authority the power of intermediary
intelligence and contact between the formative com-
mand and the obedient material and the power of
administrative life, to which mind owes illumination,
the forces of Nature their continuance, and the equili-
brium of all things its stability. By such alone,
whether creation be by immediate act or by endow-
ment expanding itself to perfection through eternity, it
matters not, for human mind can fathom neither but
by such alone and at once the very existence of the
universe appears possible, and its beauty compre-
hensible.

The impulse of a spiritual ideal has ever been an
agitating power within the human heart ; but religion,
which is its practical expression, has been too often and
wilfully misconceived and mistaught, as though its
origin had been in the consciousness of human weak-
ness overwhelmed in contrast with Nature's power and
immensity. But superstition is not religion, and devo-
tion is incompatible with terror. The intuitive con-
science of each individual, perceptive of its own posi-
tion in the world, conscious, from the very nature of
things, that the anomalies which surround it are but
transitory material combined with spirit, good and
evil side by side takes the order of beauty in the uni-
verse as its guiding light, and is conscious of the
response of Nature's life to its own unutterable appeals.
Thus is it that, pining for expression, the artist takes
the things, the forms, the beings that surround him as
the only available interpreters of his thought, the light
and darkness, life and death, storm and calm, growth
and decay, equal in their awfulness and in their beauty,
and with them as the symbolic language of his convic-
tion, his worship, and his love, he pours out his soul to
God and man.

42 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

To such an one, the tenor of whose study for his
art, among the things and effects of the world around
him, has led him to regard beauty as but a veil separat-
ing the seen from the unseen of Nature, and through it
to watch that great Master-spirit of life that moves
among its vast machinery, it is as painful as it is strange
to witness the course of other minds, profoundly trained
in the knowledge of the same material universe, and of
the relationship their own intelligence bears towards it,
arriving by various paths of study to the same place as
himself, but then to stop, refusing to go on. Whether
it be from invincible aversion, or from the pride of am-
bitious intellect, mistaking its freedom for independence,
their result is the opposite of his own. They appear
to have placed intentionally a bar to all progress beyond
their own special sphere of thought or knowledge, as
though there were but one basis for reasonable intelli-
gence, and but one approach to sure convictions. The
disposition and habits to which their minds are trained
are contrary to such considerations ; for having elimi-
nated from Nature its Creator and man's intelligent soul,
as having no part in it, and content to register the
appearances and to calculate the latent forces of Nature,
but disregarding that latent Life which is the secret of
them all, the direct and mechanical conclusions from
material appear to them alone consistent with right
reason, and all else no better than delusion. The sub-
jects of their studies are, indeed, of inexhaustible inte-
rest, and the value of them inestimable to all mankind ;
but their pursuit appears at fault when the means,
which seemed to minister to strength and breadth of
intellect, end only in binding round it the bands of an
exclusive system intolerant of all others beside or
beyond it.

The ultimate goal to which such subjects of con-
templation and study appear to other minds, that take

in TO SPIRITUAL LIFE 43

a larger range, less barred by speciality than theirs,
naturally to lead, is the great truth which alone is of
paramount interest to mankind, his destiny ; but to such
as refuse to look beyond the realm of sense, and cannot
because they will not see, the result has too often been
to habituate the mind to a strict and stern correctness
in one direction alone ; so the mental vision becomes
warped and clouded to all else, and at last distorted to
believe that nought else was possible. Intellect was
glorified, but the soul ignored.

There is, however, another sphere of life and sight
to which their eyes are never raised ; and there is
another atmosphere than that which impinges on the
material to which they cling, the atmosphere of a liberty
that is none the less complete because it acknowledges
the service of a Master for that service is one that
saves a man from himself, and is his only perfect
freedom.

To reach such healthy breadth of view, and to
estimate aright, in their worth and relationship, the
spirit of the man within him and of the material around
him, the great machinery of his intelligence needs the
mutuality of all its faculties as completely as those of
the body are needed for the healthy action of its life.
No mental function can arrogate its own independence
and sufficiency without a fall. Conscience uninformed
and undisciplined grows morbid and oblique; imagina-
tion may soar superior to the other faculties, but grows
vain and bewildered without the weight and balance of
the rest ; so too reason and sense cannot stand alone
without loss : unaided, they would make but a crippled
machine to trust the course of life to, without conscience
to restrain and imagination to liberate them. The
work of imagination, too subtle for verbal definition,
too vast and varied for mental grasp, thus disciplined,
supported, and supplied, is, both in purpose and effect,

44 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

essentially and practically real ; it is the source of
invention in active life, of relief and exhilaration in
wearied life, and the aid upward from baser to better
life in whatever form it be regarded. Its work is no
vague dream. The powers and beauty of the external
world give form and fashion to it, whether in the realm
of moral or material ; to its authorship are due man-
kind's most imperishable monuments ; but the prompt-
ings to which its own vitality responds (for all subjects
take their colour from men's minds) come from the
deep things of Nature, and those are no other than "the
deep things of God." It is the mirror into which beauty
is reflected, to be presented to the vision of the soul.
It is the faculty through which the fine arts those
faithful intermediaries of all human sympathy minister
to spiritual life. When not marred and darkened by
an evil will, it is a divinely-constituted means of spiritual
intelligence, illuminating mortal sense from the fountain
of immortality. It is a creative power within that
gives form to spirit, substance to faith, and reality to
the unseen. Without it how desolate the wilderness,
how deep the darkness through which the spiritual
vision strains toward the light that gleams above the
horizon of mortal sense ; but with unflinching gaze it
follows upward to its source the ray that issues from
the Light that lightens light itself. Imagination is
that great faculty by which the soul ascends to the
contemplation of the Divine nature, and listens to that
Voice that is in the stillness of the universe. Without
it that precious spark would die, which, among the
paradox and mystery of existence, like a shining star,
makes clear the pathway from the life we know to the
life we are conscious of, but know not ; supporting the
timid soul by that certainty of its divine relationship
which raises it for ever.

The immortal soul is self-conscious. It is conscious

in TO SPIRITUAL LIFE 45

too of universal life, and of its own place in it. In-
fidelity has offered to it the gospel of Death, and it has
refused it. It is satisfied with the knowledge of the
fact of mystery, as that without which eternity would
be an idle void. It listens to the echoes of a distant
past. It has never let go the hand of God. It sees
and hears His guiding spirit in the trial sphere of
human life. It knows His footsteps ; it sees His light;
it traces Him in the excellence and beauty of the
universe, for all Nature is His parable.

But the influence of fine art upon thought and life,
both in those who produce and in those who receive it,
depends upon the tenor of individual disposition and
capacity ; for some minds turn all poetry to prose, and
some invest the simplest things with the halo of their
own brightness ; and thus it happens that the appeals
of beauty through the forms of art too often fail. Its
elements are insoluble in some minds ; and, as the
course of life is often rough, and the ways of it not
ways of pleasantness, but of infirmity and depression,
it too often happens that, amid the absorbing neces-
sities which harden practical life, fine art is valued
by the multitude rather for its furniture than its
poetry.

Regard for one moment the effect of a great picture
and sculpture gallery upon the mass of the spectators.
What do they find ? a vast array of pictures and statues,
portraits and landscapes of all nationalities ; here and
there a scenic representation of a religious subject from
one school, or an academic composition from another ;
then, more rarely indeed, a gem of devotional expres-
sion ; the rest are portraits, boats, or battles, or domestic
scenes most picturesque, or of vice and revelry most
offensive ; and the sight-seers disperse, some perhaps
delighted with their entertainment and exhilarated by
its brightness, and some perhaps utterly confounded by

46 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

its multiplicity. But pause one moment. There were
some who lingered there and went away thoughtfully,
for there were those among that multitude men,
women, and children too on whom some lovely ray
of thought had struck. The poetry of colour, the
mystic charm of Nature's truth and beauty, or the
aspirations of devotional expression, still breathing from
the surface of some old canvas as the poor artist had
left it, with his last sigh, a legacy for the world, had
found their kindred spirits, and had struck home at
last. Those were the souls that Nature had already
tuned, and the old artist's poetry had struck them and
brought out their music.

But the source of the inspiration of art's poetry, that
comes as a breath we know not whence, must be sought
far deeper than in the emotion of the passing moment.
The power whence springs that impulse, whose ultimate
result is art, must not be measured by the means of its
expression. The urgent motive, the rapid search, the
restless spirit battling against the bondage of material
all witness to a living power impatient of control. That
impulse is indeed vivid, vigorous, irresistible, as those who
have felt it know right well, as though mastered by some
mighty will, or urged forward by some great unseen
hand ; but whence comes our power to respond to it ?
Whence in our nature does that throb of sympathy
arise that answers to the call of the spirit of beauty
and truth ? That power is ours, but it comes of too
long an ancestry to be traceable only among the
surroundings of present life. But are we left to that
alone ? Are love, thought, and memory bounded by
its limits ? Have hope and terror no history beyond
the annals of humanity ? Has the majesty of philo-
sophy, the pride of knowledge, the reign of sense, ever
satisfied mankind ?

What is the secret of that power that holds the

in TO SPIRITUAL LIFE 47

mind enthralled as the after-glow of sunset fills the
eyes ? Whence comes that sense of rest and yet of
longing, lingering desire as the sight loses itself in that
ocean of light ? Why no sense of solitude in those
awful depths ; no fear, but only joy in that sublime
infinitude ? Why ? but for the conscious presence of
more there than sight perceives. That glorious sheen
of light and colour is but the clothing of a sphere of
life into which we pierce and find no strangeness in it.
Its fascination is not that of novelty, but of reminis-
cence. We are no more alone : a sense of relationship
to all that sphere contains invites onward, as to a home
once known and long since left, but not forgotten
another but a true sphere of life a spiritual scenery
reflected from heaven's mirror. Thus does sublimity
of external effect, which only art's deepest poetry can
recall, stir in the affections of the human breast the
echoes of life beyond the horizon of our sight a life
not lost, but, like the sunset, sunk beneath the shadows
of a distant past, shrouded from sight and interrupted
for a while, as though to test fidelity a life once ours,
ours still, and ours for ever: no dream, but the con-
scious reality of the silent soul.

The spirit of beauty, whether enshrined in material
or moral form, the beauty of strength or weakness, the
beauty of reality or idea, all come from the same source
whence our own nature itself has come, and has been
endowed with power to feel and to comprehend it.
That spirit of beauty, like the Spirit of the Eternal
Being, of whose presence and character beauty is itself
both the evidence and the purest symbol, is appre-
hended not by the scrutiny of the intellect but by
the affections of the heart ; and fine art, profoundly
more a thing of spirit than of sense, is the minister .
commissioned to interpret its lovely parables to the
world.

48 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

There is an Oriental adage that " Beauty is in the
eye of him who sees it " an expression most true,
indeed, if by it is understood that power of mental
sight beyond mere physical sense ; for then the inde-
pendence of the spirit of beauty is rightly apprehended
as an element as subtle as life itself, an element of ex-
traneous existence by which, through sense, the mental
faculty is impressed ; but it is most untrue if by that
saying it be implied that the perception of beauty is
but a whim or waif of poetic fancy, self-deceptive,
applying a bright quality of itself to the things it calls
beautiful ; as though the emotions of the imagination
were created by a power which it had first created
itself!

No ; beauty, like the spirit of life, in its own nature
infinite and independent, such as no time nor place can
bound, no thought can grasp, nor words define, is the
subtlest witness that the universe affords of the nature
of spiritual life. It is as a bridge connecting two
worlds : on one side leading to infinitude of all perfec-
tion, on the other, attached to material, not as though
belonging to it, nor bounded by it, but transcending
every quality it possesses, investing them with its own
excellence, and overflowing them with its illimitable,
irrestrainable stream of life. What is there in inert
material, unfathomable mystery though it be, that can
touch the spiritual element of mind and emotion ?
What sympathy can there be between what is lifeless,
unstable, corruptible, and spirit that thing of immor-
tality ? Surely none ; but the spirit of beauty can
and does transfuse material, and does animate the en-
dowments of bodily sense with power to penetrate the
thin shadow that separates those two worlds, and
opens to the prisoned spirit of the man an access,
clear and unrestrained, to the free air of the world
invisible to him.

in TO SPIRITUAL LIFE 49

To such an one, whether practically an artist or
not, but at least contemplatively one, whose powers
of natural insight have been cultivated and refined
by all that it is Art's sacred mission to teach to such
an one Nature has opened wide her treasury of divine
life. She has spread before the eyes of his responsive
spirit, in a vista of infinity, the mystery of divine
beauty. Unsolved, unsolvable ! He gazes with
adoration ; the highest faculties of his nature, of
body, soul, and spirit, in silence bow before it. Sense
perceives, imagination portrays, reason accepts, con-
science assures, with all the power of their blended
testimony, that that inscrutable mystery of beauty is
the mode in which it has pleased the blessed God to
communicate to His creatures the perfection of His
wisdom and His love.

The sublime vision is beyond the range of mortal
sight ; the moral sense, that voice of the soul within,
has answered " Yes " ; and then the heart turns to
its course in human life, the sphere of a short pil-
grimage, fortified and content. The convictions which
thought, study, and the experience of life had heaped
together stored, sorted, purified in the great labora-
tory of memory have been illuminated by a ray from
the throne of immortality. Fear vanishes. Difficulties
which tempt, infirmities which impede, are but the
discipline of an existence conscious of its own transi-
tory nature. The way of life lies out before. The
light of divine beauty has been shed upon it : and
thus along the pathway of this mortal life, whether
it be earthward or heavenward, the footsteps of the
travellers are made light and their hearts rejoiced
with the blessings of assurance and of peace.

Such is the lovely message that Fine Art is com-
missioned to carry to the world ; and such is its work,
to minister to the spiritual life of those who seek it.

THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART

ESSAY III

The origin and consummation of beauty is in
that love which God has said He " is." The com-
munication of it is the expression of the Will of that
love ; and happy they who have their hearts pure and
their intelligence of sense and spirit bright, to per-
ceive, beneath the outward show of things, the living
Majesty of that Wisdom, Power, and Love Divine,
whence PERFECT BEAUTY, the fountain of all joy, flows
forth for ever.

ESSAY IV

FINE ART IN ARCHAEOLOGY

*T^HE arts in archaeology are like the sounds of many
voices coming from a distance, arresting our
attention by their mystery of mingled clearness and
uncertainty, and fascinating us more and more with
all the charm of poetry's vague suggestiveness, as they
die away upon the distant air. Such opportunities
of mental travelling as their pursuit affords over the
wide and varied area of past time is the romance of
reality, and its intellectual locomotion is as invigorating
to the spirit as change of air and scene is to the body.
It is a kind of journeying free from all but pleasurable
fatigue, so varied as to dismiss all weariness ; or if
sometimes the way seems long and the traveller's steps
begin to flag, new interests break out where least
anticipated, with all their cordial of new hope and
enterprise, as refreshing to heart and sense as the oases
and springs of the desert.

What can exceed the interest of that retrospect
that spreads before the imagination the light of dawning
intellectual life, of which the relics of earliest art are
the few remaining testimonies ? But now even they
appear strange in age and origin, and the tale they tell
seems so lost among the world's morning mists, that all
we know of most of them is but the literary notice of
some venerable author who handed on from an unre-

52 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

corded source a tradition that had interested him, and
left for us no more than the whispering myth of a
reality of which only the silhouette remains. Thus is
the intensity of interest redoubled as we, who are
antiquaries now, regard the works and records of anti-
quaries of a long past age, who themselves have plunged
into the depths of the age before them. Such was
Solon, and such his feeling when, having vaunted the
glories and antiquity of his own nation, he sat wrapped
in astonished interest as the Egyptian priest, smiling
at his small notions of antiquity, recorded to him the
origin of his own and other peoples from the great
island continent, then long since no more, that once
had all but filled the ocean space beyond the pillars of
Hercules that wondrous land, the great Atlantis, with
its sheltering Alps and fertile plains, rich mines and
crowded cities, inhabited by tribes now only dimly
known as the Oceanides, the Atlantides, and the
Hesperides, a real but now a mythic people, whose
story lives only in the romance of unwritten history.

If archaeology involved no more than a study of
things^ old things, it would still find favour with many
minds ; but as the study of old things implies also the
study of all that throws light upon them, such as what
a scientific man would call their environments, and a
poet their associations, the boundaries of archaeology
become exceedingly wide, and its actual limits hard to
define. In it the studies of the scholar, the philosopher,
the poet, and the historian find full scope. Its wide
range of interest, its scattered facts, its vague suggestive
thoughts, tell how great the need its student has of
quietude, time, and care, to brings its elements into
focus, and to frame for the profit and pleasure of the
world the varied pictures it presents. But time is the
trouble of our age, and impatience its characteristic ;
so the genius of movement in this busy world is apt to

iv FINE ART IN ARCHEOLOGY 53

regard the antiquary as a sort of living curiosity. It
looks on him as a creature infected with mould and
rust, and has no idea of the enthusiasm which lies
beneath his quiet skin. Happily for human nature,
enthusiasm is of many kinds, and is often the shallowest
where it is most demonstrative. The fact is that the
world knows very little of its component parts, and
little does it reflect on the words of the poet who spoke
of men's " hermit souls " ; but those words would go to
the very heart of an antiquary, and express to him his
very self; picturing to him the quiet depth of that
stream of gentle but invincible enthusiasm which buoys
him up and carries him through his work, brightening
the spirit of his enterprise, and rilling the mirror of his
contemplation with ideas. I am not confounding per-
severance with enthusiasm. An antiquary's work is
hard, and there is no doubt of his perseverance if he
be worth his rust. It might at first blush be hard to
believe in the enthusiasm of writing a dictionary, or of
collating dates, or of classifying musty deeds or rusty
coins ; but granting its indomitable perseverance, and
granting, too, the dry, mechanical labour it involves, I
believe that, without that quality of a deep and quiet
enthusiasm which is the very life of all good continuous
work, the spirit of the archaeologist, whether he be
historian, philosopher, poet, or antiquary, would sink
beneath its work, and his " hermit soul " would die.

The association of fine arts with archaeology, and
the part they play in it, will be measured by the know-
ledge that people have of them, and be valued according
to the tone and tenor of their many-sided minds. The
thorough antiquary should be at once a historian and
an artist. Art and history must go side by side in
archaeology to supply and illustrate each other, for
what is history without poetry, and what is art without
fact ? History is the typal picture of men and things

54 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

in all time ; and art is that power over material by
which men in all ages have rejoiced in setting forth to
others their deepest thoughts. Thus art and history
are bound together, and poetry and philosophy belong
to both ; for philosophy is the moral of history, and
poetry is that plastic power of illustration which gives
life and action to it all.

What is it that fills the history of ancient art with
all its vivid interest, and what is it that endows that
art itself with all its captivating charm, but that it
embodies the very soul of mankind ? Facts and
feelings are equally precious in any just and true
estimate of human life ; for feeling is, in truth, a great
result, the end of a complicated tissue of sympathies
and antipathies that may for the moment be taken as
a point of rest. But life cannot rest, and the more
intense its power to feel, the more impossible to rest.
It may be stayed for a while in contemplation ; it may
ponder and linger captivated or overwhelmed : but the
fire that smoulders will break out at last ; and the
result, in a burst of eloquence, poetry, or art, is the
relief of the over-burdened mind.

To such an origin as this it is that we owe the
birth, the growth, and the perfection of ancient art,
with all its power to fascinate, to command, and to
draw together the whole brotherhood of humanity. It
is the design and intention, the warmth and passion of
the living man, that glows in that ancient art, that
makes it precious to us through all time. The intellect
alone may be as cold as the moon and live, but art
must have sun in it or die.

But the broad brotherhood of archaeologists must
not be expected to appreciate art alike. Their unani-
mous verdict would probably go at least as far as this,
that its pursuit was interesting and pleasurable; but
only those who could interpret its forms and features

iv FINE ART IN ARCHEOLOGY 55

into a living language could feel the sacred fire. But
if the poetry and symbolism of perfect art is ill under-
stood by some, the rudeness of primitive art, and that
of half civilised nations, is even less so. But, in truth,
rough work is often the most expressive, like a bold
sketch dashed off under strong impulse. So with
primitive art ; its very roughness and impracticability are
often the true signs of an impulse and an idea too big
for the untrained mind to grasp, or the hand to form.
The form of beauty or of power that the mind of such
a man could grasp was one of hard severity, like his
life. The angular boldness of its extreme simplicity
was the very type of that life which gave it all its
interest. It is folly to despise archaic art for want of
beauty. It is better far to allow the weakness of the
artist, and through his rude lines to love the man, and
honour the grandeur of his emotions. There is more
vigour of life and heroic grandeur in the bold action of
the sculptures of Nineveh than in half the modern art
we see, with all its perfection of anatomy and analysis
of expression. There is often more touch of nature
and intensity of feeling in the architecture and painting
of our own middle ages than in many a modern work
the world admires. It is folly to talk of their faults of
technicality and want of precision, which are evident to
all. For what is it that makes all ancient art precious
but its testimony to the emotions that impelled it, and of
that life, with all its surroundings, its nature, its motives,
its joys and pains, that made those emotions possible ?

Those works are the precious relics of men and
nations ; and cold is the sense and shallow the criticism
that fails to trace, through all their faulty forms, the fire
of their poetry ; and through the rough hewings of their
sculpture and the ideal conventionality of their painting,
to reverence the simple grandeur of ancient days.

But the unpoetic or scientific archaeologist, for

56 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

whom the sacred fire burns in vain, will hardly care to
regard them in this light. He will be contented to
allow that the fine arts have always been associated
with the highest intelligence and civilisation of their
age. His interest in them is rather for the witness
they afford than the beauty they produce. He will
value their styles as arbiters of chronology. He will
trace up their origin to their fountain head in archi-
tecture. He will go farther, and trace up architecture
itself to the necessities of construction and materials.
He may, and probably rightly, attribute our pointed
architecture, with all its grace and piquancy, to the
inexhaustible genius of Oriental fancy. He may trace
the perfect architecture of classic times to its earliest
types in the constructive edifices of wood. The very
form of the Pyramids suggests to him their origin, long
before the earliest dynasty, in the heaps of piled stones
which mark the passage or the resting-places of wander-
ing tribes, or the monument of prehistoric victories.
And further still in the depth of time, Chinese archi-
tecture, with its turned-up ridges and quirked gables,
seems to him (as they certainly do to me) to find their
first forms in the primitive huts and barns of a race
living on the wide watery plains of that land of rivers,
where the bamboo, reeds, and rushes gave the first
materials ready at hand for roof and shelter.

Thus will he note the rise and progress of other
arts, and trace their development from the ingenuity of
human necessity to their employment for the purposes
of social life ; but his pleasure in the subject is solely
intellectual, and beyond that his sympathies and profit
nil. He goes in for knowledge, and the clash of theories
and the intellectual pugnacity of schools and scholars
only add to the zest and interest of his pursuit.

Others there are, true archaeologists indeed, who
seem to have reversed the order of life, and to have

iv FINE ART IN ARCHAEOLOGY 57

turned the stream of futurity backward ; individuals to
whom pursuit means retrogression, and progress is
scored only down the pathway of receding ages.
Others again there are, as dry as dust, who love, if
they love anything, only what they can see and touch
of facts and things, antiquaries of the arid type, men
of persistency, of large memories and small sympathies,
to whom tedium is unknown, imagination a blank, and
romance impossible ; most useful men indeed, who
repeat, only in reversed order, what their predecessors
did, who in old days occupied the dulness of their un-
counted hours in drawing up the inventories of house-
hold goods, and properties of church or state or private
life ; who doted over their dry lists, page after page
with " item " this and " ditto " that, as an auctioneer
glories over a catalogue, or a miser eyes his jottings of
unprofitable coin ; such dry chroniclers little dreaming,
in their sleep of time, what mines of interest they were
laying up for us, who draw from them pictures as true
as though the realities were before us, of the character
of those times remote, of the ways of social and
domestic life, the pursuits, the habits, and even the
moral worth of those who lived in them.

The works of art which are the glory of antiquity
were accomplished in times when all the world was
alert with intrigue or war, or in those short and stirring
intervals of peace when warriors devoted their spoils of
victory to their country's honour. Those too which
adorn the ages nearer to our own, and which now stand
up among us as the monuments of peace, the types of
the religious spirit that had conceived them and the
devotion that had realised them, were no less than
their glorious predecessors the accomplishment of
nations struggling with moral if not with martial foes,
warring with barbarism and fighting for life, amid that
movement of events, that gave the motive, the dramatic

58 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

action, the incident, and the very vital spark itself to
their unconscious genius. Thus was it that, when all
was astir with uncertainty and change, those immortal
works of art and poetry were produced which shone
like stars in the stormy sky of classic history, and like
angels of consolation among the sighs and sorrows of
the middle ages.

Most true it is that both heart and intellect are fed
upon the stores of that continuous stream of life which
flowed on from age to age, and has left along its banks
the scattered pearls of human genius. Far off in the
remote ages of geology we may begin to draw our first
glimmerings of human history. Their silent annals
present a counterpart to the world of intelligence and
life, for deeper and deeper as the shaft is driven, the
richer and more inexhaustible are the treasures of re-
search ; but the whole value of the past is in the use
we make of it, and all our accumulated knowledge,
whether of material or mind, is no more than lifeless
fact and prosy chronicle till touched by the fire of
human sympathy. Treasure is of no profit till it can
pass into currency ; and facts accumulated into mount-
ains are useless to us until we assimilate them. We
need to breathe and live on the fresh free air which
blows over the wide field of life and things gone by;
not only to fill our minds with knowledge, and store
them with the treasures of resource, but also to freshen
the motive and brace the heart for good work upon the
world, the times, and the men around us.

It would be a melancholy system of dry morality,
and a cold philosophy indeed that merely filled the
mind with matter and ignored the heart and soul of
humanity. The value of archaeology, whether for the
enlightenment or for the interest of maturer years, lies
not in the pedantic knowledge of antiquity, but in the
thought-felt, heart-felt realisation of its life.

iv FINE ART IN ARCHEOLOGY 59

Art is in its nature pure, vast, heaven-born, and the
antiquary who takes the true, noble, and right view of
the place and work of it in the world, will find that all
the elements of his study in history, philosophy, poetry,
and antiquity will concentrate upon it. He then esti-
mates it no more as the mere furnisher of the illustra-
tions of facts and things, but the embodiment of that
life and spirit that make history live.

The retrospect of the world's story resembles the
picture of individual life except in this, that the world's
life is always young ; its infancy veiled in impenetrable
mist, its bounding youth an epic of heroism, blotted
with fault, but starred with gems of virtue ; its age a
struggle of alternating progress and decline, but its life
still young, and its winters the balance of a perpetual
spring. Things and minds, not life, grow old ; and it
is that parallel of decline that gives to antiquity that
touch of sadness in the sympathy of thoughts and
things, long since passed away for ever, that intensifies
its absorbing interest. That touch of nature that
makes art so fresh and pure is the link of human
brotherhood. In the depth of unrecorded geological
age, the cave-man relieving the tedium of his weary
life, etching with his flint arrow-point upon bones the
forms of animals that peopled his lonely hunting-
grounds, was but the elder brother artist, alive to the
same charm of natural life, and impelled by the same
motive spirit as young Giotto of our own age, as Cima-
bue found him drawing upon stones the forms of the
sheep he tended upon the Tuscan Apennine. So too
the potter of prehistoric days decorated his pottery with
spots, lines, and chevrons, at Nature's own suggestion
adopting the fundamental principles of repetition, pro-
portion, and contrast, by which the most consummate
art has ever since been ruled.

The unity of mankind is not more plainly shown

60 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

by its anatomy than by its habits and moral, as they
are illustrated in the arts of life. It may be that here
and there a rude race is found as that of Terra del
Fuego, of the Andamans and the Australians
descendants of weak families pushed outwards and
flying before the vigorous expanse of early migration,
as wild animals fly before the advance of men ; and
who, isolated uncomputable centuries ago by changes
of earth and ocean, themselves originally outcasts, un-
intelligent, resourceless, and dispirited, have lost their
clue and tradition of community ; and so utterly over-
whelmed in the loneliness of nature and their own
poverty and distress, that what little good they carried
with them has dropped out of memory. But with all
others, whether in the happier climes or the most
distant refuges of the world, their story, as written in
their arts, tells, from remotest ages, the same tale,
that as with ourselves, the same aspirations stirred
them, the same needs, the same motives, the same
energies moulded the habits of their life.

It is thus among the associations of life, to which
the relics of art are the unfailing witnesses, that
archaeology draws the subjects of its deepest interest.
Its paths may not be always easy, but the tracks of
human feet that have trodden them before, are the
secret of that fascination which tempts us onward.
Uncertainty increases interest, and a sense of mystery
adds zest to the pursuit, as they lead on amidst that
silent and shadowy scenery of the past, where time
itself is lost in mist and the last fading colours of
tradition die away ; but even there, with apparently no
more than the materials of antiquity around us, the
breath of thought still rests upon their forms, and the
deep silence is broken by the whispers of life.

Artists engrossed in their work are little aware
how often they portray themselves. Their friends and

iv FINE ART IN ARCHEOLOGY 61

critics call it mannerism, but the touch of art is deeper
and more subtle than the accidents of style. Music,
painting, and sculpture lend themselves plastically to
individual character, and even the calculated forms of
architecture, which seem to allow no place for elasticity,
tell the individuality of mind and hand.

Thus has art in archaeology spread out in the dim
light of centuries a picture within which is concentrated,
with truest portraiture, the habits and characters of all
ages and generations of mankind ; a picture of the
realities and the romance of human history, but pre-
eminently a picture of the unbroken affinities of human
nature, and the brotherhood of human souls. For if it
be that in the records of history we trace the life if
in the annals of commerce and of travel we ascertain
the habits if in literature we learn the wisdom it is
in art that, throughout the ages of the past, we feel
the spirit, and we mingle with the hearts of men.

ESSAY V

THE MINISTRY OF COLOUR TO SCULPTURE AND
ARCHITECTURE

PART I COLOUR AND SCULPTURE

T N Nature, colour serves many purposes ; in Art, its
service is to make beautiful things more beautiful:
ugly things it cannot serve, but to intensify their ugliness.
Nature affords us no reasons for its selection, so we
may be tempted to regard its use of colour as arbitrary ;
but it can hardly be so, where, as in universal nature,
system and reason are supreme. We have no right to
affirm natural colour to be arbitrary and without law,
any more than the winds. Nature is nowhere lawless.
There must be some law in the natural employment of
colours. Indeed it may not be a mere childish dream
that a deeper law and purpose, than our weak faculties
can fathom, may underlie those mechanical relations
which we attribute to chemistry and light. The power
of colours is a mystery to which something in our in-
ward nature responds, a method of expression of which
we hardly yet have learnt the alphabet. It is indeed
hard to believe that such traits of loveliness as are
possessed by the colours of external nature can be
mere mute and arbitrary signals without significance.
We hear their music, and we are entranced by it, but
we cannot tell whence it comes, or whither it goes. A
law it must have, but it is one that all the chemistry

ESSAY v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 63

and mathematics of our science fail to explain ; and
imagination, which goes deeper than them all, to the
very depths and springs of our nature, can tell no
more than of their mystery and their beauty.

Whatever be the law that orders their relation to
the things they adorn, it is measurable, if measurable
at all, only by special aptitudes of mind and sense ;
but even here there is no basis for comprehension, for
the perception of colour is so various, that sense dis-
agrees about its use ; and minds susceptible of the
moral of it, form their estimate according to their own
individual intelligence. Where then is the conclusion
to be ? That which in its own nature is infinite, which
sense cannot exhaust nor mind fathom, which seems to
play with all the fickleness of fire, but is subject to laws
which rule its apparent license into an exquisite order,
we must be content to accept as a wonder and a joy.

An artist needs to have a spirit of very subtle
penetration to comprehend in one broad grasp the
material and moral qualities of the things that Nature
has lavished for his use. His main difficulty is in
their selection. Such is the infinitude of forms and
colours, an infinitude made still more embarrassing by
their combination, that only those who know not what
there is to know, will plunge into art with reckless
haste, as though its heights were to be scaled with ease,
or its pathway only strewn with flowers.

A student has plenty to learn, but learning in art
is not like learning facts and figures that serve to train
him for other things, for art is a speciality to be learnt
rather by training faculties than by learning rules ; for
though there are great principles to be mastered, and
great experiences to be gained, there is no hope where
the heart does not go before the education. A pupil
needs first to make the elements of his art as though
they formed part of his very nature, and then at last

64 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

as an artist to use them for his heart's expression. If
sculpture be the art of his choice, and he be blessed
with a genial spirit that can descend from the upper
airs of abstract idea to the sphere of common men, he
will inevitably be some day struck with the contrast
between the works of his hands and the models from
which he had fashioned them. Those works may be
beautiful, but they have stopped short and vaunt their
superiority in their sublime ideal of abstract form.
The idea was fine, but the method of attaining it afforded
no reason for stopping where he has stopped. He
realised figures of ideal representation a hero, a god-
dess, what not ? by idealising the forms of Nature, that
is, by modulating those he saw to those conceived in
his imagination, till the special figure of his conception
was complete. If then Nature be not transgressed by
taking such mental liberties with her forms, why should
any violence be implied by applying the same liberty
to colours ? Thus, at the outset, interesting problems
will arrest him, and, among them, few will be more
difficult to solve than the relation of forms to colours.
They appear to be distinct entities, and to have no
necessary relationship, but Nature has made them in-
separable, and, when harmonised, they charm our sight
and master our moral sense, and come at last to be in
the artist's hand a power to arouse every emotion, and
excite every passion of our nature.

The perception of colour is a speciality. Some
people feel colour, some people only see it, or think
they do ; but eyes might be equally faithful in them all
for the mechanism of sight, but the intelligent percep-
tion of colour is a very different matter, and varies in
them from a reality to a blank. Colours are the
creatures of light, and where light is there are colours.
White is beautiful, more by association than in reality.
All colours are contained in it, for it is not by their

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 65

annihilation but by their union that they produce white.
We associate purity with white : but colours are as
pure ; it would be hard to find impurity in the rain-
bow, but there is no white there. Sea-foam and snow,
a chalk cliff and a lily, are white, but all their whites
are different ; and every undulation of form, every half
tint or light reflected upon them, and, still more, their
shadows, make those whites again more different.
Why do we associate perfect purity with white ? Is
it not because of its exquisite union of all colours ?
We do well to treasure the idea of its purity, but none
the less is colour pure. The snow-white mountain
against the mid-day blue is as the white of an opal,
and as the morning rises and the evening sets upon it,
it turns to gold and ruby, and at night it is more
silvery than the moon. Those colours are but elements
of its whiteness, and are as veils of beauty thrown over
it, in Nature's varying moods. Colour is all pure in
itself, and it is perhaps the very intensity of our sense
of its perfect purity, that induces our dread of art's
imperfect use of it ; as though colour were an element
so divinely pure as could be entrusted only to that
Hand that clothed all Nature with it.

If form be pure, then colour purely used can only
enhance that purity, for it is but an ethereal element
of light. The forms of sculpture are not changed by
it ; but it may be that for want of custom or experience
our inner sense is confused by that union of form and
colour ; still it is unreasonable to object, except on
confession of our mental inability to reconcile our sense
or mind to the union of what our habits of thought had
separated. But were they, are they right in that
separation ? where is their authority ? Certainly not
in Nature, for in all that surrounds our life colour is
everywhere ; but the sense of abstract purity conveyed
by white is so universal and so strong, and in our

66 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

inward conviction its symbolism is so sacred, that to
offend it would be sacrilege. But if colour is as pure
as white, as the very elements of that which is pure
cannot be less pure than that which they combine to
produce, and the source from which they flow, may not
the intelligent sense of colour demand an equal courtesy
of respect ? In light is the fountain of all existence ;
it brings life with it, and whether in the unity or the
separation of its elements it is equally an emanation of
divine beauty.

The greatest difficulty that art has to meet, in its
communication of thought from man to man, is that
variety of disposition and sense that results in a tangle
of irreconcilable convictions which no reasoning can
touch, because the very basis of comprehension does
not exist between them. We must therefore agree to
differ, and we must respect each other's differences ; for
the senses to which art addresses itself are the en-
dowments of our individual natures ; and art's best
hope is in her power both to delight and teach, and
thus to break through the crust of indifference or
inability, and to enter, as naught else can enter but
by appeal to the universal sympathies of mankind, by
inspiring thoughts that turn men's minds inwardly
upon themselves, and lead them at last to the percep-
tion of that soul in art, which, through the skilful
semblances of outward beauty, appeals to them and
wins them.

In practice the association of colour with sculpture
can be only rightly conceived by mastering the pro-
prieties of it, proprieties that are not limited by what
such form or colour might be in Nature, but such as
would best aid the expression of the idea they are
designed by the artist to convey. The conception and
choice of colours are apt to be embarrassed by the
recollection of them in relation to accustomed forms

COLOUR AXD SCULPTURE

and effects, and thus associating them in our ideas with
truth and untruth. But if sculpture be rightly under-
stood as appealing to the moral and intellectual sense,
rather than by mockery of imitation to delude the
sight, all the choice of form, composition, relief, colour,
and all else that combines to produce its expression,
must be guided by an art that would of necessity
include the idea of nature and reality ; but at the
same time would assume, with all the supreme author-
ity of genius, the power and the right to use and
modulate the whole scale of those material means,
and so to embody its life and purpose as genius had
itself conceived them.

With this view and to this end it is at once clear
that the conception of colour, in its relation to all
arts, must come from within, from the mental reflex of
external truth ; and the associations of its truth or
untruth, its fitness or unfitness, must be grasped as
completely in relation to idea as to fact Colour, as
art uses it, is true when it is true to the great pur-
pose of its existence, viz. to enhance existing beauty,
by the marriage of two beauties, of form and of itself,
thus making one. It is untrue when its purpose is a
lie, by the attempt to make a thing appear what it is
not The nude of a statue is not flesh, the drapery
of it is not stuff of woven flax or wool, and colour that
would be used in either case with the purpose of de-
ception, would be a falsity and offence. Those forms
were conceived, composed, and executed to satisfy the
sculptor's impulse, to present to others the embodied
idea of what his own heart and mind had drawn from
the depths of Nature's inspiration ; and just as his
idea may have been one of power or of tenderness, of
simplicity or majesty, of life or death, his purpose was
so to arrest the minds of other men as the inspiration
of it had arrested and overcome his own ; and then,

68 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

if, in the completeness of his art, he let colour come
to breathe upon those forms, it was not to flush their
surface with a mock reality, but to perfect their ideal,
by making tenderness more tender, death more solemn,
life more lovely, majesty more sublime.

Do you ask how is all this to be obtained ? I can
only reply that no mortal can teach the secret of it ;
for there is nothing in the whole range of art more
spontaneously artistic, undefinable, and ideal, than the
relation of colour to form. The perception of it lies
in intuitive genius ; and the only ruling of it is that of
a pure mind and of a knowledge, taste, and judgment
profoundly matured.

It is a laudable jealousy that would restrict an art
to its own sphere, and so far as this is the opponent
motive to the use of colour with sculpture, it is worthy
of all respect ; but the limits of any art's sphere are
not easily assigned ; its characteristics may be readily
defined, but they are not its exhaustive definition.
When Socrates, himself a sculptor in his youth, said to
his friend Crito that the province of sculpture was " to
represent the emotions of the soul by form," he beauti-
fully expressed the speciality of the art ; but art is too
elastic and expansive to be shut up within the limits of
an aphorism. As well might we say that " the pro-
vince of eloquence is to express the emotions of the
soul by words ;" but what does not intonation of voice,
expression of countenance, and bodily action add of
life and power to those words ? So too in sculpture
the intonation of its material may be invaluable in its
effect on form, as Gibson felt when he wrote to a
friend " form is spiritualised by the tinting ; it makes
its forget the material ; the Greeks were right." Sculp-
ture from the days of Daedalus to Praxiteles has pro-
gressed, like every other art, by the gradual accumula-
tion of graces ; and in its progress it has been so

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 69

sensitive to external influences that the poetry, the
philosophy, and the contemporary civilisation, have
affected it throughout The merely abstract ideal of
" form " in sculpture was by itself insufficient " to
express the emotions of the soul ;" so poetry suggested
the attributes of the figures, philosophy and religion
suggested its motive and symbolism, refinement of
civilised life suggested its accompaniments and acces-
sories of expression, all which the sculptor felt by
turns, and breathing into his work the breath of his
own life, he reproduced the influences he had received.
Still " form " was indeed paramount, as words are
paramount in eloquence ; and all that accompanied
form was but an item of accumulated grace to give
it moral and intellectual interest, and thus to em-
phasise the speciality of its beauty. So Socrates's
dictum remains unquestioned ; but as form is precious
not merely " for the expression of the sculptor's soul,"
but still more for that of humanity, the power of its
beauty is at once asserted, and all that could help its
interpretation, as in some cases at least the added
element of colour might do, would enhance and endear
it to mankind : and thus men would feel " the emotions
of their own souls " relieved in the expressive eloquence
of the artist's work.

Each art has indeed its own sphere, but each has
many spheres within itself; and to these it must be
true, and by their limits alone can it be fairly barred.
Within them all is liberty, a liberty that is conscious of
itself; and, conscious of the dignity of self-restraint, it
ranges with freedom within the fences that " truth to its
own purpose " has alone the authority to impose. Where
then is the career of sculpture to be stopped ? Sculpture
is not limited by its subjects. Carving may mark its
lower, statuary its higher sphere ; but from the flowers
and fruit of Grinling Gibbons to the Venus of Praxiteles

70 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

all is sculpture. The panels of Ghiberti's doors may
seem to invade the art of painting, and the Cariatides
of the Erectheum to trespass upon true architecture ;
but all these are recognised as not only beautiful but
legitimate, because they are seen to fulfil their various
purposes with propriety and grace. Where then is the
limit to be placed ?

Again I must say that no mortal can teach the
secret of it ; and no rule but " truth to its own pro-
vince " can limit any art : a rule indeed dangerously
indefinite, a free will that is open to good or evil, like
that of the life of men and nations, of which fine art is
the reflection and the exponent. Purity, propriety, and
truth are counsels of perfection exquisitely ideal, and
by their standard must all fine art be judged ; but the
words have not yet been written that could frame the
indictment.

All art is the union of material and mind, and it
is the artist's touch that makes and consecrates their
marriage. In sculpture it is not merely by the choice
of subjects nor the composition of its forms, but by the
subtlety of touch that it fascinates the world. But the
sculptor's work, however beautiful in other ways, may
be marred by imperfections of its surface. There is
hardly a limit to its finish. It is the unceasing move-
ment of undulation on the surface of a statue that gives
it, from every point of view, that mystery of rounded
profile that captivates the sight. Much of this effect
may be due to the material, and white marble has been
the sculptor's favourite resource, as offering the greatest
facilities and the fewest defects. Materials of dark
colour, like bronze and porphyry and black marble,
need highly-polished surfaces to make their modelling
visible, and consequently are liable to the disagreeable
effect of bright high lights in violent contrast to their
local colour, all which is avoided in white marble.

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 71

The brilliant high lights that give vivacity to pottery
are not equally agreeable as bright spots on the muscles,
limbs, and features of a statue. A surface of modified
lustre is the best ; but even that depends somewhat on
the tone of it. Pure white marble, freshly cut, fails to
show the delicacy of its modelling as the same would
show it, if relieved of its intense glare of whiteness. So
terra cotta has been a favourite and successful material
from the soft richness of its tint. Ivory too has been
so for the same reason, and for the facility of its
colouring. But marble is the queen of all materials
for sculpture ; and, to remedy its one defect of white-
ness the greatest artist of art's greatest days supplied
to it, by a simple artifice, what time has done to it for
us by the mellowing effect of age.

It is not merely to the ocular but to the mental
vision that sculpture addresses itself, and hence the
difficulty of its complex artifice. The works are
addressed to the world at large, and are felt and
thought about, just as it may happen that they fall on
heedless or thoughtful eyes ; how much therefore their
effect depends on external circumstances it would be
hard to exaggerate. We, whose sight is trained to the
veiled light of northern sunshine, can only realise by
imagination the needs of southern eyes. They crave
for colour. Their bright atmosphere imbued their very
nature, and even where, from mere habit, all idea and
thought about it was a blank, the mental happiness,
unconscious of its source, was there, and came of the
soothing joy of satisfied sense. Colour was with them
a necessity. As their world would be lifeless without
it, so their works without it seemed bald and wanting.
It would be hardly chargeable with exaggeration to
say that their works were always coloured either
artificially or by the choice of material ; for there is no
style nor period of art, when by some form of evidence,

72 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

direct or indirect, it may not be asserted that colour
was an element of it.

Colour, as bluntly conceived by unaccustomed minds,
must not be confounded with the refined delicacy of its
use in the hands of a consummate artist. The language
of colour has an unwritten grammar, that has a
phraseology of its own according to its varying mood
and purposes. Some plain rules and great principles
may be laid down for its use, but beyond them
the true artist's use of it must be learnt by the love
of it, and matured by that thought and care to
which that love alone is sure to lead. Doubtless
it needs a natural aptitude for its comprehension ;
but it is a great reality which those who cannot
appreciate must be content to accept. They may
glory in the colours of pictorial art, but they battle
with the idea of colour used with sculpture, because
their sense is confounded by what their minds fail to
reconcile.

In early days of art it may have pleased barbarous
eyes, and in better times even those blinded by the
affections of archaeological association, to have seen the
statues of the gods daubed with vermilion ; and such
may have been the result of habit even upon the most
trained eyes and taste, that all sculpture may have
seemed wanting in effect without at least some colour-
ing, where the very air itself was full of colour, making
the cold white marble an offensive blot. But be the
colouring of their sculpture what it might, its object
could not have been illusion, nor its principle that of
bare naturalistic reproduction, for it is impossible to
believe that such heroes of art's acme, as those of the
days of Pericles, could for a moment have tolerated the
annihilation of all their art's poetry by the substitution
of the base for the ideal, the sham of reality for the
truth of feeling, in the production of what even to our

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 73

inferior sense and taste could be only stigmatised as
demonstrative vulgarity.

If we seek a guide to our judgment on such sub-
jects and look back to the days that all regard as those
of art's perfection, we find our views enlarged and our
practice modified by such a review. They must be so
only with this reserve, that no age must be the slave
to another, nor one country to another's arts, which the
exigencies of their climate and the habits of the people
must originate and naturalise among them, if their arts
are to be worth their name. In looking for precedents
to such times, difficulties arise from the absence of any
complete examples, and from our dependence on the
writings of travellers, archaeologists, and dilettanti, who
were not experts in the arts they describe. Still, such
is the aggregate testimony, that all great principles
involved are clear enough to reconstitute those arts, so
at least as to represent them to our minds, though our
skill might fail to reproduce them.

In early poetry and early art we find the germs of
what maturer times produced. It needed the sunshine
of national enthusiasm to complete their growth. The
earliest sculpture that we know was painted, or made
or ornamented with coloured materials. As we might
expect, all eyes turn southward for any historic art
with the attribute of early genius ; and thence sculpture
came with all its colour, and there many of its ancient
models still remain. Eastward too there was light and
warmth and wealth for art's development, and, what
was needed also, the cultivated civilisation and natural
aptitude of the people. Architecture, providing for
life's earliest necessities, was the first to be developed ;
and with that we are at once introduced to the use of
colours. Sculpture followed as its natural relief, with
its forms of mingled wood and marble, painted and
clothed with embroidered drapery. From the splendid

74 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

palaces of Assyria to the temples on the Nile all was
coloured. Even where the dread of idolatry excluded
imitation, as in the temple of Solomon, no limit was
imposed on the glorification of all other modes of art
with gold and vermilion, cedar, ivory, and metals,
" bright ivory overlaid with sapphires and pillars of
marble set in sockets of gold." l Although the artists
may have been comparatively rude, rejoicing in effects
of colossal size and gorgeous display, they certainly
had mastered the great principles of adapting material
and ornament to their right place and purpose. Their
art was essentially objective. It needed centuries of
refining civilisation to develop the subjective sense of
beauty and expression ; and still more to reach that
most abstract of all phases of art, when an uncoloured
statue became a possibility.

The arts travelled westward with all their tradition
of splendour and their strange mixture of barbaric and
refined idea, consecrated by associations of antiquity ;
with combinations of material and skill that East and
South had brought into full practice, and needed only
the genius of Pheidias to bring to perfection. The
sculptured wall -pictures of Nineveh and Egypt, the
golden gates of Shalmanezer's palace, 2 with their pro-
cessions of countless figures in relief and incidents of
history and warfare, were the first suggestions of an
art perfected at last in the friezes of Athens and
Pheigalia.

Such were the conditions, the forms, and materials
of art that the Greeks received as a precious legacy
from the nations of the world ; and, with the mighty
mind and skill of that great people, they perfected and
adapted them to their own national character and use.

1 Canticles V., vs. 14-15.

2 The gates from Ballawatt, now in the Assyrian Department, British
Museum.

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 75

Transforming them by their genius, transfusing them
with their poetry, they made them all their own.
Greece plucked the fair flowers from the gardens of her
neighbours, and sowed their seed at home, that when
they bloomed again they might be only Greek.

The inquiry into their use of colours at the highest
period of their arts is not easily satisfied, because it
depends in great degree upon the careful inference
of experts, and cannot be, except in a few cases, posi-
tively demonstrated. We acknowledge their authority,
and without yielding a tittle of the genius and power
of our own times, we may accept the canons of their
taste, and profit by their experiences. But colours are
themselves so frail and fugitive, and the preparatory
film of material on which they were laid was so tender,
that scarcely a scrap of them remains. The deep
recesses of sculptured forms, the sheltered corners of
walls and hollowed mouldings alone retain the evidences
of what once covered them. The descriptions of ancient
travellers, the quotations from ancient authors, the dis-
coverers of our own time who have dug out broken
remnants that carelessness, fanaticism, or greed had
failed to destroy ; the inferior works of latest classic
work exhumed from buried cities or found upon the
ruins of ancient monuments and cemeteries, preserve at
least, although in shadowy forms, the traditions of the
arts of past great days, and make, with rare exceptions,
the total catalogue for our reference ; still they are
sufficient to convince unprejudiced judgment, that
colour was an important element of sculpturesque and
architectural effect in the greatest works of classic art.
Materials that in the South and East were common,
with us are rare ; and we are too apt to appreciate for
their rarity what the great artists of antiquity valued
only as subservient to the production of their effects :
so they gilt and painted what we should quail to touch.

76 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

But it is a grievous task to attempt description of them,
or to convey to others the true import of one's words,
where all depends upon the subtleties of art. The
refinements of artistic sense are indescribable ; form
cannot be conveyed in words ; and of colour it is hope-
less to insure the true impression, where each mind
takes them in its own sense, and the bare mention of
them suggests to many an effect of glare and violence,
when all that was meant might have been but the
tenderest blush of white or the opalescence of a pearl.

Wherever we look among the sites of ancient
celebrity, as at ygina and Athens, in the Morea or in
Asia Minor, at Olympia and Halicarnassus and the
islands of the ^Egean ; at Paestum, Girgenti, or Selinunte,
and among the countless remains scattered far and wide,
but of which all trace or name is lost : unquestionable
evidences from travellers whose very purpose as scholars
and artists was to search out and verify the history
and arts of classical antiquity, all combine to one and
the same result. In many places the colouring remained
bright ; in others, where the gold or encaustic had
perished from the sculpture, the stain remained ; where
the colour had faded from the architecture the etched
outlines showed where the architect had designed upon
his mouldings the ornament for the painter : holes in
the marble plainly indicated where metal decorations
had been fastened on the frieze, where the gilt bronze
harness had been fitted to the horses, and where helmets
and weapons had been attached to the figures of gods
and men.

But beyond the mere fact of the existence of this
colouring that which gives special interest to its varied
use is the plain distinction which had evidently pre-
vailed between the treatment of different kinds of
sculpture, namely, that in high or low relief and the
two distinct classes of statues those associated with

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 77

architecture and those independent of it. If it be borne
in mind how absolutely distinct is the principle of
architectural effect from that which constitutes the
beauty of independent statuary, the principles of all
ornamental treatment will fall at once into distinct and
reasonable systems. For instance, in sculpture, taken
independently, however definite the composition may
be, however bold its effects of contrast and relief, its
beauty depends on those qualities which exemplify
life ; and the blending together of its distinct features,
and the modulation of the curves and undulations of
surface and profile into one another, are the special
elements of its treatment. In architecture, on the con-
trary, its composition is based on precisely opposite
principles of construction and effect. There is no
blending of its parts, no softening of its outlines, no
thought of life (not that architecture lacks life, for
every fine art is a thing of life, and in architecture its
vitality is the measure of its excellence, the life of idea
from which it sprang, and the life implanted in its every
feature by the mind and hand that executed them).
This contrast between architecture and sculpture will
be better appreciated by remembering that every
feature in architecture is an entity complete in itself,
cut off from every other by sharp definitions, as the
abacus separates the capital from the entablature, and
the astragal cuts off the capital from the shaft, the
metopes, the triglyphs, the frieze, the cornice, or the
arch having each a complete individuality and inde-
pendence except that Art has so built them up
together, and so combined their differences, as to make
of them all one completed thing of beauty.

The beauty found in each of these two arts depends
of course on the excellence of its artistic treatment.
If then any other art, as that of colour, comes to be
employed upon them, or any ornamental material be

78 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

used to enhance their effects, such art must follow the
ideals of their distinctive beauties, and maintain their
respective characters, if it would not disfigure rather
than adorn them ; and such were the plain and simple
principles which, whether thought out or instinctively
perceived, appear to have been accepted and practised
by the greatest Greek artists.

Thus their architecture was parti -coloured and
treated with no feeble hands ; and this leading prin-
ciple, viz. their recognition of the entire distinctness of
each architectural feature, is exhibited in the method of
their coloured treatment of it : for instance, triglyphs
were usually painted in positive colours, without regard
to the metopes between them. A traveller at Athens
in 1837 described a metope lately found there as
" sculptured in high relief, and painted red, blue, and
green," but the flats of the architrave below them
appear quite plain. Mouldings were selected for special
colouring, such as the bands of richly -polychromed
design of honey-suckle scrolls and frets which covered
the grouped mouldings of the pediments and the level
cornices of the finest marble models of Grecian archi-
tecture ; and belts of deep colouring were carried
independently all round these buildings, like the band
along the peristyle above the Panathenaic frieze. The
ground of that frieze was blue, and the figures relieved
with gold and colours, some of the horsemen's head-
dresses being coloured and their arms and ornaments
gilt, while, in strong contrast, the bulk of the archi-
tecture beneath them was left plain. 1

1 There is now no irrefragable evidence whether the external plain
surfaces, such as columns, the flat parts of entablatures, etc., of marble
architecture were or were not generally coloured. That the marble was
coated with encaustic, whether as a preservative or to impart high finish to
it, is from Vitruvius's account, writing from Greek sources, probable ; but
whether those parts were coloured or not cannot now be assured. The
mouldings have the most positive evidences of colours and their patterns ;

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 79

The grounds of the tympana and metopes were
painted everywhere, in some cases, as in Sicily, red,
in others, as in Greece, blue, against which the statues
were relieved, and when nude were comparatively
plain ; while in strong relief, their emblems, arms,
drapery, and ornaments were boldly marked with colour,
gilding, and metal -work. They grouped with the
architecture, and as architecture was so were they. The
capitals of the antae and of the colonnade under the
porticoes were painted and gilt, while the white marble
columns and capitals of the great peristyles were left
uncoloured. Thus by all of these, which are but typical
illustrations of what is found elsewhere, we perceive
that the same principles on which architectural con-
struction depended that is to say, on the distinct in-
dividuality of eacJi feature so also the colouring of the
associated sculpture appears to have been ruled, viz. by
the arbitrary selection of a fine constructive taste, taking
parts here and there and loading them with richest
decoration, and leaving the rest plain stone or marble.

The statues in the pediments at ^Egina may be too
archaic to guide our taste ; but in them we have at
least the plainest record of this traditional treatment of
architectural sculpture, and the finer statuary of the
Theseum may be quoted to the same effect. In both
cases, indeed in all cases where fine Greek art has been
sufficiently preserved to illustrate it, the colouring was
positive, and composed in no relation to the picture or
wall painter's art, but architecturally ; indeed so power-
fully so as to have been too self-assertive and dis-

but the thin pattina of colour on the large plain surfaces, if they had any,
would have perished before the writers, on whom we depend, had seen
them. Stone temples were coated with cement, as at Paestum and in
Sicily ; the question being whether these, of which there is no doubt about
their colouring all over, were so coloured in imitation of their greater
models of art, viz. those of marble ? Pliny, Pausanias, and Lucian, and
Vitruvius wrote 'of them about five hundred years after they were built.

8o THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

agreeable but for their association with a parti-coloured
architecture. If this were an archaeological or con-
troversial volume instead of an essay limited in its
address, very much detail could be mentioned here to
illustrate further this clear and distinct character of
architectural treatment, and of the difference between
architectural and independent sculpture ; but it may be
said without prejudice that while some parts may have
been left without definite tint beyond that of the wax
and oil of the encaustic, in such pediments as those of
Olympia and the Parthenon, just inference leads to a
contrary opinion as to those of the more archaic
^Egina and the highly-decorated Theseum at Athens ; it
is at the same time most unlikely, that those apparently
uncoloured figures could have remained crude as they
left the sculptor's or the mason's hands. It should be
remembered that we are here referring to no ordinary
works, or ordinary criticism, but to artists of unequalled
refinement, and a population of extraordinary perception,
who, undisturbed by the multiplicity of such life as ours,
passed an out-of-door life, identifying themselves with
their national arts, and regarding them not as the
merely ornamental accessories of life but as important
elements of national glory. Such men would regard
all works of art around them with a seriousness and
reality that a modern would smile at. They valued
things not for their material but for their effect, and if
the unmitigated glare of such a sunshine as theirs
interfered with the perfection of sculpturesque effect, as
in the delicacies of half- tints and reflected lights it
certainly would, it is reasonable to infer that some treat-
ment would be adopted to remedy such defects. As
we see those marbles now, time has mellowed them ; but
it has bared them also of the materials of that treatment
by which their surfaces had been originally mellowed,
viz. of that tender film by which the encaustic painter

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 81

had prepared them for colouring and gold, which has
all likewise perished. But we are not altogether left in
ignorance about these matters, for Greek artists and
architects left writings descriptive of their principles
and systems on many subjects, such as perspective,
geometry, proportion, anatomy, and methods of painting,
of which Vitruvius availed himself, and has preserved
many valuable details from them. The originals have
perished, but we have his description of the old Greek
system of preparing walls for painting, and the method
of treating the marble surfaces of both statues and
walls. Pliny quotes from the same authorities, which
lead to the inference that the encaustic preparation
was all but an universal practice ; and by our own
experience we know how the wax and oil, with or
without resins, rubbed in and fixed by heat affects the
marble, giving it a peculiar quality of effect between
white alabaster and ivory, and either tinting it or not
as may be : but in either case blending it with the
coloured and otherwise rich effect of all around it.

It appears therefore that the treatment of archi-
tectural and independent sculpture differed on plain and
reasonable grounds. The former had made part of a
complex effect, and in consistency with the demand of
artistic breadth, it had yielded to the stern demands of
architectural composition. Colour had formed a very
important part in it. Independent statuary, on the
contrary, was clear of all obligation, and its colouring
had relation to itself alone. With exception of a few
touches of colour on drapery and accessories, to save
the whole from insipidity, the treatment appears to have
been very tender, the main purpose having been to clear
the supports and parts of inferior importance from the
figure itself, and thus by contrast to emphasise the
beauty of the nude.

The great chryselephantine statues of Pheidias at
G

82 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Athens and Olympia, and the Hera of Polycleitus with
its ivory arms, its gorgeous robe and throne of gold,
have had all the splendour of their colouring described
by eye-witnesses ; but both through them and by the
positive evidence of modern research, we know that all
this magnificence of material was not isolated, but
formed part of the general effect, being supported by
other sculptures, by inlaid paintings, by coloured walls,
such as those by Pansenus round the screen of the
sanctuary at Olympia, by decorative metal -work, em-
broidered drapery, and coloured marbles. And thus
the breadth of result that an artist's sense demands
was secured : but on individual and independent
statues such was the influence and such the demands,
of all the coloured materials around them everywhere,
without which ancient art appears to have been re-
garded as incomplete, that these too were not left of
unstained or unalloyed metals, nor of crude untempered
marble. Details of universal use, the common daily
effects of things, are not noticed in written records.
The very commonness of that use of colour accounts
for the rarity of remarks about it. Great works,
that we know to have glowed with it, are described
by ancient authors without a word about their
colouring. It was taken for granted in sculpture as
well as in architecture ; and unless for some special
reason we only incidentally come upon the notice of it,
as in Virgil's dedication to Venus of a figure of Cupid
with many-coloured wings and a painted quiver, and
of a marble statue with crimson sandals to Diana ; or
when Callistratus admires the blush on the cheeks of
a bronze cupid by Praxiteles, or where the sculptor
Aphrodisius is designated as the sculptor and statue
painter (' ^aX/mro-Troto? ey/cavar^'), mere passing notices,
which could be greatly multiplied, and which by their
incidental character testify to the ordinary nature of

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 83

the remarks. The greatest works of Greek independent
sculpture appear not to have been of marble but of
bronze and other metals ; indeed the list of materials
used in them reads like a catalogue of colours. The
metals were varied by alloys, stained surfaces and
gilding, and the marble when it left the sculptor's hand
was submitted, for complete finish, to another art than
his. The profession of the statue painter was one of
recognised importance, and his confraternity appears to
have included the distinct occupations of the encaustic
painter, the gilder, and the stainer, 1 skilled decorators,
but in their ways artists. The encaustic was variously
compounded of wax, oil, and resin, and sometimes
tinged with colours, as the"circumlitio variata" mentioned
by Seneca implies. It gave to fresh marble the mellow-
ness of age, and aided the sight of the tenderest
undulations by counteracting all glare, without inter-
fering with its crystalline luminousness. The deli-
cate movements of the surface of fine sculpture are at
the mercy of material. They are lost in the plaster
cast, and are invisible in stone : hence the preference
in critical Greek eyes for such compact surfaces as of
ivory and metal. If in this respect marble fell at all
short of these materials it was superior to them in
many ways, by its easy workmanship, its adaptableness
to any subject, and pre-eminently to the work of the
encaustic painter, who remedied all defects, giving
consistency to its surface, softening its rounded profiles,
and harmonising it with surrounding colours. Encaustic
painting was not necessarily colouring, but served as
the preparation for it, and for protection of the surface
when colours were not used. To write of painting
statues might mislead a reader : the expression might
have applied to archaic figures and reliefs, where

1 "AydX/j-aTUv ^yKavaral, xpu(ru>ra2, /cal /3a0ets. Plutarch, De Glor.
Athen. 6.

84 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

painted architecture, whether Greek or Gothic, required
such treatment ; but in all thought of the colouring of
such sculpture as I now speak of, independent high-
class work, the barest idea of paint as commonly under-
stood must be at once dismissed, and in place of it
must be conceived an art peculiar to itself, of utmost
refinement of sight and handling. Its purpose was
altogether subordinate ; less with a view to any imitation
of nature than of conventionally aiding materials to the
more perfect display of the beauty that sculpture had
itself already produced. Hence the intense refinement of
it. It was a useful ornament, but would cease to be so if
obtrusive or suggestive of a second idea apart from
form. The arts of the " stainer " and of " encaustic "
combined, whether on drapery or emblems, accessories
or supports, or on the figure itself, had for their one
sole purpose the perfect exhibition of the figure by the
relief and contrasts that they afforded.

So in all ways colour, whether tenderly or power-
fully used, was within the strict limits and province of
the great art it served. It would marr rather than aid
the effect of sculpture if it transgressed those limits.
Sculpture is the highest and most difficult of the
imitative arts ; and they are rightly called imitative,
from the artist's sheer necessity, having only Nature's
models to follow ; but imitation in art is an intellectual,
not a mechanical process, a matter of translation ; it is
Nature's voice spoken by the artist's method ; it is the
realisation of impressions, that, in passing through the
artist's mind, are affected by his character and motive
in the image that he gives to his idea. The highest
value of his work is in the moral aspect of it ; the
whole force of it depends on the unity of its ideal ;
and whether colour or no colour be used, it is so used
or not, and only so to insure the completeness of its
expression. Even if in such master works as the

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 85

Theseum or the Parthenon the nude parts of the
pedimental sculpture had been tinted or stained flesh
colour, this mere flat wash of colour as contrasted
with the actual painting of flesh, as in a picture, with
its fixed composition of light and shade, its countless
gradations and broken tints, is a totally different
matter ; and it is impossible to believe that such men
as Pheidias (himself a painter before he was a sculptor),
or his chief encaustic artist Pansenus, or at the Theseum,
Myron, both painter and sculptor, could for an in-
stant have transgressed the province of their arts, or
have done more than to use a consistent local tint,
whether such were warm, as some flesh tints would
be, or merely with the mellowness of the olive com-
plexions of the south ; but, whatever it was, so modified
as finest taste would suggest to harmonise the white
marble with the richly-ornamented architecture, the
painted mouldings and the deep shadows of the
pediment above, and of the portico below. It was
with the instinct of the artist that they acted ; and,
whatever was the course they pursued, they knew too
well both what art and nature meant, to be guilty of
the weak folly of making mock realities. The soft
white Parian marble was as precious to the Greek as
to us ; but he used it with the independence of an
artist's genius, colouring, toning, gilding, and otherwise
adorning it or not to suit his purpose. He knew full
well that the end of art was not to delude but to
delight ; the very thought of illusion would never cross
his mind. His work was art ; his mistress Nature, too
revered for mimicry ; but the bald marble might be
too self-assertive, too obtrusive of its own material for
his desired result. His purpose was to realise imagery,
which haunted his imagination, not to glorify marble,
and most certainly not to counterfeit flesh. His result
would be a work of art, natural indeed, but ideal also,

86 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

to bring his conception of Nature's beauty to the
hearts of other men ; a work so schemed and executed,
simple or complex, plain or coloured, but such as would
leave all sense and thought unimpeded, by the mere
technicalities of art, to range freely in the action and
story of it, and to enjoy that motive poetry of it with
which his own mind and imagination had been filled.
The artist speaks only through his works, and Nature's
forms are all he has to use ; and it would be difficult
to conceive a greater libel against her, who is the
source and centre of all the real and the ideal both of
art and life, than the mocking image of pretended
truth, in the attempt to produce the thing without the
life which is all that gives value to that thing's reality.
The art of art is not to hide itself, but to hide its
artifice. A work of art is not a pretence. A statue is
a reality, but a reality of art ; not as the rival of
Nature's work, but the reflection of her spirit.

Colour is but one mode of an artist's expression.
Doubtless the ideal of sculpture is the perfect beauty of
abstract form ; but expression is the life of it ; without
it art is dead ; for what is art's action in its highest
sense but the appeal of the living to the living ? Even
if death be its subject, it is the grandeur or the pathos
of that death that makes the poetry of it beautiful, and
the sculpture of it precious. Colour does not alter
form, but argument is out of place where Nature
rules ; and art has no logic for cold reason, but goes
straight to the heart by the rhetoric of sympathy.

The " How and how much ?" of colouring, of inde-
pendent classical sculpture, must be ever a matter of
uncertainty. The notices of ancient writers are vague ;
and time, accident, and atmosphere have done their
worst, and have left us but little positive evidence, as
compared with what remains on works of architecture.
Nearly five centuries had passed over the master-

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 87

pieces of antiquity before such writers as Pausanias,
Pliny, Strabo, and Lucian described their state. Still
there is an ample accumulation of many scraps and
kinds of testimony to justify the inference of how great
a part colour played in all the master works of art's
greatest days, and how thorough were the knowledge
and the taste of their authors. As their grandest works
of sculpture, the colossal figures in the temples of the
gods, were enriched with every coloured material and
every mode of coloured ornament that ingenuity could
devise, the use of colour is implied on others standing
near them, to save them from a contrast painfully
obtrusive. In the Heroum at Olympia there were
above twenty statues of gold and ivory, and such figures
were the special subjects for the coloured ornamenta-
tion of jewelry and enamel. The heroic statues were
commonly of bronze, sometimes gilt, sometimes of
metal much alloyed, sometimes stained with bitumen :
the marble statues were tinted by encaustic, the
famous " circumlitio " being the process of its use.
With these the temples within and without, the
porticoes, the galleries of the market-places, the
Lesche, the Agorae, and the public walks, were orna-
mented, and such was the general taste for coloured
and varied materials that statues of ivory and gold,
exported by hundreds, became an important part of
Athenian trade. Such was the proud magnificence to
which victorious Athens had trained her people. The
artist's mind was full of the romance and heroism of
his own times ; and his imagination, enriched with the
myths, the poetry, and the traditions of his country's
history, realised to the people the just mead of their
own devotion. For us imagination alone can form a
picture of it. No painted casts, no plaster models of
temple fronts and groups of sculpture, even were
Aphrodisius, Pansenus, and Nicias called up to paint

88 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

them, could give the faintest idea of those glories of old
art. Colour needs colour ; and colour supports colour,
and the material it adorns makes much of its beauty.
No grouped or isolated illustrations could inspire the
idea of what that reunion of the arts produced ; nor
reproduce that symphony of harmonious form and
colour that the wealth and refinement of Greek cities
realised, and Greek sun and atmosphere made possible.

Nature has taught and trained us all. It has
endeared to us our sober scenery, our misty skies, and
the gray moss and lichen on our storm-stained walls ;
but to them, that glorious flood of light that turned
their distant glaciers into jewelry, that deep blue sea,
those cliffs and sun-browned rocks that had trained
their sight to the revelry of colours, had made such
backgrounds for all that human hands could raise in
front of them, that their architecture and sculpture
would have been intolerable without some artifice to
harmonise them with Nature. So colour was the note
to which they were all attuned ; and Pheidias and his
friends let their artistic enthusiasm go free in the gold
and vermilion of their sunny cornices, and in the
vigorous contrasts and reliefs of their groups of
sculpture.

The common reference that the opponents of colour-
ing make to the authority of Lucian to prove the absence
of all colour on the finest works of ancient sculpture, by
citing the whiteness of Praxiteles's masterpiece, the
Venus of Cnidos, appears to me to savour of a criticism
inspired by an exaggeration or misconception of the
use of colour, and indeed in some persons by a natural
inaptitude or a temper of resolute antipathy. Lucian
presents the subject in the form of an imaginary con-
versation, in which the 'speakers are engaged not so
much in artistic criticism as in lauding the exquisite
complexion of a beautiful lady. They compare it with

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 89

the finest known works of sculpture and painting, and
to this statue in particular, concluding that marble is
too white for it ; and hence modern opinion has jumped
to the result that all the finest marble sculpture of
antiquity was left crude white from the master's hand.
Then how about Praxiteles's opinion, which was dia-
metrically the opposite of this? The idea of repre-
senting the natural effect of flesh in the colouring of
statues, or even the broader treatment of washing a
statue over with what is commonly understood as flesh
tint, except in the necessary conventionality of archi-
tectural sculpture, would be an equal insult to human
eyes and to Nature. I can, however, imagine an art-
loving literary archaeologist, but certainly not an artist,
writing that he " meant by painting a statue, the
employment of colours so as to give to the face and
body the actual hues which they have in nature." 1
Praxiteles would have thought Nicias gone mad if he
had written that. It is not to be wondered at that
Lucian's conversation concludes that sculptured marble
was too white for comparison with the flesh of that
lady. 2 It is the misconception of the art of applying
colour to sculpture that presses the argument, without

1 Quatremere de Quincy, Le Jupiter Olympien.

2 If Lucian's imaginary allusions to the Venus of Cnidos be properly
estimated, it will be remembered that the statue was above 450 years old
when he saw it, and that the colour used for such a tint as such a statue would
have had, would have been very fugitive. The real colour would in all prob-
ability have been a merely mellowing tint, with which its encaustic would
have been " variata." He does not mention colour or white, but describes
the effect as \afj.7rpoTr]s, which answers exactly to Pliny's word " nitescunt."
If &'jwarm tint were used on it, the colour would have been most probably
prepared with vermilion and treated in the most delicate manner. Archaic
statues were much prized in the time of Praxiteles for some pleasant or
quaint associations, and these were painted all over with unmitigated ver-
milion[; but even in that excess of colour, such was its quality that those
statues had to be frequently repainted. Any other colour would have
been stains, still more fugitive, or ocres uselessly opaque. Lucian's
testimony as to the non-existence of colouring on that or any other sculpture
contemporary with it, seems therefore to me worthless.

90 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

thought of circumstances or the limits of each art,
that " proximity to naturalist representation marks the
degrees of an art's perfection." It may do so as regards
mechanical imitation, for perfect mechanism would
make any number of copies the same, but no two out
of twenty artists, worth their salt, would or could make
their copies alike if acting independently, especially if
they were studies from Nature, for a copy is the
idea or impression of each individual mind reflected in
his work, and there is none such in a mechanical
copyist. An artist not merely sees but feels, and
works as he feels. So in using colour, if condescend-
ing to the base trade of a wax portrait modeller, he
would probably "represent nature" (!) better than any
other man ; but as a sculptor, putting out the whole
energy of his artistic sense, the feeling which prompted
his idea would be his guide, and colour would then
become an abstract conception, totally irrespective of
simple natural effect, and, if used at all, would be so,
not as an element of representative art, but as an
element of perfection to be moulded to his purpose, to
enhance the expression of his work, an imitation,
indeed, if you will, both of form and colour, but the
imitation of the ideal of Nature in his mind.

Parian marble was so tender in texture and hue
that to use the word asperity, as a fault of its natural
surface, would be an exaggeration ; but works of art
are not independent of surrounding circumstances, and
the treatment of marble surfaces in sculpture by the
ancients in some way or other, beyond the last touch
of file or chisel, is indubitable ; and in doing so, there
could be no purpose but to modify them. In Lucian's
conversation, the surface was not declared to be un-
coloured, but only too white for human flesh. The
Venus of Cnidos was said to be so, but that was all.
White has a very wide range indeed of hues, short of

COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 91

the tender life -blood -tint even of the fairest flesh.
That statue was cited as an exquisite example, but a
defect in the marble, marked by a dark spot on one of
the legs, has been especially noticed as a proof that the
statue was not " painted." Most true, indeed, it was
not so, as this crude idea of " paint " implies, which no
artist's mind would have conceived. The marble was
marble still, not for its own exhibition of lime and
crystals, but to serve its purpose ; not mimic flesh, to
delude and offend by vulgar trickery, but marble still,
with unobtrusive surface, toned, veiled, and made beauti-
ful as only art can make it. But as this was one of the
master's finest works, of which he said those " pleased
him most " that his young friend the encaustic painter
Nicias had touched, 1 it is but a fair inference that this,
his masterpiece, the Venus of Cnidos, was among that
number that " pleased him most." That figure was the
ideal of female beauty, and not in form only, but in
tone and texture, all would have been done by such a
master to make it perfect. The encaustic circumlitio,
whether plain or " variata," but equally mellowing and
transparent, would have exactly produced the desired
effect, and the softness of its tint would have made
refinement more refined. All was coloured round it.
The open shrine in which it stood, was surrounded by
all that cost and artifice of ornamental gardening could
produce ; and if upon the statue itself the mellow tint
of the encaustic painter produced a blush that did but
play into the fancy of the eyes, without pretending to
reality, the marble would only have been softened
by it, not disguised, and, by contrast, have been made
only more beautifully white.

The negative evidence of the non-existence of

1 " Dicebat Praxiteles interrogates que maxime opera sua probasset in
marboribus quibus Nicias manum admovisset,' tantum circumlitioni ejus
tribuebat." Pliny, N. H. xxxv.

92 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

examples, or of any definite account of the artistic
treatment of this class of sculpture, is not conclusive.
The positive evidence of the finest works having been
subject to the encaustic painter, 1 as those of Praxiteles,
or worked in variously coloured materials as those of
Pheidias, or decked with jewels and gold as was the
Venus dei Medici, indicates sufficiently the direction of
public taste of that age as guided by its greatest men.
By piecing together the fragments of ancient and
modern testimony, it seems to me inevitable to con-
clude that colour was very widely used in the finest
sculpture of the Greeks, and that its general use pre-
vented any effect of peculiarity and strangeness which
its extreme rarity produces upon us. It may be im-
possible to say exactly where and how much, especially
with respect to the actual tinting of the nude parts ;
but taking for granted the finest discrimination in its
use, there is strong testimony for its artistic propriety.
From what we know of the style in which ancient writers
treat such subjects, a perfectly definite description
of colours could not be expected. For instance, Plato's
admiration of the local propriety of the colours used on
painted statues leaves all detail to the imagination.
Gilding, colours, and statue painting, are mentioned
again and again by old authors, but almost always
with poetic vagueness. Statues are said to have been
sometimes painted with vermilion, but we know that
that colour varies from the most offensive violence to
the ground of the tenderest blush. The choice of ivory
for the nude parts suggests the almost necessary use of
a stain upon it, 2 as in the case of ornaments where such

1 " Uti signa marmoria curantur." Vitruvius, vii. 9. Quoting from
ancient Greek writers.

2 Among the Athenian artists of the time of Pericles, Plutarch men-
tions e\^0ai/Tos co7/3a0oi, painters of ivory, or painters from life on ivory.
Ivory was treated with great independence by the ancients, who, careless
of its beautiful colour, very commonly used it as a vehicle for other colours.

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 93

treatment was universal ; but in the use of it for the
nude parts of statues, it was necessary to overcome the
unbecoming blots and tints of its inlaid pieces, or its
liability to turn yellow. But realistic imitation of flesh
is nowhere specified, nor are there any remains of any
attempt at flesh-tint, such as is generally understood
by that word, except on statuettes and figures in
coloured terra -cotta ; but ivory of itself approached
so near to the tone and texture of flesh, that anything
done to it by the artist would have been inevitably in
the direction of greater likeness, however much or little
he modified his tints of yellow, olive, red, or brown ;
so that from all we naturally infer, and from what we
gather by the facts of special " ivory painters " being
employed, or by Plato's expressed admiration of the
" appropriateness " of the colouring of statues, or from
the use of jewelry to give brightness to the eyes, and
the entirely naturalistic effect of the enamel-embroidered
drapery and of the constructive materials, it is inevit-
able to conclude that if in any form of sculpture
realistic effect was the result of its ornament, it was in
those colossal statues of ivory and gold. But this was
contrary to the great sculptor's wish. Pheidias had
urged to the utmost his preference for marble ; but he
was overruled, and the employment of ivory was forced
upon him by the popular will ; and every touch that
degraded the ideal to the level of imitative reality was
executed by other hands than his.

In the writings of numerous travellers and artists,
both English and foreign, early in this century, we

In several places Homer mentions it, as in Iliad, IV. v. 141, where he de-
scribes the ornaments of purple stained ivory of the harness. The plaques
of ivory from Assyria and Egypt are commonly so carved for the purpose
of inlaid coloured enamel, that not half the ivory surface is left. The
mediaeval ivories were also frequently painted, just as the ancient Greeks
had treated their marble architectural sculpture, painting strong flat back-
grounds, gilding all ornaments, and colouring forcibly the linings of
draperies and accessories.

94 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

have the clear evidence of eye-witnesses of the colour-
ing of the finest marble : as Professor Cockerell writes
of the Parian marble sculpture of the Theseum, "The
Minerva, the central figure of the Western Pediment,
was painted with chequers of beads ; the ^Egis was
painted all over, with gilded scales, etc. ; " and Mr.
Dodwell, writing in 1813, says of the marble figures
of the Pediment of ^Egina, "The statues were all
painted, the colours are still visible;" and of the
Theseum, he writes (in 1801-6), "the armour and the
accessories have been gilt to represent gold or bronze ;
the drapery is generally green, blue, or red, the favourite
colours of the Greeks. The scene took place in the
open air, so the ground is painted blue." 1 And thus
many others have written about other places and other
sculpture, of which these are but specimens ; and
although such notices apply exclusively to temple
statues and reliefs on temple walls, they indicate at least
the general principle how architectural sculpture was
treated in other buildings, for colour and gold was not
peculiar to temple architecture ; but the statues in the

1 The references to authorities on the subject of sculptural and archi-
tectural colouring are too lengthy and numerous for quotation. Travellers
and archaeologists from most countries in Europe have contributed to
them. The following are some of the most easily accessible and worthy
of study : Of ancient authors Pausanias, Strabo, Lucian, Pliny, Vitruvius,
Callistratus's Descrip. Stat., Plutarch's De Glor. A then. Of modern date
Mr. DodwelFs Travels in Greece, Mr. Clarke's ditto, Professor Cockerell's
sEgina and Basses, Col. Leake's Topography of Athens, Stuart's Athens,
Kennard's edition of ditto, Mr. Donaldson's Supplement to ditto, Sir C.
Fellows's Lycia, Faulkener's Dadalus and Mitseum of Classical Antiquities,
Mr. Penrose's Principles of Athen. Arch, and Polychromy, with coloured
illustrations, R. Rochette's Peintures Antiqties and Lectures on Ancient
Art, Letronne's Lettres d^un Antiqnaire, etc., Millin's Monuments Inedits,
Quatremere de Quincy's Jupiter Olymp., Report of the French Expedition
to the Morea, Report of German Expedition to Olympia, Bronsted's Voyage
en Grece, Weigmann's Die Malerei der Alien, Kugler's Ueber die Poly-
chromie, Hittorff's Temple d^Empedocle, Stackelberg's Apollo Tempel zu
Bass<z, Winckelman's Reflections on Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks,
Labrouste's Restitution des Temples de P&stum, for the Ecole des Beaux
Arts, and plates.

v COLOUR AND SCULPTURE 95

Propylaeae, the Agorae, and Leschae, and all such public
buildings, would be subject to a treatment at least in
some degree similar to those on the great models of
Greek architecture. Isolated statues would be treated
independently, but the most independent of them were
always associated with those public places, and were
usually placed within them or in their niches, or on
pedestals in front of them ; and such statues, thus
placed, embrace the greatest masterpieces of antiquity.
The accounts we have of the discovery of numerous
statues in many places, assert the vividness of their
original colouring when first unearthed, but that upon
exposure it faded away at once. 1 If then such was
the case with the powerful colours of their drapery
and accessories, how much more would this effect of
time and exposure be evident on the tender encaustic
painting of their limbs ; a painting that was free from
opacity, and, by all that we can judge, amounted, in
independent sculpture, to no more than a transparent
glaze and polish through which the crystalline beauty
of the marble would show its toned whiteness, as silver
does in translucent enamels, and as Pliny says, after
describing the encaustic process, " Sicut et marmora
nitescunt" But for our eyes nothing has been spared ;
those statues, whether independent or architectural,
were at first well cleaned upon their discovery, then,
on arrival at their destinations, well soaped for taking
plaster casts, then chemically washed to get rid of the
soap (as the Elgin marbles and others in the British
Museum were treated) and at last presented to us

1 Mr. Newton, in a letter addressed to Mr. Faulkener, and quoted at
length in his interesting volume Dcedalus, referring to the colouring on the
sculpture found at Halicarnassus, of which the finest extant specimens are
now in the British Museum, writes thus of the colours which he found on
many parts both of the architecture and statues, " I saw them fade away
in the sunlight like a ghost. " Professor Cockerell writes of the colours on
the statues at /Egina, " They were discovered in all their original vividness,
which quickly disappeared on exposure."

96 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY v

bare marble ; and people think that they were ever
bare, from which the old encaustic painter's work has
thus been ruthlessly stripped, and not a blush of it
remains. To form our judgment of the practice and
effect of that art, granted that but little more than
written evidence and inference remains, but it is infer-
ence not vainly based on fancy, but on all that we
know too well of the conditions under which the
arts flourished together in those days, to need further
reference.

ESSAY V Continued

THE MINISTRY OF COLOUR TO SCULPTURE
AND ARCHITECTURE

PART II ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING

/"COLOUR as an element of architectural effect was in the
^ earlier years of this century generally regarded as
a novelty. The traditions of classic art were lost or in
abeyance ; the colouring of Christian buildings had
been all but exclusively internal ; the systems of wall
painting were, however, being studied afresh, aroused
to interest by the discoveries in Greece and at Pompeii,
and thus, whether for within or for without, the idea
of colour was dawning as a new light. The former
generation had been educated in a purism which kept
the arts estranged. The painter, the sculptor, and the
architect knew little or nothing of each other's arts.
The idea of modulating them into one great rhythm
was not dreamed of, and they cared for them as little
as they knew. The public cared for none of those
things, and the few who were spared from politics,
commerce, or righting, received as gospel the common
art-tradition that colour was the province of pictures,
and that sculpture and architecture were sacred alone
to the ideal of abstract form. Such was the art religion
of the day : all else was sacrilege ; and there was much
truth in it, so much so, indeed, that with all our

98 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

emancipation and liberty of conscience in such matters,
we must acknowledge much in it to revere and to
admire, for its foundation was a sound one, and lay in
an ideal of purity, in a recognition of the excellence of
abstract beauty, and in that modesty of art which is
implied by singleness of purpose.

The employment of colour with architecture in the
times of its perfection is now too generally admitted to
need proof. The beauty of nude and colourless forms
may be very great, but they need to be of the highest
art to bear the trial of such nude exposure. The nude
beauty of uncoloured architecture is certainly of the
most pure and abstract kind. Architecture is an in-
tellectual creation, but as such it is too artificial, too
abstract, too exclusive of all that is common to external
Nature to command all hearts. There is a note wanting
in its scale. One touch might bring the refinement of
its calculated symmetry into a closer harmony with
external Nature, and the abstractions of human genius
into nearer accord with the feelings of human nature,
and that is the touch of colour.

A thing of colour is a thing of life. A colourless
thing in Nature, if there be such, savours more of death
than life. In art a colourless thing is but a passionless
abstraction. It may be in both pure and lovely, even
though the idea of life may have no part with it. But,
as life is better than death, so are things that represent
it ; and, as Nature without colour is inconceivable, so
art without colour is incomplete.

The colouring by the ancients, whether by their
wall paintings within or the polychrome of their sculp-
ture and architecture without, was as contemporaneous
with their building as each case allowed. The example
of an uncoloured temple or public building as being
exceptional or indicating its unfinished condition, was
well illustrated in the story told by Herodotus of the

v ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING 99

reply given to the Siphnians, who in much anxiety had
consulted the Pythian oracle, and received this many-
coloured answer : " When the Prytaneia in Siphnos
shall be white, and the Agora white-fronted, then there
is need of a prudent man to guard against a wooden
troop and a crimson herald." They were white at that
time, being scarcely completed, and so they remained,
for the "prudent man " did not appear in time to save
the people from the ruin that immediately befell them
by the invasion of the Samians. Those buildings
were of Parian marble. The oracle had specified their
whiteness as a peculiarity.

In such magnificent beauty as in the works of the
architect Ictinus and the sculptor Pheidias, in their
full glory of mingled natural and artificial colouring,
we hear no regrets of the great artists themselves, nor
complaints of their contemporaries, that colour inter-
fered with the beauty of their forms. In their days
was realised that power of artistic combination by
which colour could be felt as pure and beautiful in art
as it was in nature. In those days the grandeur and
the beauty of form, as represented by the highest ideal
of architecture and of sculpture, could be and was re-
cognised no more in the tender hue of the Venus of
Cnidos than in the splendour of the Minerva of the
Parthenon ; no more in the white shafts and cornices
of Siphnos than in the coloured glories of Athens and
Olympia. No, in those days, to which we turn with
reverence for the classic education of art as for the
classic education of its literature, we hear nothing of
such bald objections, which seem only to imply either
weakness of sense or poverty of imagination. The
ideal of beauty in form is rightly loved for its purity,
but I am convinced that, as in ancient days, so too in
our own, a larger-hearted and not less pure-minded
perception of its excellence will find no hindrance in

ioo THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

its association with the equally pure element of colour,
if only rightly used, but rather will love the loveliness
of colour all the more, which only makes the ideal form
more lovely still, as it has nature for its universal guide
and human sympathies for its universal exponent.

When the sculptor, the painter, and the architect
thus worked together, the spirit of the age which had
brought their arts into life and action inspired them
alike ; but in tracing the progress of their arts' develop-
ment it has been too common to treat each stage of
it with comparative indifference, as but a passing phase
of its condition, and, with the view directed only to the
ultimate result, to ignore the principles which at each
period prevailed. Such principles may, indeed, have
been inchoate and perhaps unheeded, but they definitely
marked the turnings of the road that led to their per-
fection ; and, as such, each turn exhibited an experi-
ment, at the time invaluable, but lost sight of in the
general halo of their advance. A spirit of independence
was perhaps inevitable, as each art developed, and was
regretable only in its excess, when their unity was im-
paired by indifference and self-assertion. In earlier
days such discord did not exist. A definite style, no
matter of what age, was the expression of a definite
idea ; it was perfected by the union of many arts, and
the more perfect their union, the more perfect was the
expression of that idea. Destroy that union and you
destroy the very means of its expression, for the
whole charm of style lay in the purity and clearness
of its voice as the articulate expression of individual
character.

But in modern times, since the beginning of the
fifteenth century, the union of painting with architec-
ture has been greatly impaired by the growth, and at
last by the excess of independence. The development
of the painter's art led to the development of one ex-

v ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING 101

elusive phase of it, that of pictorial effect. But the
true greatness of the art consists rather in the greatness
of its adaptability, in its width and power to respond to
the most opposite demands. But now it is restricted
to one only phase, one and one only is supposed, , com-
patible or proper to its highest aims, that whefrbeiVil "be
applied within the limits of a gold frame, qr be spread
over some great surface, needed for the J repose' ' and
grandeur of architectural effect, yet still that the same
ever -repeated phase of picture should prevail. It is
strange that artists should fail to recognise the weak-
ness of this restriction, that their grand art should
manifest such poverty of invention and resource that,
under conditions so opposite, it should still remain the
same.

The modern painter has made himself a slave to
the mere technicalities of naturalistic and pictorial com-
position, but the greatness of his art lies in design^ not
in the mere technicalities of linear or atmospheric re-
lief. But art was in this way narrowed centuries ago,
even by those who in the great days of its revival
glorified it by their genius. Painting was reduced to
illusive pictorial effect, drawn in within one narrow
code of practice. The picture, the altar-piece, the
window, and the wall, the fresco and the mosaic, were
all brought within the category of the same rigid table
of art laws ; and why ? because the artists were in
bondage to one view or principle, and had ignored the
varying conditions of art in its place, its purpose, and
its materials ; and popular opinion, with its eyes half
closed, was miseducated by its masters.

To the honour of English art, there have been two
great spirits who broke loose from the track of common-
place and asserted in practice the true theory of design,
both in decorative and in the highest order of illus-
trative art, Wedgwood and Flaxman.

102 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Linear and atmospheric perspective are, of course,
among the primary essentials of an artist's education,
but as accomplishments they rank with his alphabet
and spelling-book. In dealing with them successfully
Qn : a scale and under circumstances where a modifica-
tion' ''<$' them is necessary, lies an artist's skill. For
"tetaiice. in a long wall painting, which a spectator
w6uld necessarily move about to see, such modification
is inevitable ; several points of sight must be taken ;
but such dealing with linear perspective is a very dif-
ferent thing from ignorant or wilful outrage of it.
Subjects may be so treated as to render such modifica-
tion possible and agreeable, and composition may be
so arranged as wellnigh to cloak the effects of per-
spective. The foreshortening which is the perspective
in figure-drawing is of course an absolute necessity and
inviolable, but that is an effect of local as distinct from
pictorial and general perspective, and in no way inter-
feres with the restrictions that are necessary in some
conditions of wall painting. I know that such restric-
tions do cause difficulty to those who will not or cannot
embrace the idea and principle they involve. The
easy freedom of ordinary picture painting is gone. A
disciplined and dignified simplicity is imposed on the
artist, a simplicity that concentrates his mental con-
ception of a subject and checks his hand, but the result
may be all the nobler for this discipline.

The design, the composition, the colour, and all
that in the unfettered freedom of pictorial effect were
helped by technical convenience, or hidden and screened,
shirked or scamped by artistic ingenuity, are now laid
bare and open to all eyes, and must be met and
mastered. The sculpturesque simplicity of ultimate
effect demands his highest attainments. The strain
calls out powers hitherto unbidden. The rigour of the
discipline deepens and matures his study, and, if genius

v ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING 103

be there, his work is grander for the victory he has
gained, and the loss of minor effects is more than
compensated by the perfection of the greater and
nobler elements of his art, form, proportion, and equi-
librium.

Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, and Raphael
in the Stanze, painted on walls with full and free pic-
torial effect, and rightly^ because in both cases no archi-
tectural obligations were in their way. Raphael then
painted upon the mere walls of rooms, and what archi-
tectural forms were there, were merely decorative and
tantamount to picture frames. In the Sistine Chapel
there are no forms of architectural construction to
falsify, so the artist was free. The whole is painted ;
the whole interior is a scene of architecture, sculpture,
frames, and pictures ; an interior of the extremest
conventionality, that must be accepted in honour of
the splendid genius displayed in it. It falsifies and
violates no constructive architecture. It is a work of
thorough and consistent artifice, and clashes with no
principle that I advocate.

It would be entirely to misunderstand my purpose
if it were supposed that I could possibly underrate the
merits of pictorial composition and all those splendid
accomplishments which lead to its perfection. It would
be worse than absurd to suppose that my advocacy of
a distinctly architectural treatment of painted subjects
should apply to all occasions of wall painting, as though
such as adorn the open spaces of the walls of public
buildings, where incidents of national or local history
are displayed, such paintings should be deprived of
more than half their interest by denying them their
scenic completeness and the charm of natural effects.
What would the ancient walls of the libreria at Siena
be if Pinturicchio's historic works were deprived of all
the vivid interest in the stories completed in their

104 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

backgrounds, or those by Herbert and Maclise in the
modern palace of Westminster ? All such are too
precious for present and future record and enjoyment
to be curtailed of a tittle of their value by submission
to severe or conventional principles. But I am writing
of a totally different matter and of a different occasion.
I desire only to press the duty of the painter to accept
the obligations of architectural constructive effect, and
to curb artistic licence, where the mere A B C of
atmosphere and perspective are displayed as merits,
where indeed they exhibit only the artist's limited per-
ception and poverty of resource, and mar the beauty
of a sister art.

Let picture painting be as free as the air it imitates,
but architectural wall painting is bound by the respect
that one art owes to another. In the former, the effect
of it should be the annihilation of surface, in the
latter, its emphasis.

By all that we can learn from the relics of ancient
monuments and the records of ancient literature, we
find that everywhere, when those arts were combined
without mutual injury, a system, even if it cannot be
dignified as a principle, was implicitly followed, and,
purposely or by intuition, the artists worked with archi-
tecture without stultifying it, and produced works mag-
nificent in their consistency.

If we reach back to long past times for precedents
that would command respect, we may have to pass
over centuries in which the true principles of monu-
mental wall painting were unbroken, but where, as in
the waning art of Rome and Byzantium or the
waking art of the Christian middle ages, the art
itself was too faulty or incomplete in other ways to be
accepted as authority. The crude and lifeless pro-
ductions of the Byzantine school, such as those which
in painting or mosaic cover the walls and cupolas of

v ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING 105

Constantinople, Ravenna, Salonica, and Trebizond, were
based on the traditions of antiquity. Their isolated
groups and single figures were composed, in relation
to each other, on a system which they had not in-
vented, but which, inherited and perpetuated by them,
feebly and sometimes painfully, did nevertheless in
their way represent the true architectonic ideal of their
great ancestors. When the archaeologist Pausanias
describes the chest of Cypselus he describes a system
of composing a series of subjects upon one surface
which has prevailed for centuries before and since, from
the wall paintings and coloured reliefs of Egypt and
Assyria to the sculpture, the paintings, and ivory
carvings of the Christian middle ages. And when he
and others write of the great wall paintings of the days
of Pericles, their descriptions picture to our imagination
systems of composition conceived in the same manner.
Such is the idea we form of the great works of Micon
in the cella of the Theseum, which he covered with
the battle groups of Centaurs and Lapithae, Greeks
and Amazons. So also were those of Polygnotus at
Thespiae, and his vast works which covered the walls
of the Lesche at Delphi with historic scenes of the fall
of Troy and the fabled visit of Ulysses to Tiresias in
Hades, with their many groups and subjects arranged
in succession and above or below each other. It was
thus that Pheidias in his younger days must have
painted the Olympion at Athens, and thus his nephew
Panaenus covered with groups of fighting Amazons the
shield of Minerva in her temple at Elis and the archi-
tectural spaces round the great Jupiter of Olympia ;
thus too must Pausias have painted when he restored
the works of Polygnotus on the injured walls of
Thespiae. These were the days of consummate genius,
when principles were worked out and fixed that have
prevailed, and in art must prevail for ever, where per-

io6 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

feet reason and perfect imagination combine their equal
powers which genius alone can sway.

The feeble Byzantines, the Christian mosaicists, and
the Gothic wall painters only followed on the lines which
had reached them through dark and evil times from
the finest art-schools of antiquity, for the golden thread
of artistic sympathy which bound together those true
but unequal friends has never been broken. The fifth
century B.C. was the great classic building age, and archi-
tecture then ruled the arts and inspired the sculptor
and painter with its ideal of consummate dignity. We
have but the relics of their arts in ruined fanes and
broken statues, in the copies, or at least the influence
of their works in the imagery of their painted pottery,
but even with these we have enough, by careful in-
ference, to realise in imagination the grandeur of their
genius.

There were two distinct systems of painting by the
Greeks, one on panels, the other on walls. With the
first we have nothing to do here, for they were inde-
pendent pictures, free from all architectural conditions,
and usually let into walls, framed or hung upon them.
Wall painting was essentially the art of the great
building age ; grand, heroic, monumental. Panel pic-
tures were produced equally with their wall paintings
by the great masters of the age, but were essentially
the development of a later time and a more delicate
technicality, the work of independent genius supplying
the costliest votive offerings of the temples and the
gems of public and private property.

It would be an offence to the works of those great
wall painters of Elis, Athens, Thespiae, and Delphi to
draw from the designs of the vase painters, refined and
beautiful as they often were, a further comparison with
them than that which a weaker art may suggest of a
greater, viz. the broad ideal of its conditions. But that

v ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING 107

much we certainly may draw, for it is impossible to
account for the combination of such magnificence of
idea and composition with such frequently weak and
faulty handling as those vases present, otherwise than
by attributing their derivation to the works of the great
masters of their age. If therefore from them we de-
duce the impression that those master -works were
characterised by the dignity of sculpturesque self-
restraint, as distinguished from the freedom of the
picturesque, we shall be forming a just idea of them,
for all other available testimony confirms it, from
traditional description, from eye-witnesses, from models
of design in contemporary sculpture, from the bas-reliefs
of the Heroum of Zanthus to the friezes of Pheigalia,
from the pictures on the prize Lechithoi of Athens, and
from the far-reaching influence of their characteristic
conditions, that can be traced back to them from the
walls of Pompeii and the decorative paintings of Rome.
The Greek, the Rhodian, and the so-called Etruscan
vases, which are painted only in outline, or admitting
rarely the introduction of white and gold, 1 afford but an
imperfect idea of the modelling and effect of the great
compositions from which they are derived, except in
the examples of the Athenian Lechithoi, which retain
fragments of the richest colours, and from them may
be formed a fair conception of the splendour of the old
Greek wall painting. An admirable specimen of this
kind of composition is seen on a Lechithos in the
British Museum, on which is painted the group of
Orestes, Electra, and Iphigenia at the tomb of Aga-
memnon. It is a perfect wall painting ; the figures
are exquisitely drawn, the colouring is intense, the

1 One of the finest compositions of this kind is that of the surprise of
Thetis by Peleus on the Cameirus vase, in the British Museum, on which
Eros is painted white with gold and blue-enamelled wings, and the figure
of Thetis is pure white.

io8 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

composition is entirely free from pictorial relief, the
background is a mere architectural indication, and the
unoccupied space above is a flat tint of uniform blue.

We are, therefore, justified by these various styles
of vase painting in forming a definite idea of the essen-
tially architectonic character of the great works from
which they have drawn their motives, corroborated as
they are by contemporary bas-reliefs which represent
the pictorial element of sculpture, and to form, at the
same time, a high estimate of their artistic merits, con^
firmed as it is by the admiration which the great
originals universally obtained ; for, taking Polygnotus
as a representative of the age and style, the art must
have been of a noble kind that could have drawn forth
such praises as those of Aristotle, who attributed to
him the highest excellencies of both technical and
moral beauty, or such as those of the critical Lucian,
who ranked him among the best of Greek colourists.

The result was a style which on all accounts de-
manded the highest artistic powers, unaided, as it was
in later and pre-eminently in modern art, by the acces-
sories of elaborate backgrounds. Landscape painting,
as a distinct art, had no existence in that age ; nor
even, so far as it is possible to ascertain, was it ever
developed on naturalistic principles by the Greeks.
The perspective necessary for it was not known till
a later age ; for that which has been attributed to the
architect and scene-painter Agatharcus, and described
by Democritus and Vitruvius from his writings, amounted
only to the elements of linear effects. Historical and
mythological subjects and athletic national pursuits
engrossed public attention ; and where out-of-door life
in such a country and climate was the habit of the
people, such art as that of landscape painting was not
needed to fill up any void left by the beautiful Nature
around them.

v ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING 109

The examples of pictures saved from the ruins of
Pompeii and Rome, which savour most of ancient
Greek tradition, bear evidence, in contrast with the
complex and realistic naturalism of modern art, how
simple, symbolic, and conventional was the treatment
of all backgrounds by the ancient classic school. The
late Pompeian and Roman paintings of the time of
the empire, 1 and such as, later still, the genre-painter
Ludius had influenced, belong to a quasi-modern school
of the picturesque, having lost all the dignity which
characterised the Greek school. Such are the wall
paintings of the house of the Empress Livia, which
represent panel-pictures with all the attempt at pic-
torial effect common to that period, exhibiting the
utmost known of atmospheric relief, as in the back-
ground to the group of lo, Mercury, and Argos, with
their landscape of mist and mountain ; or the scene
through an imaginary window, where the street and
houses are drawn in such perspective as no child could
now be guilty of. But the panels to which I refer as

1 A very illustrative series of pictures of this kind may be studied in
Bartoli's two volumes, Recetdl de Peintiires Antiques, 1783, and in the
volumes of the Museo Borbonico, and R. Rochette's Peintures Antiques
Inedites. In some of these the landscape occupies the greater part of the
scene, but without any definite principles of composition, scattered and
ill drawn, with here and there imperfect effects of atmospheric perspective,
and, where buildings are introduced about the scene, each is drawn with
a linear perspective of its own, and even then without any approach to
definite rule, the result being exceedingly crude and awkward.

Landscape painting, as a distinct art, is that of modern times and
northern nations. Of the landscape scenery of the Greek theatres nothing
is clearly known but that special places were indicated in them, and that
in Greek pictures particular objects were admirably illustrated ; but the
distinct selection of natural scenery and effects, as the sole purpose of
pictorial illustration, was an art springing from sympathies which as yet
were immature, and, though attempted here and there, as in the spirited
little mosaic landscape (of uncertain date) among the Roman and Pompeian
pictures in the British Museum, nothing in antiquity approaches to land-
scape of nature and imagination worked into a high class of fine art, as
we know it in the various styles of Claude and Poussin, Both and Berg-
hem, Gainsborough and Turner.

no THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

thoroughly Greek in the evident tradition of their art,
have their backgrounds composed with a studied sim-
plicity, as though to avoid all possible disturbance of
the interest concentrated in the actors of the scene.
Such is the case in that fine mosaic picture at Naples,
the choregium of the Casa del Poeta tragico, where
several groups of actors are seen rehearsing their parts,
to which the background is no more than a level colour
with two or three Ionic shafts against it, and festoons
of wreaths and ribands hanging from them. Such also
is the spirited scene of the Pompeian wall painting
representing the discovery of Achilles by Ulysses in
the palace of Lycomedes, where the figures occupy
almost the entire space, the rest being a portico of
simple architectural character of columns and wreaths
with the least possible relief. Thus many others have
no more than backgrounds of drapery or plain colour,
as is the case in the well-known panel of the Nozze
Aldebrandine, representing the marriage of Thetis and
Peleus, with attendant Muses and other figures, with
a plain wall behind them and a flat tint of blue
above it.

Thus, with these examples as a centre, if we look
back to the past and forward to our own age, from the
greatest works of antiquity, from the walls of Assyria
and yEgypt, to the traditions of Greek art in the days
of its perfection, the tombs of Etruria and the walls of
Pompeii, the great mosaics of the east and west, the
paintings of the early Christian times, and the frescoes
of their development, present to us a system and a
sense of art in one continuous stream of common
feeling as painting allied to architecture in harmony
and completeness. If I urge the consideration of this
more architectonic type of this great art, I do so only
where the conditions either recommend or demand it,
and with a view rather to enlarge its sphere than to

v ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING in

restrict it. The architectural character of a building
may demand from the painter some adaptation of style
to harmonise his art to that upon which he works, but
such need entail no return to palpable errors in techni-
cality nor to archaism of faulty drawing or bad com-
position. No rules or definitions, but only the feeling
and discretion of the artist can guide him in such treat-
ment. I am advocating a principle which involves no
return to the errors of the past, and certainly to no
abnegation of any superior knowledge of our own ; but
I certainly do advocate the practice of painting in a
wider sense of its powers than is commonly found
among us now. I look to it to harmonise itself to
whatever it may be associated with, and whatever be
its style. I look to that union of the arts rather as
their espousal than their vassalage. If in architectonic
painting the art were denied some of its common re-
sources, it would be but to draw out and elevate the
rest. Design need lose nothing of dramatic expression,
figures need lose nothing of their vigour or refinement.
Art would rather gain by its opportunities. Pictorial
effects and accessories are only too often the means of
escape from some crucial difficulty of composition.
But where these find no place, and all resource for
artistic indolence or cloak for inability is cut away, a
painter is put upon his mettle ; his design must be
more matured, his composition more studied, and his
whole art thus necessarily raised to a higher standard.
It would be no ill day for our arts if there were
anything thus pressing upon them to force them up-
wards.

But, to conclude, monumental art is, of all others,
the highest in its aim. Its condition of success is that
the resources of all the arts which compose it be
brought into unison. The success of former ages was
the result of that unison in which the whole chorus of

ii2 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

the arts joined. It is the modern self-assertion of the
individual that renders success in monumental art well-
nigh impossible. Let each art be free as air, and revel
in its own powers when it is alone and uncontrolled^ but
then> and only then. In either case the painter's triumph
may be complete. Let him paint as the spirit moves
him, and, with all the freedom of independence, do all
that natural effect or picturesque incident may inspire.
But then, associate his art, in full swing of its liberty,
with the calmer dignity of architectural design, and the
result is this both mind and eye are offended, he has
made all light which the architect had purposely left
massive, bold, and broad ; he has placed the two arts
in direct antagonism ; he has stultified the architecture
and reversed every condition of its construction and
equilibrium, opening that which should be closed,
lightening that which should be heavy, and leaving
weighty masses of masonry without apparent support ;
he has turned cupolas into thin air, thick walls into
scenes of aerial perspective, and has left massive arches
to carry the clouds.

But the great works of other times have given us
the precedents and principles to attain results of success
similar to their own. Individual taste may nowadays
revel in vanity and self-assertion, but great artists of
the greatest days did otherwise. I am confident that
in conjunction with architecture all arts are raised at
once to their highest sphere. Architecture is the most
conventional of all arts, the creature of thought most
abstract and refined ; and with it others can find com-
panionship complete and sympathetic only in their
purest and noblest character, where all power is con-
centrated to symbolise and suggest rather than to
realise, to address imagination rather than to satisfy
curiosity.

The title of an architect is that of the " chief of

ARCHITECTURAL WALL PAINTING 113

artists," and the consummation of his genius is in the
union of all arts for the perfection of that which is
especially his own ; for, as gold is among colours, so is
architecture among the arts ; it is the centre toward
which they are all attracted by mutual regard and
interest, and round which, as in natural relationship,
they group their various attributes ; with all their skill
and all their poetry making architecture itself com-
pletely beautiful, at once the home and the glory of
them all.

ESSAY VI

MOSAIC

PART I ANCIENT

TT would be easier to imagine than to certify the
* origin of mosaic. Happy accident has been the
source of most of our arts and ingenuities, and to that
the origin of mosaic may be safely consigned. It was
a conviction rather than an invention. A dozen people
in the depths of antiquity may have hit upon it inde-
pendently and at the same time, and as many more
since who had never heard of them. In its rudest
form l pebbles set together before a doorstep was a
natural device for comfort, and suggested the orderly
arrangement of their sizes and colours into a pattern
as a natural device for pleasure ; and the next door
neighbours, pleased with the good sense of the whole
thing, adopted it ; and others, whose conviction as to
its use and pleasantness brought it into fashion, de-
veloped it into the character of a decorative art.

There is no art about the early history of which so
little is known as this : and it is not a little remarkable

1 Dr. Schliemann in his Troja, 1884, pp. 53, 54, writes thus : "We
found a house-floor of large white pebbles, which extended to the very wall
on the north side, and of which a large part may still be seen. This
singular house-floor must necessarily have belonged to one of the first
buildings of the second inhabitants here." This "second city" was
"Troy proper," "The Ilios of Homeric legend." Title, chap. iii.

ESSAY vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 115

that, such being the case, there is none to the various
forms of which such a multitude of names have been
given. It would be useless to give a catalogue of
them here ; but it may be said that some appear to be
common-sense definitions, such as the Greek name
"lithostratos," 1 for a pavement, and "psephosis" for tessel-
lation generally, the Latin " opus tessellatum," etc. ; some
names are fanciful, such as the " opus vemiculatum," so
called from the lines of its tesserae undulating like the
coils of worms ; one is complimentary, viz. the " opus
Alexandrinum," said to have been so called from its
inventor the Emperor Alexander Severus. 2 Purple
and green marbles were imported from Alexandria,
and during that emperor's reign some ingenious
mosaicist appears to have hit upon a very effective
combination of them, which the emperor (" instituit ")
was pleased to " appoint " for use in his palace.
Hence its invention and its name might for flattery's
sake have been attributed to the emperor, as is affirmed,
but for every other sake to Alexandria, whence its
materials came. Some names for it are technical, such
as " opus figlinum," i.e. of the nature of pottery ; some
might be relegated to a comedy of errors like the
derivation of the word " musiva " or " musaeva " from the
name of the mythic poet Musaeus ; or the idea of the
learned commentator on Theophilus, who suggests that
"mosaic "comes from " mosque," because it is so commonly
found in that kind of building. 3 A mediaeval writer

1 This word is properly an adjective, the word "edaphos" being
understood, and forming the complete description of a ground or " floor
spread with stones." Psephosis mosaic- work, from psephos, a pebble or
tessera.

2 " Alexandrinum opus de duobus marmoribus, hoc est cle Porphyretico
et Lacedemonio, primus instituit : palacio exornato hoc genere marmor-
andi." Lampridius, Life of Alex. Sev.

"Alexandrina marmora Numidicis crustis distincta sunt ... in
picturse modum variata." Seneca, Epist. 86.

3 Hendrie, p. 37 of preface.

ii6 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

disposes of the difficulty without hesitation by his
comprehensive description of it as " materia musica " ; l
but long before his time the same idea had struck the
Emperor Theophilus, who early in the ninth century
added to his palace at Constantinople, in which the
empress's apartment was so beautifully ornamented
with mosaic, that in consequence of the rhythm and
harmony of its colouring he called it the embodiment
of music (Mover ^09). Indeed the origin of the word
" mosaic " has been the subject of such speculation and
controversy as leaves one at the end in a vague con-
dition of mind between the ornamentation of museums
and the company of the Muses ; but be the origin of it
what it may, its heterogeneous application has turned
its confused etymology into worse confusion by dignify-
ing with its name any and every kind of inlaid materials,
from the grand pavement of the Battle of Issus to the
picture of the Madonna made of inlaid flowers by
Italians at a village festa. 2

Nor are the frequent references to its earliest use
much more satisfactory. It is vaguely stated that
" the Chinese practised it from high antiquity " a con-
tingency of considerable probability, but without a
single authority or illustration being offered of an art
apparently so well suited to a people of great ingenuity,
and simply taken for granted successively by one writer
from another. Ornamental inlaid porcelain must not
be confounded with mosaic ; and such was the only
approach to it known in China, as in the Tower of

1 Ciampini, vol. i. p. 78 "Nee desunt qui Musivum aut Mosivum a
Grseco verbo (JLovveiov, id est Musico Cantu deducant, " a derivation expres-
sive of the same idea.

2 Constantine Porphyrogenitus (905-959), describing the luxury and
extravagance of the Byzantine Court, mentions the habit of wearing
mosaics as ornaments of dress ; and he adds that ij/fauffis, the proper
word for tessellated work, did not suffice to express the minuteness of
those ornaments, so the words povcelov , (JLOVGOIOV, /xoixretci/ua, and

were invented for it.

ANCIENT MOSAIC 1 1 7

Nankin. That " porcelain pagoda " has been thus des-
cribed as having " its outer face covered with slabs of
glazed porcelain of various colours, principally green,
red, yellow, and white : the body of the edifice is of
brick." l It is indeed impossible to quote any author
to the effect that mosaic was never practised by the
Chinese ; but the absence of any notice of it by the
closest observers of the arts, antiquities, trades, and
habits of that people, is at least negative evidence
against it. Among the lists given of Chinese arts and
manufactures mosaic is never mentioned. In the places
most likely for it, it is not referred to, such as in de-
scribing the Imperial Academy, a great public hall at
Pekin, which is known as " the court of gems," no
allusion is made to it ; nor in the famous apartment or
guest-room in the empress's palace known as "the
flowery wall " is any reference made to anything of
the nature of mosaic on its walls or floor. In Chinese
paintings and ornamental work no suggestion of mosaic
is afforded, except in that of carpenter-work, marquetry
of cabinets and boxes with pieces of mother-of-pearl
inlaid upon their carved surfaces. This kind of work
on a large scale is the special manufacture at Ningpo,
where furniture inlaid with light and dark woods is
produced, ornamented with a marquetry of figures,
animals, and conventional patterns, a Chinese edition
of the Italian intarsiatura of the sixteenth and the
French of the seventeenth centuries. Their ancient
enamels have often the effect of most refined mosaics,
but they belong to a totally different art. Beside these,
their inlaying on metal and other materials is a beautiful
art, in which precious stones of various colours, some-
times carved in projection, make part of the design ;
but it is not mosaic. In the Yuen-Ming-Yuen, or
summer palace of Pekin, there was no mosaic ; its

1 The Middle Kingdom, by S. Wells Williams, vol. i. p. 83.

ii8 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

principal hall was " paved with slabs of gray marble
laid chequerwise." l " Tiles, glazed blue and green for
roofs of temples, and yellow for palaces, are made of
stoneware, but the common flooring tiles are burned
from brick clay." 2 Geometrical patterns, which of
themselves suggest a mosaic treatment, are the rarest
elements of Chinese ornament, which has all but
invariably curved or flowing outlines. The pattern
which has the least of this character is an occasional
band or border resembling the Greek fret. In the
numerous works illustrating Chinese art nothing of
mosaic is found beyond the subsidiary work of inlaid
wooden furniture. The floors of public edifices, ancient
or modern, are commonly laid with alternate squares
of contrasted marble, and in others of tiles, earth,
or cement. If wall or pavement mosaic exists in
China it is at least unknown to the rest of the world ;
and if it ever existed it must have been no more than
what an accidental variety is in the realm of botany, a
" sport " that did not repeat itself. From Marco Polo
in the thirteenth to the latest traveller in the nineteenth
century no reference is made to the subject, beyond the
trivial notice of a pleasant conceit observed a few years
ago on the gravel walks of a garden outside Canton,
described as "a pretty device ... in a rude kind of
shell-and-pebble mosaic in the gravelly paths, repre-
senting birds, animals, or other figures." In short,
mosaic, architectural or pictorial, appears to be " con-
spicuous by its absence " among the arts of the
Celestial Empire. 4

1 Sir John Davis, China, vol. i. p. 435.

2 S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom^ vol. ii. p. I2O.

3 Ibid. p. 10.

4 The best books of reference are silent on the subject. Staunton's
Embassy, 2. vols., does not mention it, but says "the floors are of marble
or indurated earth," vol. ii. p. 370. The works of Barrow, Sir John
Davis, and Wells Williams do not mention it. The Jesuit fathers Riccino
and Trigault, A.D. 1616, and Ellis, who accompanied Macartney in his

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 119

A similar statement, and in the same vague manner,
has been made about Egypt : certainly with more
reason, but by no means- with satisfactory result. It
would be as possible for an ancient Egyptian as for
any one else to have arranged an ornament mosaically,
and no doubt he did so, as the wild Indians of North
America did, and as the Mexicans do admirably with
inlaid feathers to the present day. The inlaying of
regularly- formed tiles in an ornamental pavement or
against a wall should not, however, be classed with
mosaic, if there is to be any orderly comprehension of
the word. Of such kind is the earliest known applied
architectural ornament in Egypt round a doorway of the
Pyramid of Saccara, where small tiles of two colours
placed alternately are set against the wall, and form an
effective ornament to the entrance. This has been mis-
takenly described as a mosaic. Nor can the arrange-
ment of glass beads woven together on threads into flat
tablets of ornamental pattern on the pectoral plates of
mummies, often mingled with figures in porcelain and
both in real and imitative jewelry, 1 be rightly classed as
mosaics, though writers have carelessly called them so.
The frequent covering of a surface with little squares
of inlaid materials has also often led to mis-statements
about Egyptian mosaic. These inlays are found on
furniture and boxes of which the sides are ornamented
with alternate squares of dark and light blue glass or
of ivory white and stained, cut out of sheets of about
one-eighth of an inch thick, and cemented upon the
wooden surface, looking like the tessellation of mosaic,
but being no more than a coarse kind of geometrical
incrustation, tarsiatura, or marquetry. 2 There is

Progress Overland to Pekin in 1816, are silent about it, and such is the
case with others foreign and English.

1 As in the Egyptian Museum at Turin.

2 Specimens are in the Egyptian Collection of the British Museum,
No. 5897, and others near.

120 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

among the Egyptian antiquities of the British Museum
a curious little head-dress 1 of a figure found at Thebes,
the surface of which is covered with little beads set
longways and edgeways into a plaster ground to pro-
duce the effect of the edges of small curls, and round it
is a band or fillet richly set with imitation jasper and
gold, with a mosaic appearance, but, like the surface of
the boxes mentioned above, being no more than an
incrustation of small pieces of glass about one-third of
an inch square and one -sixteenth thick. This little
head-dress has been quoted as a mosaic. It is simply
a unique and ingenious imitation of hair by the edges
of small beads.

There is a form of Egyptian ornament that is pro-
duced precisely as the English Tunbridge ware is made,
viz. by laying together long sticks of glass of various
colours so arranged that, when cut across, the ends
present the appearance of a minute tessellated mosaic
with some definite design, such as a head or bird, or
the many-coloured feathers of the winged orb or sacred
hawk. These glass rods are fused together into a
block, and being made elastic by heat, are drawn out
to any length, the arrangement of the pattern being
unchanged, and when thus reduced to the size of
threads, and cut across, the extreme minuteness of the
ornament would surprise a person unaware of the
ingenious and simple way of producing it. If Tun-
bridge ware is rightly called mosaic, then this Egyptian
glassware and its little curiosities of ingenuity may be
so too.

The inlaying of pieces of coloured paste, glass and
pottery is met with in places and belonging to periods
that are independent of any relative influence. In the
comparatively modern Frankish and Anglo - Saxon
burial-places of the sixth and seventh centuries A.D.
1 No. 2280.

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 121

in England, France, and Germany, ornaments of great
variety have been found, having an appearance as much
like mosaic as these Egyptian inlays, or of cloisonne
enamels, but composed of thin pieces of coloured glass,
and occasionally of coloured pastes and enamels set
like jewels within thin fillets of metal ; but these
are not mosaics ; and precisely in the same manner
we find that in the distant ages of Egyptian art,
jewelry and ornaments of costume were inlaid with
little flat pieces of precious stone, fitted with exquisite
nicety into forms of a design which are marked by
their fillets of gold, similar to those of cloisonnes
enamels. In this manner also, ivory tablets were
ornamented with inlaid lapis lazuli in the form of
feathers on the wings of the Bull of Nineveh and of the
winged orb of Egypt This system of partial inlay was
most effectively used by Egyptian artists of the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries B.C. in ornamental designs
made sometimes in relief upon tablets of baked clay
or cement, on which the principal subject or figure,
admirably modelled and clothed with elaborate draperies,
had been painted with enamel colours, having the parts
selected for special ornament hollowed out and inlaid
with small strips or borders variously coloured j 1 but,
again, these are not mosaics.

These inlaid tablets of cement or tile, with their
crisp designs and multiplicity of refined detail, afford
surprising evidence of the completeness at which the
arts had arrived at that age. There is nothing experi-
mental about them, but all their composition and orna-
ment is effected with an artistic selection and con-
fidence which only that maturity could have produced
which implies centuries of previous civilisation.

The patterns painted on mummy cases are often

1 Vide especially some tablets of the time of Rameses III., Egyptian
Room Brit. Mus., No. 12321, and others about it, from 133010 1400 B.C.

122 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

so like mosaics as to appear like copies of real mosaics
elsewhere, but no such originals are known or recorded.
The only employment of anything like tesserae as the
nearest approach to a real Egyptian mosaic was in the
chequer ornament often found on tiles and plaques.
These chequers are usually of two colours, and are
constructed not with tesserae of these colours, but by
colouring the surface of the tablets one colour, and
hollowing out the alternate squares and filling them up
with little cubes or tesserae of the other colour.

A few years ago a tomb was discovered near the
Pyramid of Meydoun, dating from the second or third
dynasty (about B.C. 2400), on the side of which the
stone was overlaid with a coating of a strong red
cement, and upon it lines had been incised and filled
with a white material to accentuate the features of the
design. The principal subjects were the portraits of a
man and woman seated side by side, and of somewhat
less than natural size. They are described as drawn
with much dignity, and that the effect of their eyes
was very brilliant, " being inlaid with ivory, crystal,
and dark ore" (much as the eyes among coloured
hieroglyphic forms are habitually inlaid), and the whole
picture was painted over black, red, and yellow, on a
ground of white. A great authority has called this a
mosaic; 1 if it be one, we must accept Egyptian mosaics
as a genus absolutely apart.

The piecing and inlaying things and colours is so
simple and natural a system of ornament that it is
found everywhere and of all ages from Joseph's coat to
a modern chess - board ; and ornamental materials,
mosaically arranged, are as common in Egypt as else-
where ; but any unquestionable mosaic, beyond the
character of set jewelry or of inlaid ornamental acces-

1 History of Ancient Egypt. By Brugsch-Bey. First edition, vol. i.
p. 66.

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 123

series of an altogether secondary character, is not
known in Egypt, unless the little gems of glass Tun-
bridge ware be accepted as such. No monumental
mosaic, as an art of national origin, whether tessellated
like the pavements and pictures of Pompeii, or sectile
like the walls and works of Florence, is to be found
there.

An inscription on the wall of a tomb in the hill of
Abt-el-Qurnah gives an account of the offerings made
by Thutmes III. (about B.C. 1600) to the temple of the
god Amon, and among them it describes " a beautiful
harp inlaid with silver and gold, and blue, green, and
other precious stones."

Thus in various forms of ornamental work their
colours were arranged much as a mosaicist would have
arranged them ; and this and the decorative inlay and
combination of materials in the semi-mosaic methods
I have described, appear to have been their nearest
approach to complete mosaic. The true mosaics in
Egypt were first Greek then Roman in design and
workmanship, and lastly Byzantine and Arab.

If the Greeks were in truth the earliest pre-eminent
in this art, whence did they get the elements of it ?
They were a people of quick artistic perception, apt to
seize upon an incomplete idea, no matter where or
whence, and to turn it into a thing of beauty. All
other of their arts were matured from initial forms
created elsewhere. Were mosaics among them ? Greece
had all the elements of pictorial mosaic in use in the
middle of the fifth century B.C., but the commerce of
other nations had enriched it long before that time,
and had brought to its shores mostly through inter-
mediary Phoenicia, the convenient centre in that age
for the reception and dispersal of all art influences
the suggestive models of Oriental and Southern arts.
The inlaid ornaments of Assyrian and Egyptian work-

124 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

manship had thus been known to it, but the fashion of
adorning exteriors with inlaid coloured marbles appears
in Greece itself at a very distant age. The tomb of
Atreus, which was of the twelfth century B.C., is de-
scribed by its latest explorer 1 as having originally pre-
sented a rich effect of colour as well as of ornamental
carving. He writes of it thus : " The front surface,
built of polished brescia blocks, was once coated in its
upper part with slabs of red, green, and white marbles
. . . the outer frame (of the facade) was formed of two
slender embedded pillars of dark gray alabaster, the
shafts of which were richly ornamented with sharp zig-
zags, spirals, etc. . . ." Nineveh could have taught it
no better, for although many Assyrian ornaments had
a mosaic character, and their architecture was adorned
and inlaid or coated with figures, and numerous
natural forms enamelled upon bricks, such work was
not mosaic, nor had it any pictures in mosaic tessella-
tion to give its first lesson to Greece. Nor could
Persia do more, for it had derived the first models of
its ornamental arts directly or indirectly from Assyria,
Chaldaea, and Egypt. The only architectural mosaic
of Persia, if indeed it may be dignified with the name,
was of the most elementary kind, formed with bricks of
two colours, gray and red, laid in patterns, of which,
after all, the principal effect was obtained by their
arrangement in projection or recess, producing those
patterns in relief by light and shadow, as they are seen
on the facades of the rock-cut tombs of the valley of

1 Dr. H. Schliemann's Tiryns. 1886. Preface, pp. 39, 40. This em-
ployment of inlaid variously coloured marbles in architectural ornament
had been recorded long before Dr. Schliemann by English travellers. In
DodwelFs Classical Tour, vol. ii. p. 239, is an account of this monument :
"The relief of the two lions which closes the triangular space over the
gate of lions at Mycsenge consists of greenish marble, like the green basalt
of ^Egypt." "Fragments of decoration on both sides of the entrance of
the Treasury of Atreus are of green, red, and white stone," etc. etc.
Donaldson's supplement to Stuart's Athens, and Dodwell as above.

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 125

Doganlu and the neighbourhood of Persepolis. The
inlaid marble floors of Ahasuerus (Xerxes) at " Shu-
shan, the palace" (Susa), about B.C. 480, were certainly
of sectile mosaic character, possibly of such designs as
the sculptured floors of Assyria had suggested, and
such as the pieces of coloured marbles found near
Babylon justify us in believing. Such a fashion would
have been known to other nations for centuries, but
they afford no precedent for pictorial tessellation, nor
did any other part of Persian architecture, of which the
polychromatic ornament consisted in coloured materials
used broadly, as by enamelled bricks and constructional ^_
and inlaid marbles.

But at a time many centuries before all these, a
complete mosaic applied to architectural ornament had
been perfected in Chaldsea. On the site of the ancient
Erech, 1 in the province of Babylon, now known as
Warkah, was discovered a few years ago, among its
most ancient remains, a building ornamented with
tessellated mosaic, covering with various contrasted
patterns the forms of its original architecture. The
style of this architecture is rudely simple, consisting of
alternate plain surfaces and groups of seven semi-
columns, suggesting an original construction of wood,
in which these large shafts or stems would have been
the poles of straight timber (palm-tree ?) set close to-
gether of equal lengths without base or capital. These
forms, subsequently followed in the earliest brick archi-
tecture of Babylon, are found at the great necropolis of
Warkah. The mosaic is formed of tesserae (or, as
from their shape, they are called "cones") of terra-
cotta, some left with their natural yellow colour, some
coloured red and black, and so shaped as to suit the
inlaying of the rounded surfaces of those half-columns,
by being tapered at one end like pegs. The wall, of

1 Babel and Erech, and Accad and Calneh. Genesis x. 10.

126 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

which about thirty feet remained, and the mosaic are
thus described by their discoverer.

" The cones, embedded in a cement of mud with
chopped straw, were fixed horizontally with their
circular bases facing outwards ; some had been dipped
in red and black colour, and were arranged in various
ornamental patterns (of three colours] such as diamonds,
triangles, zigzags, and stripes. . . . The wall had a flat
surface of 14. feet long (covered with a diamond pattern
mosaic] projecting I foot 9 beyond a series of half
columns on each side of it, ornamented with spirals,
zigzags, and lozenges"^ The site was evidently that of
a vast burial-place, and " from its position, scarcely
above the level of the desert, I regard it as one of the
earliest relics discovered at Warkah." 2

Elsewhere in Babylonia the ruins of similar mosaics
are found. 3 But beside these aboriginal tessellated

1 W. K. Loftus's Travels and Researches in Chaldcea, etc., 1857.

2 "Warkah, its ruins and remains," published separately from the
Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, March 1856, p. 23. W.
Kennet Loftus.

With respect to the date of this mosaic no exactness can be ascertained,
but close by it is a building of precisely the same character, of which the
sun-dried bricks "bear the impression of a cuneiform inscription, and are
cemented with bitumen, recording . . . the dedication of the building to
the Moon by King Urukh about 2234 B.C." The wall of this building
is so curious that its description may interest the reader. "The most
striking feature of the front settles, I think, the moot question whether
the Babylonians employed the column as an architectural embellish-
ment Seven times on the lower portion of the building is the same
sacred number of half columns repeated, the rudest perhaps that were
ever reared, but built moulded with semicircular bricks. . . . The
entire absence of cornice, capital, base, or diminution of shaft, as charac-
teristic of other columnar architecture, and their peculiar and original
disposition in rows like palm-logs, suggest the type from which they sprang.
There is not a line in the face to which foreign influence can be traced."
Other peg-shaped but much larger cones were found lying about in great
numbers, but these were sepulchral memorials with cuneiform inscriptions
all over them, referring even to still earlier dates. In the British Museum
(Chaldaean collection) is a cylinder of green jasper inscribed with the name
of Hashamar, a viceroy under Ur-Id or Amil-ea, "the man of the River
God, King of Erech" Warkah: about 2300 B.C.

3 At Mugeyer were found "many pieces of polished marble perforated

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 127

mosaic, the same country affords the evidence of
mosaic of sectile marble suggesting some idea of that
in the Palace of Shushan ; whether for floors or dadoes
cannot be said, but the recurrence of marble knobs
among the flat pieces suggests ornamentation more
suited to walls than floors. Their discoverer thus
describes them as " numerous pieces of marble, alabaster,
and agate, of all shapes heart-shaped, oval, circular,
square, and some like a ball. They are found all over
the mounds in the Jezireh and Iraq, particularly at
Maujur." He then refers to the vast quantity of mosaic
cones found in the same place, and to Mr. Loftus's
description of them at Warkah, and adds " with regard
to those pieces of sectile marbles, from the number of
fragments discovered at various places, it seems to have
been one of the most usual decorations employed in
Lower Babylonia." 1

Here then we seem to find ourselves among the
very originals of all mosaic. Certainly in no other
country has anything of the kind been found at such a
date. It is complete tessellation, only with round
instead of angular tesserae. The Chaldaeans had to
decorate their coarse and only building materials,
brickwork ; so with these forms of mosaic and marbles,
and with sheets of precious metals and painting they

at the back, fragments of plain cones and cylinders, curious-shaped tiles,
and small bricks about \ an inch thick and 6 inches long, floors of beaten
clay or sand, walls covered with fine plaster rudely painted, on one was
the figure of a man holding a bird in his hand, and a smaller figure near
him in red paint. . . . (p. 411). The mounds were literally covered with
conical pieces (mosaic cones) of baked clay, about \ to j inch diameter
. . . and in nearly all the trenches were found marble and limestone cones
4 to 10 inches long ; some had their edges painted black, some with a rim
round the edge filled with copper, from I to 3 inches diameter at the base
(tapering to a point)." T. E. Taylor. Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, vol. iv. p. 410.

1 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , vol. iv., 1855, "Ruins of
Mugeyer," pp. 260 and 410, and vol. xv., 1855, PP- 2 68, 2 74> 4 II '4 I 5-
T. E. Taylor.

128 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

covered their walls. Commerce, much wider and more
active than commonly supposed, carried with it the
traditions of the style and fashions of the arts. Caravan
roads were common both inland and to the sea-coast,
and thence to the western world the character of
Chaldaean art was spread far and wide. Assyria and
the east, that is to say Persia, were educated by it ;
and from the Syrian coast it can hardly have failed to
reach Greece. But as far as mosaics are concerned,
those of Babylonia were decorative, not pictorial ; they
possessed, however, the true principle of decorative
tessellation. 1 Anything of such early date approaching
pictorial representation, by arrangement of self-coloured
materials, is not found, except in the minute glass gems
of Egypt, made for rings and brooches, on which are
set, as already described, microscopic figures, such as
heads, birds, and hieroglyphs. These may have sug-
gested to artistic Greek eyes the conversion of the
Chaldsean architectural tessellation to pictorial effect ;
but all such explanation, though most probable, can
only be speculative. Egypt had nothing like Greek
mosaic, and Greece had nothing like the diaper patterns
of Babylonian mosaic ; but the ideas are fusible, and
directly or indirectly from those aboriginal arts, the art
of Greece must have derived its birth.

But on the soil of Greece itself, at Tiryns, have
been found pavements of very early date suggestive of
coloured mosaic floors. 2 In works of ornamental art,
Tiryns, itself of Phrygian origin, traded with Phoenicia
and Egypt. The floors found there, and of a date not
less than 1000 B.C., are of clay, with a thickness of
lime concrete above them, into which, in situations at
all exposed to wear or weather, pebbles were set, and

1 Of various degrees of coarseness and fineness the cone tesserse have
been found varying from above an inch to a quarter of an inch diameter.

2 Tiryns, by Dr. H. Schliemann, pp. 275, 276. London, 1886.

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 129

Dr. Schliemann, describing them, writes that " in the
great men's court and in the great Propyleum,in the latter
the pebbles were so prominent that we may describe
the floor as a mosaic of pebbles. In the rooms these
pebbles are generally absent, and accordingly they have
a smoother floor ; but, instead, the mortar is made into
a carpet-pattern of scratched lines . . . remains of red
and blue colour found in several rooms show that the
floor was also painted ; in one place we could still per-
ceive the colouring of the floor with red geometrical
ornaments of circular and waving lines." If two and
two may be put together, we have here not indeed the
complete fact, but a very plain suggestion of a coloured
mosaic tessellation, sufficient for the eye of a quick
artist to adopt, and about which the last words read
like a description of many mosaics that we know well.

From the walls of Babylonia and the floors of
Tiryns there is a long interval before we come to the
earliest known pictorial mosaics. They were in Greece,
at Delphi and Olympia. The earliest reference in
literature to what appears to have been a pictorial
mosaic, is found in a scholium upon a passage in
Lucian, who, writing about miscellaneous subjects, refers,
in passing, to the story of Jupiter determining the
centre of his earthly dominions by the flight of two
eagles, eastward and westward, that, having made the
circuit of the earth, its centre would be ascertained by
the spot on which they met. This spot was marked
by a large stone, which from that story was called the
Omphalos or navel of the earth, over which the Temple
of Delphi was built. Lucian refers so incidentally to
the legend that the scholiast, to enlighten his readers,
comments on the passage thus : ". . . the centre of
the earth. . . . They say that in Delphi there is an
omphalos upon the pavement in the temple, and
about it an eagle is represented (or painted,

130 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

' by setting together of stones! an d this place is said to
be the centre of the (whole) earth." Lucian merely
refers to the story, his scholiast refers to a local work
of art illustrative of it, as an anecdote explanatory of
the text, such as a well-informed writer of the time
would afford from his own acquaintance with artistic
or archaeological subjects. His words clearly refer to
a mosaic ; and the probability of such an ornament
being found there is corroborated by the discovery of
one at Olympia, similar in character of construction, of
a date slightly subsequent to what might with prob-
ability be assigned to this at Delphi. 1

The mosaic at Olympia was discovered by the
members of the French Scientific Expedition, in the
Pronaos of the Temple of Jupiter. It is " still in situ,
and probably the earliest extant specimen of Greek
mosaic." 2 The description of it in the Report of the
French Expedition in the Morea, states : " This mosaic
is evidently of the same date as the building of
the Temple ; it is executed in pebbles from the river

1 The passage in Lucian occurs in the line 70, p. 251, vol. ii., edit.
Amsterdam, 1743. " De Saltatione." " Kal TO nt<rov TT}S 7775 evpivKo^evov
TTTTJffei, T&V dercoj'." The words of the scholium are " Ae7oi'<r' e^ AeX0ots
8fj.<pa\ov eiVcu e?rt roO 8d(j)ovs rov vew, /ecu Trepl avrbv aUrbv yeypd(f>6ai airb
o~vvd<r(i6S \id<j)v KO.I roOro e0acr/cw TO ^o~ov cnrdo"r)S TTJS 7175." The existence
of this "navel" of the earth (an aerolith? "the stone which fell down
from Jupiter ") is referred to by Strabo and Pausanias. The former, thus :
" deiKvvrai d /ccd 6/A0aX6s ris ev ry va<^ TenutHOpfros Kal e?r' avrw at duo eiKoves
rov [j,v6ov." "There is exhibited too in the temple a certain omphalos,
and upon it the two figures of the story." He thus adds to the illustration
given by Lucian's scholiast, who describes not the omphalos but the orna-
mental work of a "painting made by the composition of stones" on "the
pavement around it, the figure of an eagle being its principal subject,
which in no way interferes with Strabo's reference to the great stone alone
with " two figures of the story " upon it. Pausanias's notice of it leads to
the same conclusion, but he specifies the omphalos as of white marble.
" Pausanias describes in the Temple of Apollo itself two old stones, one
apparently an aerolith which were treated with great respect." Mahaffy,
Rambles and Studies in Greece, p. 22O.

2 C. T. Newton's Collected Essays on Art and Archaeology, p. 342.
1880.

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC \y.

Alphseus. The design is oblong, of two nearly square
compartments, enclosed within a broad border of double
interlacing fret, and in the centre of each is a figure,
one of a Triton, the other of a Syren, surrounded by a
graceful border of Greek honeysuckle." 1

The Triton is drawn with great spirit, with one
hand holding to his mouth a spiral shell horn, brand-
ishing an oar with the other, and carrying a child on
the coils of his tail. The colours are very distinct, the
hair being chestnut, the bodies pale flesh tint, and other
parts varied with black, white, red, and yellow, the
figure of the Syren being similarly coloured. It was
found under a pavement of fine marbles, with another
mosaic near it, but of less ancient date. Mosaic appears
to have been confined to the subsidiary parts of great
Greek temples. The pavement of the central nave at
Olympia, as that of the Parthenon, was of white marble ;
the side aisles had been floored with stucco at a level
slightly above the central floor, and round the space
where the throne of Pheidias's great chryselephantine
Jupiter had been placed, the pavement of black marble 2
was found in situ.

Such were Greek mosaics about the middle of the
fifth century B.C., but they afford no clue to their own
history, or to the art out of which they grew. Here
then are specimens of a developed art, suggesting
the same difficulty as that of the well-known example
of the work of Sosus (about B.C. 220), described by
Pliny, as so complete a picture of the things appar-
ently littered upon the floor of a room, as to have
seemed realities. In the centre was the famous design
of the so-called Pliny's doves, 3 similar to that in

1 Expedition Scientifique en Morec. A. Blouet. Paris, 1831.

2 Ibid.

3 Commonly called so from his description of them, "Mirabilis ibi
columba bibens, et aquam umbra capitis infuscans. Apricantur alise
scabentes sese in canthari labro." H. N. xxxvi. 60.

132 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

the Capitol at Rome, which is not altogether rejected
by competent archaeologists from being the actual work
of Sosus, the point of objection being that some of
the small tesserae are of glass, and it being asserted by
others that glass was not used in mosaics till the time
of the empire, a criticism to which I venture to reply
that it would be true at Rome, but that, if this be the
original, it is a Greek mosaic, and at the places whence
Greece mainly drew the use of glass, that material was
used for many ornamental purposes, and notably for
that of the imitation of precious marbles and jewels,
which (as in that of the Battle of Issus) were used pro-
fusely in Greek mosaic. The mosaic of Pliny's doves
is composed of marbles, jewels, and a few glass imita-
tions of them. Still, the originality of this work can
only be conjectural, especially as another of the same
subject was found at Naples in 1833, and equal in
execution to that at Rome. 1

The use of ornamental floors (subsequently known
at Rome as "pavimenta sculpturata") may have been
common long before that date, as in Assyria, and the
colouring of them would have been a natural develop-
ment as at Tiryns. It is to about B.C. 480 that the
common reference is made for the earliest known
description of a (possible) mosaic, viz. that of the floor
in the palace of Ahasuerus, mentioned in the book of
Esther, as " a pavement of red and blue and white
and black marble ;" but whether this were a merely
geometrical pavement, or one of sectile pieces of
ornamental forms, we have no means of knowing.
Some inference as to the character of its design may
however be drawn from a fine piece of ornamental
floor 2 from the North Palace of Sardanapalus at

1 The fineness of the work of the doves of the Capitol may be under-
stood from there being an average of 160 tesserse to the superficial inch.

2 Now in the Assyrian collection, British Museum.

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 133

Koujunjik, of above a century earlier, richly carved in
a single block (measuring about 1 3 feet 6 inches by
9 feet), for the arts of Persia were as much indebted to
Assyrian traditions as Assyria itself was to Chaldaea.
The design is that of a diaper of conventional flowers
fitting each other in squares, and enclosed by a broad
border of lotus buds and flowers, suggesting a still
earlier derivation from the painted and sculptured
designs of Egypt It is a grand specimen of the
" pavimentum sculpturatum" of the seventh century
B.C., and of a design admirably suitable for a mosaic,
whether tessellated or sectile.

The actual locality to which the origin of the art
of picture in mosaic can be assigned, is therefore still
obscure. Varieties of it may have existed for centuries
before Greece was a nation, but to the graceful imagi-
nation of the Hellenes 1 may probably have been rightly
assigned the application of it to pictorial representation,
such as the examples already mentioned sufficiently show,
at least as early as the middle of the fifth century B.C.

Only a few names of Greek mosaicists have been
preserved, among the best known of which are Parnesos,
an artist of Elis, and Sosus of Pergamus, the artist of
Pliny's doves, and of the pavement of the " unswept
floor," only known by Pliny's description. One of the
finest of the Pompeian mosaics, constructed of tesserae
of vitreous enamel, 2 is also signed by its artist in Greek
" Dioscorides the Samian did this." The subject of it
is a group of three musicians practising, of which the
central figure wears a female mask, and is playing the
castinets, bending forward as if marking the time of
the man, who in an attitude of gay complacency holds
up his tambourine to his ear. The third is a woman

1 " Pavimenta originem apud Gnecos habent elaborata arte picturae
ratione." Pliny, N. H. xxxvi. 6.

2 Vide R. Museo Borbonico, V. iv. tav. 34.

134 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

standing behind them playing the double pipe, and a
boy near her watches intently ail that is going on. The
excellent pose of the figures and draperies, and the
delicious combination of comedy and gravity in the
whole group is so admirable as to suggest its derivation
from some fine original of which Dioscorides has been
the ingenious copyist.

The absence of any notice of mosaics among the
works of art in Greece at the time of Pausanias must not
be taken as any reason for supposing their non-existence.
He was more scholar than artist, and more interested
in the search for historical works than in any independ-
ent notice of others by himself. The demand for
works of Greek art was no less an archaeological than
an artistic craze among the dilettanti of the empire,
and all available works were taken to Rome without
consideration of cost or injury. Had mosaics existed
in the form of pictures upon walls, they would indubit-
ably have been among the choice things removed ; but
as pavements they may easily have disappeared by
spoliation, as invaluable quarries for Roman mosaicists,
just as Roman works themselves became subsequently
the stores of tesserae and coloured glass for Christian
artists of the middle ages. Some of these at Pompeii
were wall pictures, as that one by Dioscorides, but the
finest of all, that of the Battle of Issus, is a pavement.
If such as this were commonly so, as there is reason to
believe, the Greeks, no less than the luxurious Romans,
were indeed reckless in their use of valuable materials,
among which not only tesserae of rare marbles, but of
precious jewels also were introduced. Whence their
designs were derived is not and probably never will be
known, but their reference to great originals is on all
grounds a fair presumption. The style is Greek, and,
when signed, they are so with Greek names ; it is
therefore fair to conclude, that whether imported from

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 135

Greece, or made on the spot in Italy, they represent
the Greek method, and the choice and use of materials
such as were received traditionally from Greek mosaicists
of long past time.

The subject of the most famous Pompeian mosaic
is that of the Battle of Issus, in which the prominent
figure appears to be Alexander the Great, in the thick
of the fight, having just speared his foe, whose horse
has fallen in the attempt to fly. The tide of the battle
has at that moment turned, and victory gained. The
direction of the groups, the attitudes of the figures,
confirm that idea, and the whole composition has been
most artfully conceived, representing by comparatively
few figures the rout of a great army. All is confusion,
but without the smallest confusion in the arrangement
of the picture. The artist has all his feeling and ex-
pression well in hand ; and by a more masterly scheme
never was the crisis of a battle more admirably exhibited
than in this fragment of a half- ruined mosaic. The
rich owner of the House of the Fawn used it as a
pavement ; and it is not known whether the Greeks
ever used mosaic for other purposes, but if not, their
rule was certainly this, that where art was to be per-
fected, cost and materials were beyond consideration.

The earliest mosaic in Italy, of which an account has
been preserved, is that which, on Pliny's authority, was
made for Sylla and placed in the Temple of Fortune
at Preneste (Palestrina). There is, however, the utmost
uncertainty as to what this was. Several mosaics have
been found there, and fragments of them are now in
the Hall of the Animals in the Vatican Museum, one
of which is a fine arabesque in black and white marble
tesserse, having for its central subject an eagle killing
a hare ; but the great one specially known as the
Palestrina mosaic, somewhat over 18 feet long by 14
broad, and plainly the work of Greek artists, from the

136 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

numerous Greek words inlaid in it, bears such evidence
upon itself as to its date and motive as to put it out of
all association with the goddess of Fortune or with
Sylla. The scene is evidently upon the Nile, and the
period it represents is that of the Empire. The
costumes, the armour, the galley with many oars, and
the general character of the art would be Roman of
that period. It is an archaeological curiosity, but
beyond that, a peculiar interest in this large work is
the suggestion it affords of the way in which great wall
paintings were arranged by the Greeks. Here is a
complex representation of numerous incidents, each
one forming a group complete in itself, and isolated
from the rest, though forming together the picture of
one descriptive history. This pavement, if placed
against a wall, would have the upper part occupied by
bare sandy hills with groups of negroes in various
places, and wild beasts prowling near the banks of the
river. The intermediate country, occupying that part
which in a modern picture would be the middle dis-
tance, is broken up into spaces of open water, rocks,
and islands, with figures of wild beasts, birds, and
fishes, boats and fishermen, tents and houses, scattered
about till it approaches the lowest part or foreground,
where numerous buildings and groups of persons
engaged in peaceful pursuits, sitting on the banks
under awnings of trellis - work, with flowers of the
lotus budding and blooming above the water, illustrate
a scene of peaceful civilisation. In the corner towards
the right hand is an architectural portico, beneath
which and under an ample awning a figure, that can
be none other than a Roman emperor, is depicted,
attended by a group of soldiers, and in an attitude of
address toward a female figure standing on the opposite
bank, in a doorway with the Roman eagle above it.
Thus this varied composition appears to suggest

ANCIENT MOSAIC 137

the mode of pictorial composition, by which " the whole
story of the Iliad " was represented in mosaic in the
apartments of the great yacht which Archimedes
designed for Hiero of Syracuse (in the third century B.C.),
a continuous composition of numerous subjects, and
following, as might reasonably be supposed in a country
specially under Greek influence, the traditional treat-
ment of complex historical wall painting. This Pales-
trina mosaic, taken as an upright picture, appears to
fulfil, though roughly, the artistic conditions that char-
acterised those classic paintings. It treats each group
as a complete composition ; the landscape of the upper
part which represents distant objects, far up the wind-
ings of the Nile, is represented on the same scale on
the same plane, and in the same tones of colour as the
groups and scenery below, its many events forming but
one picture.

Irrespective of its peculiarities as a work of art, its
subject is curious and interesting. It has been taken
by one antiquary for a map of Egypt ; and certainly it
is composed much as a map of ancient style might be,
and the figures of negroes, hippopotami, crocodiles,
palms, and lotus flowers, are as characteristic of Egypt
as the creatures and inhabitants of the world are in-
tended to be, on the mediaeval Mappa Mimdi of
Hereford. Another, taking as his guide the emperor's
figure, with attendant soldiers, and the fulness of the
river, the extent of country exhibited, and the quiet
occupations of the people, has explained this complex
picture as that of Egypt, at the period of peace
immediately subsequent to the expedition of Augustus,
which occurred at the season when the Nile was over-
flowing its banks. Another has hit upon an explana-
tion equally possible, that it is a work executed during
the Egyptian mania at Rome, flattering to the taste of
the Emperor Hadrian, who on his return introduced

138 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Egyptian fashions and deities, eagerly adopted by the
blaze's Romans, delighted at the waif of novelty.

Artistically it is coarse, but valuable for the reasons
described ; and, as a work of a very inferior artist, who
would follow, however clumsily, the broad system of
the better painters of his day, it suggests much as to
what was practised and approved in the arts preceding
and contemporary with it.

The ambition of Roman life was rather bodily and
intellectually muscular than artistic ; but whatever
glorified that life in public estimation, or glorified the
individual by the exhibition of his wealth, was an
essential element in that life ; things of grand effect,
luxury and splendour, were estimated at the highest,
just so far as in use and degree they ministered to
such purposes. Individuals rested their social position
on the splendour of their possessions, so the world was
ransacked for them : the gods of Greece were torn
from their thrones, the pictures and statues of the " old
masters" were imported, reckless of the disfigurement
of the ancient shrines or of the prices paid for them.
The marbles, elephants, and obelisks of Africa added
to the heterogeneous magnificence of Rome, and only
the weight of the pyramids secured them to the desert.

In one very early, and at a later period, the Romans
surpassed the Greeks in their sense of artistic propriety,
namely in assigning to the higher class of mosaic the
honour of a safe position upon walls. They maintained
indeed the Greek fashion of rich pavements, and inlaid
them with precious stones, and then trampled their costly
beauty with their heels, as Lucan scornfully describes
them, " Purpureusque lapis, totaque effusus in anla cal-
cabatur onyx ;" but under better auspices they went on
to the development of pictorial mosaic, and prepared the
way for that vast extension of it that soon after took place
under Christian influences. The common use of variously

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 139

coloured glass afforded this opportunity, so the tesserae
no longer laboriously obtained from marble were cast
in glass, and the skill attained in gilding it was applied
to them at small cost, and thus all the materials which
ultimately contributed to the glory of Byzantine and
other sacred buildings in east and west were prepared.
Among the pictorial purposes for which mosaic was
used, portraiture was much favoured in Rome, one of
the earliest known instances of which was that of a
portrait of himself in a mosaic of precious stones and
pearls which Pompey displayed in his triumphs. The
great pavement covered with portraits of Caracalla's
favourite gladiators will be at once remembered a
brutal gallery; and the portraits of the friends of the
Emperor Commodus which were erected in a portico
or alcove of his garden, as described by Spartian, " in
porticu curva picturata de musivo," among which that
of his friend Pescennius Niger figured in the attitude of
one carrying the insignia of the goddess Isis. Imaginary
portraits are also occasionally found in ancient tessel-
lated pavements, as on one in the museum at Cologne,
on which are the busts of Socrates, Diogenes, Cleobulus,
and Sophocles, with their names inlaid in Greek. The
practice of real portraiture in this manner continued for
many centuries, two good examples of which are the
portraits of Flavius J. Julianus and his wife M.
Simplicia Rustica, found in 1656 in the catacomb of
Santa Ciriaca, which have a particular interest in the
extreme rarity of mosaics in the catacombs, and from
the near relationship of these persons to the Imperial
family, which the names of Flavius Julianus, borne by
all the sons of Constantine, suggest, and those of
Rusticus Julianus further corroborate, 1 who died pre-

1 These portraits are preserved in the Chigi Library at Rome. Vide De
Rossi Musaici Christiani, 1872, where facsimiles are given in colour, and
an excellent historical reference to the persons.

140 THE MINISTR Y OF FINE ART ESSAY

feet of Rome in A.D. 388, and had been regarded as a
possible successor to the Empire. The portraits are
small, within circles contained in a framed background
about nine inches across. Julianus is habited in a
dress of gold tissue and purple, characteristic of a
nobleman. His wife, in a dark dress of great simplicity,
is in the Christian attitude of prayer, her hands being
extended as an " Orante." Another historical mosaic
portrait was that of Constantine placed by Phocas in a
chapel on the site of the Forum of Augustus at Rome,
of which no traces remain. The well-known portraits
of Justinian and the Empress Theodora in San Vitale at
Ravenna are unmistakably real, that of Justinian being
very remarkable for the natural character of its draw-
ing, and its definite and intelligent expression. The
largest portrait ever made in mosaic was probably that
of a full length of Theodoric in the forum at Naples, of
which the tesserae composing the head fell off the wall,
by a singular fatality, just before his death. These are
but a few illustrations of a practice which continued in-
creasingly in .the progress of the art, of which only one
other historical example need be mentioned, viz. that of
Charlemagne in the triclinium of the Lateran, which was
rescued from the fire which occurred there in the troublous
times of Clement the Fifth (i 305-16), and of which the
much-injured remains are now preserved in the Vatican.
The application of mosaic to figures in relief need
only be mentioned as a curiosity of the art, and indeed
a misuse of it, for mosaic is essentially pictorial, and
has no quality in common with sculpture, but is rather
a hindrance to its effect. The few attempts that have
been made of it, and which have been beautiful in spite
of themselves, have owed all their excellence to the fine
taste of the artists experimenting upon a tour de force!

1 Faulkener's Dcedahts, p. 124, and R. Rochette's Peintures Antiques,
Incdites. Appendix.

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 141

Early in the first century mosaic had become a
necessity of furniture among the Romans, not at home
merely, but wherever their conquests and their colonies
took them. The " pavement " in the Hall of Judgment
at Jerusalem was but another word for mosaic, which
was then universally used to dignify the seat of a
governor and to furnish the tent of a general, as had
been the practice as early as the time of Julius Caesar,
who carried mosaic about in his campaigns, that his
official " pavement " might be always ready. 1 This
general adoption of it, which extended to basilicas and
baths, public halls and private houses, necessitated the
adaptation of native materials, where the marble of the
earlier styles and the glass tesserae of the later could
not be obtained ; so red, blue, and yellow-coloured stone,
as commonly used for their mosaics in England, and
clay baked black or red, supplied their requisite
materials. With so much that is interesting in them,
it is the more to be regretted that no clue has been
obtained to the artists who composed their designs ;
but the whole character of them, the usual excellence
of their composition, the artistic grouping and attitudes
of the figures, the arrangement and appropriateness of
the decorative parts, suggest that the originals were the
work of better heads and hands than those of the
skilled artisans who would have sufficed to copy the
cartoons and to set the tesserae.

Thus in numerous examples an inestimable service
has been rendered by mosaics by their preservation of
the designs of ancient pictures and wall paintings,
illustrating the specialities of artistic principles of
ancient schools, and in many cases with a truer remini-
scence of their colouring than the painted lechithoi or
the plastered walls of buried cities have afforded.

1 Suetonius, in his Life of Julhts Casar, describes it thus, "In expe-
ditionibus tessellata et sectilia circumtulisse. "

142 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Beside that of the Battle of Issus, already described,
one illustration, with its Greek associations at Pompeii,
and one with those of classic Rome, will be enough.

The subject of the former is Force overcome by
Love, a circular mosaic pavement in the Neapolitan
Museum, figured and described in the seventh volume
of the Museo Borbonico, plate 61. In the centre a lion,
of colossal proportion in comparison with the figures
around him, has snapped the bands of which the tattered
ends are flying from his legs ; but he bows his head
before the Amorini who have bound him with a wreath
of flowers, and are scattering others among his mane
from a cornucopia. Behind him a most coy figure of a
little cupid sits with half-averted face, playing a lyre,
and near him a priestess, draped most gracefully, and
with her head crowned with vine leaves, stands at the
angle of a terrace which forms the background, and
pours a libation to Bacchus, with her wreathed thyrsus
in the other hand, and her tambourine laid beside her.
In front two cupids present to the lion a torch and a
bouquet, and two presiding nymphs in rich drapery
and with wreathed hair are seated on rocks right and
left; trees, rocks, and the front of a small temple filling
in the vacancies. The colours are as charming as the
playful and modest gracefulness of the composition
an architectonic picture, of which the original must
have afforded the opportunities for the highest char-
acter of drawing and expression in its individual figures,
but indifferent to the easy artificialities of pictorial effect.
That this was a copy of some famous work is inferred
from the studied character of the design, and from an-
other mosaic of the same subject (with a few alterations
or omissions common to almost all such copies) found
at Antium.

Of a different character, but the copy of some
ancient work, and illustrative of the same principles, is

ANCIENT MOSAIC 143

the Roman mosaic of Bellerophon found at Autun.
The young hero is represented mounted upon Pegasus,
and rising in the air to attack the chimaera ; one arm
is hidden behind the horse's ample mane, the other is
raised directing the thrust of his spear, and the effect of
vigour and rapidity is enhanced by the whirling folds
of drapery as if rolled round him by a storm, and form-
ing a wild frame above his head. The attitude of the
winged Pegasus, rampant above the double-headed
monster, to which Bellerophon is dealing his death-
blow, completes the dramatic action of the group.

But an interest of wider scope both to archaeologist
and artist has been afforded by the variety of subjects
in these ancient works taken from contemporary life.
Mythological subjects and conventional forms of com-
position are indeed the most common, but beside them
are illustrations of the habits and occupation of the
people, such as in domestic or hunting scenes, races
and combats of the circus, costume, portraiture, and all
kinds of incident and detail that exhibit the prevailing
taste and civilisation of the age.

One of the best examples of this kind is the great
mosaic of Italica near Seville. About one-third of its
central space, in length and breadth, is occupied by a
representation of the Roman circus, sufficiently complete
to illustrate the whole arrangement of its ground-plan.
Groups of men and horses are distributed all over it,
some in full swing of the race, some wandering about
on foot as if lost in it ; in one place a charioteer has
come to utter grief and is struggling beneath his horses,
at another two men are helping a wounded combatant
off the ground, and at the farther end, separated from
the race, is a space occupied by gladiators. The
remaining two-thirds of the mosaic is filled with numer-
ous circles, enclosing within wreaths and coloured
borders busts of the muses with their names inlaid, and

144 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

others containing figures of birds, animals, centaurs, and
branches of leaves and fruit in natural colours, the
whole being enclosed in a richly coloured border of
many patterns. But the once brilliant city of Italica is
no more. It owed its origin to Scipio Africanus, who
after his conquest of the province, founded it as a home
for his disabled soldiers. It rose to great importance,
and was the birthplace of the Emperors Trajan,
Hadrian, and Theodosius ; but now no more remains
upon its ancient site but the small village of Santiponce
or Sevilla la vieja.

Nowhere, however, is the entire scene of the circus
exhibited in such completeness as in the great mosaic
at Lyons. It is a superb work. The general design
consists of a central subject set within a broad border
of conventional foliage and flowers that spring from a
scrolling stem beautifully drawn and coloured. Within
this, on a black ground throughout, is the Roman
circus with all its apparatus complete. At one end is the
Praetorian lodge raised above the arena and shaded by an
ornamental awning, and within it is a group of figures,
the central one of which is the Praetor or presiding judge,
leaning forward and holding over the front of his seat
the handkerchief that had signalled the start. Beneath
is the main entrance to the arena, with attendant figures
or heralds standing right and left. A strong high
palisade guards the spectators from the combatants.
In the centre of the arena is the spina, which appears
as an elaborate construction with an obelisk in the
centre, and enclosing a long canal of water within its
low boundary walls. At each end is a massive block
of masonry forming the two metae, which are dis-
tinguished by three tall pointed posts painted at one
end of the course red, at the other white. Over the
canal, and near each end, are slight barriers supporting
figures of dolphins, and the gilt wooden eggs, sacred to

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 145

Castor and Pollux, that marked the number of the
courses to be run round the spina, one egg being taken
off at each round, till the winning chariot reached the
white line drawn across the sand, which marked the
beginning and end of the race (ad calcem pervenire).
Eight chariots are contending for the prize, and by the
accidents that are exhibited and the excited attitudes
of the attendants, some on horseback, some running on
foot, one brandishing a whip to urge on the horses of
his faction, one. with a basin of water to throw over the
heated wheels, the race seems to be approaching its
close. There are four chariots on each side, probably
all intended to be quadrigae (four-horsed), but where
they are fallen to the ground and the men and horses
are thrown into struggling heaps, the artist has not
clearly shown that number, but the smash in each case
is well depicted by the broken remnants of wheels and
chariots overturned, and the drivers prostrate upon their
infuriated horses. The charioteers are dressed in green,
blue, red, and white, the four orthodox colours of the
factions, before Domitian added the purple and gold.
The horses with long tails (more Britannico) are bay,
white, and gray, and the whole scene is most animated.
The realities of such events were the delight of Roman
life. The charioteers were commonly drawn from the
social class of slaves, but nobles and even emperors
have taken part with them, shrouding the vainglory of
popular applause beneath the pretended heroism of
Homeric examples. Women too have contended in
the arena. The race of the fleet-footed Atalanta was
but child's play to the violence in which Roman women
joined, to the dishonour of their sex. The antagonism
of the factions led at last to such scenes of violence, too
well remembered in the early history of Constantinople,
that the discontinuance of these games was decreed by
Justinian, and not renewed till by order of Pope Paul

146 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

the Second, in 1495, they were reinstituted in simpler
form, and continue to this day as an amusement of the
Carnival.

In classical times the provision of the games of the
circus was a sure and easy way to popularity ; but at
Lyons the public benefactor Ligurius was estimated for
services more solid than these, and recorded on a tablet
erected to his memory by his fellow-citizens, who in
enumerating his honours could not fail to wind them
up by the climax that "he had given them public
games " (" Idem ludos circenses dedit "), such as this
great mosaic represents.

Another very favourite subject was taken from the
realm of Neptune, and the increasing recurrence of it
towards and after the close of the first century A.D. has
been attributed to the increased popularity of that
deity on the extension of Roman commerce by sea,
which reached its acme at the time when mosaic
became the common appendage of every house in
countries under Roman influence. From northern
Britain to the African shores of the Mediterranean this
was the case ; and although there may be other reasons
for marine subjects being adopted, as they were very
appropriately in baths, and from the general adaptability
of the ideal forms of tritons, syrens, and sea monsters
to the scrolling ornament and the rough and broad
designs suitable to pavement mosaic, still there is some
ground to credit the popular cultus of Neptune as the
originating motive of the very wide adoption of those
subjects. The coast of Spain affords a good instance
of it on the floor of the church of St. Michael at
Barcelona, where the whole glory of the ocean kingdom
is portrayed in mosaic, with fishes, nereids, and tritons
sporting among the waves, and indicating the spot to
have been once occupied by a temple of Neptune.

But of all glorifications of Neptune, the design of a

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 147

mosaic found at Constantine is unequalled. In con-
trast with the animation of the whole scene, Neptune
and Amphitrite, relieved of all impediments of drapery,
as is the wont of marine deities, stand side by side full
front in their golden chariot, drawn by four dark green
hippocamps surging wildly through the waves a grand
ocean quadriga ; winged genii have thrown a rich red
scarf as an arch above their heads ; below them two
children are riding upon dolphins, and two boats at full
sail occupy the principal place, steered by children,
while others are fishing from the bows ; and all about
are shells, fish, and marine insects, drawn and coloured
to the life. The whole sea and air are full of life.
This artistic whirl of imaginary beings, of figures and
animals in water and air, is the dash of a broad sketch
realised in mosaic that, had it been a work of the
renaissance instead of the decline, might have come of
the free taste and free hand of such a one as Julio
Romano, or even a greater decorative artist than he.
The mosaicist may show a failing here and there, but
his design bears the sure stamp of a master's hand.
This picture marks the place of dignity at one end of
a large pavement, the rest of which is covered with a
geometrical design divided into octagons by wreaths of
laurel leaves beautifully coloured with blended green
and blue, and with interweaving ribbons and fleurettes
of countless colours filling up the spaces of the white
ground. 1

This and other pavements found on the site of
ancient Carthage, at Constantine, Utica, and their
neighbourhoods, form a distinguished group among the
mosaics of the world. The subtle refinement in the
art of colouring which they display approaches very
nearly to the finest of the old mosaics found at Pom-

1 It is admirably illustrated in colour in the "Report of the French
Researches in Algeria," vol. Archeologie.

148 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

peii and elsewhere, that reflect the traditions of Greek
influence. The artistic sense and technical delicacy
with which their tesserae were handled can only be
likened to the masterly mosaic with which a great
painter inlays his work, his brush at every stroke inlay-
ing and multiplying tints and hues that singly seem to
have no affinity to their place, but together, like drops
fallen from a rainbow, blend into an effect of rich and
harmonious breadth.

One of the most important of the mosaics of classic
times (measuring originally nearly thirty feet square) was
discovered on the site of Carthage in i860. 1 Its frag-
ments, fairly complete in themselves, represent a little
above a quarter of the whole, but, the entire centre and
two sides being lost, they are insufficient to certify the
whole scheme of the design. The figures of its sub-
jects seem to mark it as the floor of a sacred place ;
and being all female, they suggest that place to have
been the temple of a female deity. Large female busts
in circular medallions fill the four corners, and full-
length figures fill the isolated panels of the ground, set
like independent pictures among scrolling foliage.
Only three of these remain. Two of them stand in
graceful attitudes, presenting gifts on their altars, and a
third is dancing before an altar to the music of her
castinets.

The special interest of this great work is derived
from the evidence it affords of being a relic of ancient
Carthage. It lay more than ten feet below the ground
level, 2 beneath a bed of burnt materials, with two other
mosaic floors at different levels above it. There are
no glass tesserae in it, as in other undoubted Roman
mosaics about the same neighbourhood, but all are

1 It is now set up in the British Museum with others from Carthage,
Utica, Halicarnassus, Ephesus, etc.

2 Carthage and her Remains , p. 213. Dr. N. Davis. London, 1861.

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 149

cut from valuable stones and marbles of a marvellous
variety, and set both as to their foundation and cement
in a manner different from the Roman. The well-
known features of Roman mosaics, with their strong
generic likeness, do not occur here ; the borders and
frames, whether the Vitruvian, the fret, the plait, or
the guilloche, are not found here ; and instead of the
usual schemes of concentric circles, or of round octa-
gons and hexagons set in borders, as in Roman de-
signs, this great pavement has a number of independ-
ent subjects in eight parts divided by long pyramidal
masses of bay or laurel leaves growing upwards to the
centre. This artistic treatment differs from any known
mosaic, and the style and costume of the figures is
neither Greek nor Roman.

The interpretation of its figures would vary accord-
ing to their being regarded as Punic or Roman ; in the
former case they would be simply representative, in the
latter they might be symbolic ; for instance, one of the
heads of the remaining corner medallions would, if
Punic, be simply that of Ceres, but if Roman it might
serve as the symbol of summer. An authority 1 whose
opinion on these subjects is greatly respected, taking
this latter view, regards the two heads at the angles as
two of the seasons, and the three remaining figures by
their altars as three of the months, the dancing figure
being April, the month of Venus, the draped statuette,
of which only the lower quarter remains on the altar,
being taken to represent that goddess ; the other two
figures being assigned to March and July ; and he
supplies the other nine by analogy drawn from other
classes of works of art, and he supplies ideally the
centre of this pavement to complete the scheme.

But why not Punic ? The various particulars al-
ready specified are devoid of all Roman character.

1 A. W. Franks. Recent Excavations at Carthage. London, 1860.

150 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

The two grand female heads at the angles might with
equal propriety be assigned to Ceres and Dido, and
those that are lost to Anna, the deified sister of Dido,
and Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, all being divini-
ties of the ancient Carthaginian Pantheon. The full-
length female figures standing or dancing before their
altars, are both in attitude and occupation appro-
priately priestesses ; and as for any hesitation about
Carthage possessing mosaics, its early association with
Greeks and their arts in Sicily, and acquaintance with
Greek art through Phoenicia and her mother-city Tyre,
would have made her acquainted with mosaic as a per-
fected art in common use a century at least before it
was even heard of in Rome. Carthage was destroyed
B.C. 146 ; but the nations she had long known by the
intercourse of a common civilisation had been the most
famous centres of the world's arts ; and commanding
the commerce of the world, she would equally have
commanded its arts, and have thrown that genius and
ambition, which characterise her history, into them also.
The exceeding paucity of mosaics of the second
and third centuries B.C., of which any knowledge has
been preserved, beside the famous " aserotos oikos "
described by Pliny, and those which lined the great
ship of Hiero, has affected general opinion with a sense
of blank, as though the art had produced nothing else ;
but it must be apparent that such a work as that
of Sosos at Pergamos, or the other at Syracuse, could
not have been solitary masterpieces in the midst of
waste. Perfect works such as those could only have
come of great attainment in the art around them and
elsewhere. They stand out like two stars in a dark
heaven, but only because contemporary and subsequent
works have perished. Carthage was the city of highest
cultivation at that time, and mosaic was the common
heritage of its age. This great work is altogether

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 151

unique ; and for the numerous reasons I have stated, I
venture to suggest as not unreasonable to regard it as
a relic of ancient Carthage, possibly of the same age
or a little subsequent to the famous pavements of
Pergamos, and the work of either Greek, Phoenician, or
Punic artists. 1

England also abounds with mosaics from north to
south, from the banks of the Humber to the Welsh
Caerleon, recalling the memories of those of Europe
and Africa, wherever the Romans have settled, for
where they were, there were mosaics. More might
have been rescued from the havoc of time and ignor-
ance had their value been known ; but, like so much
beside art, their interest is in their associations, which

1 In the limited space and in such a broad review of the whole sub-
ject as this essay alone pretends to be, it is impossible to do more than
select out of the hundreds of mosaics, classic and Christian, which exist,
certain prominent and illustrative examples. It is equally out of reach to
enter fully into archaeological controversy for the same reasons ; but with
regard to this particular pavement I must add that in judging of the date
by the style of any mosaic, it must be remembered that the similarity of
materials and form of tesserae, from their origin in the stones and marbles
of the neighbourhood, or accessible by commerce, would remain almost
identical in any one place from beginning to end. And further, this art
having been derived even by Rome entirely from Greek sources, and all
its earliest artists as well, certain favourite types and modes of producing
artistic effects (such as flesh and the shadows of flesh) would, in an art so
much dependent on traditional uses, be likely to remain a common pro-
perty of its artists for centuries. Thus, for instance, the head of Ceres in
this mosaic bearing some similitude to one at Cirencester is easily
explained by the original of them both having been a favourite model
from some great work copied many times in many places, as the Madonna
della Seggiola is copied and repeated now nearly 400 years since it was
designed. All the remains of this great mosaic are in the British Museum,
and near it are some very fine specimens of Roman work from Carthage,
Utica, and Boudrum (Halicarnassus). The particulars of these last are
given in the Report of the excavations at Boudrum, presented to Parlia-
ment in 1858, page 34. Of the former the colossal head of Neptune, the
hunting scenes, a mounted man catching a deer in a lasso, and a mosaic
picture of a basket of fish thrown out upon the ground, are among the
most remarkable. There is also a very fine mosaic slab representing a
triton with fish floating about him, and a dolphin carrying a trident
from a Roman building within the peribolus of the temple of Diana at
Ephesus.

152 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

imply both that knowledge and feeling which turn
archaeology into romance, and all the more fascinating
because it is all true. These broken relics of old
times are precious pages. These remnants of old
mosaics in our land mark the spots where men, whose
names still live in classic history and literature, once
passed a stirring life of war and enterprise, where they
summoned councils and held their courts ; or, in times
of peace, gathered their families about them and laid
for their former foes the foundations of the best civilis-
ation that they knew.

The position occupied by ancient London both for
defence and commerce was too clearly marked to
escape the observation of the Romans ; but the in-
terest of its history in their times would have no place
here did not the beauty of its mosaics arrest our
attention, and warm the imagination to realise in idea
the scenes those silent floors once witnessed : a history
that was but written upon air. In modern times the
excavation of walls and alteration of streets have
revealed those relics of a past age ; and when we read
the familiar names of Bishopsgate Street, Leadenhall
Street, Lombard Street, the India House, Threadneedle
Street, and The Exchange, and see or hear about the
mosaics that have been found beneath or near them,
the changes, which centuries of life have wrought, strike
us with their startling contrasts, as those tessellated-
floors reveal the fact that where now the strife of the
world's commerce rages round its crowded centre, was
once the quiet Belgravian suburb of Roman London.

Of all the parts of England that bear witness to
Roman residence, Gloucestershire appears to have been
a favourite. The grassy dells of the Cotteswolds
afforded them a scenery which, perhaps, the unde-
veloped sense of landscape in those days may have
failed to interest ; but they settled there, and have left

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 153

along the whole length from the Painswick beacon to
the hills and valleys westward of Dursley the relics of
many of their homes. It was a tempting site for them.
The wide hunting ground of the Cotteswold country
was behind them, and their city Corinium, the modern
Cirencester, at the junction of their principal roads, was
within easy reach ; Aquasolis (Bath) also and Caerleon,
and their "castra exploratoria " on the points of all the
hills. The great military establishment at Glevum (the
modern Gloucester) lay in the valley below them, on
the bank of the meandering Severn ; and far beyond,
the country of the Silures, the scene of their great
campaign, stretched out into the wide distance, blend-
ing the woods and hills of its horizon with the mists of
the setting sun.

Here in one of its loveliest spots, now Woodchester,
a palace was built, which from the evidence of its
extent and wealth was one of much importance. Its
historian has with most reasonable inference traced
here the site of imperial residence, where Claudius and
Hadrian trod its tessellated floors. Ostorius Scapula
was Propraetor of Britain under Claudius, and is known
to have constructed many " castra " along the Severn
valley. Claudius's 7th Legion was for many years
stationed at Gloucester, and this favoured spot, Wood-
chester, afforded precisely the central and secure posi-
tion required for the governor's residence. Its great
central open court was an atrium of all but fifty feet
square. The mosaic of its pavement is one of the
largest known, and though coarsely executed, it ex-
hibits all the best features of Roman mosaic art of that
period. The ground of it is a warm white, and within
a grandly-designed border is one large circle divided
into several rings with an octagonal centre. The
central figure is lost ; but Orpheus, who commonly
occupies that place, is here delineated within one of the

154 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

inner circles, with animals and birds duly tamed by his
music quietly following each other all round. The
colour is rich and simple ; and the materials which are
mostly of local production have, for the purest white
tesserae, the hard calcareous stone imported for the
purpose, the same as is found in Roman mosaics in
various parts of Europe. It is approached by a cor-
ridor 1 1 4 feet long and 9 broad, from end to end
mosaic ; and in various directions are the foundations
of rooms, of which the evidences of their once tessellated
floors still remain. The character of the latest of these
pavements is of a style that would date about the reign
of Septimius Severus ; and in relation to that emperor a
coincidence is worthy of remark, that a group of figures
ornamenting the floor of one of the rooms, is that of
two genii, without wings, but in the attitude of flying,
carrying between them a basket of fruit, and inlaid
below them is the motto " Bonum Eventum " a motto
that is found on the reverse of coins of that emperor
and of his son Geta. He remained some time in
England, and this device seems to bring him to this
spot, the floor having been thus inlaid in honour of his
residence. 1

Of the numerous relics of Roman mosaic in Eng-
land it is hard to pass over such fine specimens as those
at Littlecote in Wiltshire, at Stonesfield near Blenheim,
at Cirencester, and other places, but three will suffice
to illustrate their best characteristics, viz. those at
Frampton, Horkstow, and Bignor, of which the two
first contain symbols which seem to associate them
with the earliest Christian age in Britain.

1 For description and illustration of these and other important mosaics
in England vide Lysons's Woodchester, published 1797, and his Reliquice
Britannico- Romance, London, 1801. Also Fowler's Ilhistrations of
Mosaics in all Parts of England, published in 1810. Roach Smith's
Roman London and Collectanea Antiqua, and journals of principal archaeo-
logical societies, etc.

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 155

The contrast between the grandly artistic schemes
on which the floors are laid out, and the ignorance of
drawing and detail in the execution of most of them,
have inevitably suggested their derivation from some
good sources, of which the original cartoons have
perished. The mosaicists seem in most cases to have
been skilled artisans of a superior class, furnished with
a store of designs and patterns common to the archi-
tectural style of the time ; and with these as their
" stock " they gave to their repetitions of them the
appearance of originality by the ingenious variety of
their combinations. Human figures, birds and beasts,
gods and goddesses, often designed in admirable atti-
tudes, but blundered to the utmost in execution, are
accounted for on the same theory ; thus, no two
mosaics, though containing every element the same,
appear actually alike.

There are, however, two remarkable exceptions,
viz. those at Bignor in Sussex and at Avenches in
Switzerland, where not only the unique circumstance
occurs of each having a bath or cistern in their centre,
but the evidence of both pavements having been in
great part taken from the same original cartoons, is
plain from the similarity of the figures, which is so
great as to extend even to their faults in drawing and
proportion. Avenches, where the great mosaic meas-
ures 55 French feet long by 36 broad, owed its im-
portance to its strategical or otherwise convenient
position during the wars with Germany, and flourished
under the patronage of Vespasian and Titus, which
affords a clue to its probable date. The mosaic at
Bignor corresponds with this date, and being somewhat
Pompeian in character, its ornaments differ both in
style and arrangement from most others in England,
and present an appearance of greater antiquity.

The several pavements of this place, ruinous as

156 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

their condition now is, have such peculiar interest that
it is a regrettable necessity in a sketch of the history
of the art such as this, that only the main features of
any one example can find place. These at Bignor are
probably the earliest of Roman mosaics of any im-
portance in Britain. Their extent implies the decora-
tion of the rooms of a governor's residence, the capital
of whose province was the modern Chichester, from
which it is about twelve miles distant. The pavements
have suffered very greatly from wilful as well as acci-
dental injury. The usual Roman combination of circles
within squares form the general scheme of the designs,
of which the smaller circle is occupied by the figure of
Ganimede carried by the eagle, and the larger one
divided into hexagons contains dancing nymphs, which
recall to mind the paintings of Pompeii. The mimic
gladiators which occupy the four small compartments
of another floor are unique in England ; as are also
the two labyrinths in another part. These gladiators
are winged children. The panels of each subject
measure 2 feet 9 by 16 inches, and contain in minia-
ture the complete arrangement of the gladiatorial
combat. In the first the little figures stand in two
groups preparing for the fight, which is to be that
between the retiarius and the mirmillo, the former
being armed with a net and trident, the latter with a
sword and shield. Each is attended by a veteran
gladiator, the rudiarius, whose business was to instruct
and assist the rising genius. The attendant of the
mirmillo is lifting the helmet to the young gladiator's
head, while his shield rests on the ground before him ;
and he wears the orthodox grieve on his left leg. His
adversary with his net and trident is dressed with a
cassula over his tunic, and has his head correctly bare.
He seems to shrink a little as his friendly rudiarius
leads him to the contest. In the next compartment

vi ANCIENT MOSAIC 157

the retiarius is evidently pressed hard, and his friend
comes to the rescue. In the last he is fallen disarmed
and wounded in the thigh. In another part of the
pavement is a remarkable female bust, that can be
none other than that of Venus, crowned with a chaplet
of flowers, the tresses of her hair falling over her bare
shoulders. As a goddess she has a light-blue nimbus
over her head, and takes the place of the Bacchus with
his blue nimbus also, on the pavement at Avenches ;
cornucopia, festoons, and birds decorate the surround-
ing space.

At a distant part of England from this, near the
mouth of the Humber, is one of the most important
mosaics in England, at Harkstow. It was discovered
in 1796 close to the Roman road from Lincoln to the
river, near the station Praetorium of the first stage of
Antonine's Itinerary. In the central circle of the main
floor sits Orpheus with his lyre, wearing the usual
Phrygian bonnet, with a peacock at his side, and
attendant animals, the hare and dog, bear, boar, and
elephant ; birds of various kinds, among which are
doves with coloured wings, make up the company.
The four spandrels or corners of this and the adjoining
square are remarkable, the one from its four male busts
drawn in brown outline upon the white ground, and
having on each side of them the Christian symbol of
the cross inlaid in red tesserae. The corresponding
angles of the adjacent floor are not occupied by Titans,
as they have been described, but by demoniacal figures
with outstretched arms holding up the edges of the
central circle, their bodies painted black and red, and
having in place of legs huge coiling snakes with red
crests and fiery tongues ; demons of unrest in significant
contrast with the calm Christian busts hard by. The
great circle of this floor is beautifully arranged with
graceful groups of figures in four large blue medallions,

158 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

with nereids, tritons, and marine creatures between
them, and winged genii dancing and waving wreaths
round the small central circle of which the subject is
lost.

If, as is possible from those symbolic representa-
tions, this was the floor of a Christian establishment,
the pagan character of the rest is only in common with
all early mosaics ; the mosaicist having none other for
it than his usual stock of subjects.

Next to this is a spirited mosaic picture of a Biga
race. Four chariots are engaged, and two mounted
men accompany them. The chariots are apparently
of light straw plait like beehives, or of wickervvork, and
the drivers kneel in them. One is upset, with its
wheel broken off, and a horseman, dismounted, stretches
forward to save the falling charioteer. The horse of
another is in the act of falling headlong, and the other
two are at full speed. The charioteers are not clothed
with the orthodox colours, but are red and buff, and
their horses are chestnut, brown, black, and bay. The
spina dividing the course is plainly drawn, and the
meta at each end of it is surmounted with two
pyramids.

Only one other Roman mosaic in England need
be mentioned, perhaps the most interesting of all, that
at Frampton near Dorchester. Here there are pave-
ments of three rooms of important size connected by
long corridors with mosaic floors throughout. The
design of one of these (an oblong of 30 x 20 feet) is
characterised by the prevailing idea of Deity over-
coming evil. One figure, very rarely found, is that of
Mars Pacifer, the symbol of war waged for the sake
of peace, dressed like a Roman soldier, wearing the
Phrygian cap of liberty, but with an olive-tree growing
beside him, and an olive branch in his hand. Another
is Neptune spiking with his trident a sea monster who

ANCIENT MOSAIC 159

is attacking him from below. A third is Apollo killing
the Python, represented as a snake coiled on a tree and
in the attitude of attack. A fourth is the peaceful
Bacchus, filling the place, which would otherwise have
been properly filled by the more pugnacious Vulcan.
A second pavement at the end of a long passage is
altogether in honour of Neptune, its panelled hexagons
and octagons being filled with figures of nereids and
dolphins and busts of men holding long spiral shells as
sceptres.

The principal room is of basilican form of three
compartments, the main body being a square with a
narrow oblong projecting from one side and uniting it
to a semicircular apse. The ornamental border of the
square is filled with dolphins and with the head of
Oceanus as a central medallion in it on the side toward
the apse. In the centre of the oblong is the monogram
of Christus in its central circle, the rest of the space
being filled with scrolling foliage. The apse has at its
extremity an oblong panel of plain tesserae, as if to
mark the place for a statue, a throne, or an altar. A
vase in its centre is its only ornament.

The form and ornamentation of this floor suggests
that the apartment was one of importance dedicated
either to judicial or religious use ; if to the former, the
apse would have been the place of the Praetorian chair ;
if the latter, it would have contained the statue of the
god ; and to judge by the figures and emblems through-
out the mosaics of this extensive palace, this would
have been Neptune ; and the prominent Christian
monogram, the subject of Constantine's vision, and of
the labarum of his army, would have been inserted when
Christianity was proclaimed ; the statue in the apse
giving place to the altar, and the temple consecrated
as a British church.

ESSAY Ml Continued

MOSAIC

PART II CHRISTIAN

E adoption of Christianity marked the beginning
of a new era in this art, not by a revolution in its
practice or its purpose, but by the new direction given
to them both. Both use and motive indeed remained
the same ; for whether to adorn a palace for its owner's
pleasure or to aid devotion in a sacred place, the
springs of the artist's energy and the motives for his
art's employment were the same ; but the source of
those springs was changed, and the force of his motive
was initiated elsewhere. In ornamental art the joy of
human life had still to be served, and in sacred places
the ideal of Deity had still to be glorified ; but the
aspect and aspirations of his life were changed. So
the arts, those methods of men's hearts' expression,
were changed too, not in nature but in voice, with new
purposes to serve, new thoughts to tell, and new in-
spirations to obey.

Practically such a change could not be at once
exhibited. Works were continually required, but the
designs made in this new spirit were not immediately
forthcoming. It needed time to formulate the repre-
sentative ideas on which such designs could be realised.
So the result was inevitable, as illustrated by such

ESSAY vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 161

works as the mosaics in the church of Santa Costanza at
Rome, which some critics have disposed of as pagan,
some as Christian, but which were in fact that union
of both that was unavoidable in a work ordered by the
first Christian Emperor at his daughter's request, and
executed to the best of their power by mosaicists who
took what they could and what they knew best, to
please their Imperial patrons, like the well-instructed
scribe who brought out of his treasures things both
new and old,

Thus was adopted at once that employment of
mosaic which distinguished the general use of it under
Christian from that of pagan influences, the latter
having assigned its finest works to floors, the former
to walls and ceilings. Not indeed that such was the
universal practice, for from Aosta and Siena to Rheims
and Cologne the pavements of Christian buildings have
been enriched with pictorial representations of the best
that their day could produce ; but the general tend-
ency has prevailed to apply to floors the mechanical
designs of inlaid marbles, and to lavish on the wafts
and vaulting the whole glory of the artist's genius.
The ever-quoted examples of Ravenna and Constanti-
nople show this. The basilicas of Monreale in Sicily,
of the Lateran at Rome, and of St. Mark's at Venice
are splendid with all that the wealth of marble and
ingenuity of device could spread upon their floors ; but
for their walls and vaulting are reserved those master-
pieces of the art with which only poetry and devotion
could combine to clothe them.

At Sour, near to the traditional tomb of King
Hiram, the friend of Solomon, on a site that once
was a necropolis, in the neighbourhood of the ancient
city of Tyre, has been found a mosaic floor of a small
Christian church, of which the consecration to St.
Christopher, as commemorated by an inscription, set

162 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

in marble tesserae, has a peculiar significance, from this
being the country to which has been assigned the
birthplace of that mythic Saint whose colossal figure,
bearing the infant Christ upon his shoulder, has made
the subject of so many wall paintings in the mediaeval
churches of western Christendom. The fabric of this
church exists no more, but its foundations show it to
have had a central nave and two side aisles ; and, with
the exception of their three apses, their entire floors
remain, though saved from theft and injury only by a
few inches of garden soil. Judging by its style, it
would belong to the age of Constantine (as a central
date), the design of it recalling the motives which
characterise part of the vaulting of Santa Costanza's
church and of the Lateran baptistery at Rome, and
the ground of part of the great floor at Italica (already
described), which would have preceded it, and the
beautiful mosaic pavement of the Christian basilica
at D'Jemila, in Algeria, which would follow it. The
system of covering spaces with numerous circles, con-
taining figures of all sorts of animals, birds, little
winged genii, reptiles, and sprigs of leaves, was a
favourite device at that period. Indeed, so entirely
was this ideal of ornament received as of right taste
and universal propriety, even in sacred buildings, that
a little after the reign of Constantine the writer and
statesman Olympiodorus, seeking advice from St.
Nilus about the decoration of the interior of a church,
suggested that the walls on each side of the sanctuary
should be ornamented with figures of animals and fish,
with incidents of the chase, and " histories of all kinds of
birds and beasts, reptiles and plants." The Saint's reply,
objecting and suggesting a higher order of iconography,
shows how Christian influence soon prevailed to stop
this system of decoration, which after the fifth century
is rarely if ever found, except in very modified form, as

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 163

at Rome, Aosta, and Rheims, and other places, where the
circle, as a natural form for medallions, was employed,
but where they were filled, not with animal forms for
want of anything better, but with such, whether of things,
persons, fish, animals, and birds, as had some symbolic
reference to Christianity, or the moral of human life, of
which the calendar, with its ring of circular medallions,
was a simple and favourite illustration.

The mosaic at Sour is a complete illustration of the
style of its age. The principal pavement of the nave,
of oblong form, is a work of great refinement ; the
general design being that of traditional simplicity, with
a vase at each angle, from which plants grew, forming,
with their branches, numerous small circles, filled with
precisely such a scheme of figures, taken from the
animal world, as St. Nilus at a later time rejected.
In the central circle (of thirty) is drawn, much in the
same spirit as the vintage mosaic of Santa Costanza, a
group of two children, apparently playing musical in-
struments one sitting, the other standing, in a wine-
press, with a tub in front to catch the grape juice, and
at the back, rising above the heads of the children, a tall
cross. The rest of the circles are filled with animals
playing or fighting, such as a fox at full speed carrying
a cock on his back, a lion seizing a stag, and a snake and
a squirrel, to judge by their expressive figures, startled
at their sudden meeting. There are also single figures
of children hunting, and one engaged in the less excit-
ing occupation of dragging an unwilling donkey loaded
with panniers. A double row of circles, with guilloche
borders, fill the side aisles, containing busts of figures
representing the four seasons, the twelve months, and
the four winds, each distinguished by its name in
Greek ; and numerous pairs of animals, birds and fish. 1

1 The inscription forming part of this pavement has led to much con-
troversy. It states that the church was dedicated at a date corresponding

1 64 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

The continuance of the same traditional use, bor-
rowed from classical designs, of the forms of animals

to A.D. 652-3 ; and it is added that " the whole work of this mosaic ('to
panergon tes Psephosios') was included in the dedication." The ques-
tion is about the date of this pavement. The inscription does not specify
the pavement (" Lithostrotos "), but mosaic work (" Psephosis"). Had
the Greek writer of the inscription referred specially to the pavement he
would have written "Lithostrotos," which was the word universally
adopted by the Greek translators of the Septuagint at Alexandria for
mosaic pavements. " Psephosis " was the Greek for mosaic in its
largest sense as applied to tessellated architectural work by the Greeks
of Constantinople ; but when a novel employment of tessellation for
small pictures and minute ornaments, used like jewelry upon dresses,
became the fashion in the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, another
name appeared necessary for its designation, and the words "mousa-
kion," "mousaion," and others, from "mousa," were applied to it. 1

By its style this pavement, which has not a single Byzantine feature in
it, would reasonably be assigned to the date mentioned in the text. The
materials of the inscription being of similar material to the rest is no
sufficient argument for identity of date. The whole character of it, and
of the Greek letters used in it, is absolutely distinct. It almost speaks
for itself, and suggests what appears to me a simple explanation. The
churches of Palestine were at that date (652), under Byzantine influence,
habitually decorated with mosaics throughout ; and the persons effecting
so grand a work as that in their own style would have cared but little for
the pavement, then 300 years old, of a style associated with pagan tradi-
tions, and being probably that of one of the many small churches erected
in Syria by Constantine or his mother, St. Helena. Mosaic was so com-
mon in the seventh century that indifference would easily have led these
advanced mosaicists to ignore the old pavement in comparison with their
own great work of covering the interior walls with sacred subjects. Thus,
on dedicating the church anew to St. Christopher, their idea of "all
this mosaic work" ("psephosis") was what they had just done. Their
tesserae would have been all of glass, and just such as despoilers would
have certainly robbed, having subsequently become in great demand for
the walls and dadoes of Mahomedan mosques. For the pavement of
their church those mosaicists of the seventh century would not have em-
ployed tessellation, but that mixed mosaic of sectile and Alexandrian
work then universally in fashion in the East, as at Thessalonica, Constan-
tinople, and other places ; and in that manner they would have paved
the three apses with slabs and inlays of valuable marbles, which also re-
commended themselves to the same robbers for the same purpose when
the whole fabric was destroyed and pillaged by the victorious Moslems.
The sand soon swept over the old tessellated pavement, and garden soil
has preserved it till our time. So the inscription and its date relate to
the large work on the walls, which has entirely perished, and not to the
pavement into which it had been inlaid, in a totally different style of design
from the more ancient part described in the text.

1 Const. Porphyr. De Ceremon. aulcz Byzantince.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 165

and plants in the decoration of Christian buildings at
that period, is beautifully illustrated in a somewhat
similar floor in the early African church at D'Jernila in
Algeria. The scheme of the design as an architectural
ornament is faultless ; more thoroughly geometrical
than the principal pavement at Sour, with interlacing
borders enclosing circles surrounded with octagonal
wreaths of bay leaves, containing in the centre of each,
on a white ground, birds and animals, drawn in
quiet attitudes, and including the elephant, camel, and
ostrich, apparently selected from such as were natural
to Africa ; the one exception of symbolic reference to
Christianity being the dove carrying the olive branch.

A very different class of art was now begun at
the two imperial centres, Rome and Constantinople.
Christianity was now free, and the mosaics upon the
walls and vaults of its sacred places were spread as
vast pictures illustrating the incidents of its history
and faith. The great mosaics of the first nine cen-
turies in the churches at Rome have been so often
and so well described that their very names are as
household words in the history of art. They need no
repetition - here (for my purpose is rather historical
than descriptive), nor scarcely any notice beyond that
of the testimony they bear to the gradual decline of
the artistic spirit of their age, and the struggle it made
to live ; sometimes rising, at least in the poetry of
religious intention, as in the dignified portraiture of
the apse of Santa Pudeziana, and the sacred symbolism
in that of SS. Cosmo and Damian ; at another time
failing in all artistic sense, as in the ill-composed and
worse-drawn subjects which surmount, from end to
end, the grand architectural avenue of S. Maria
Maggiore ; and sinking at last to its lowest depth
in the stolid figures which signalise the very death of
art in the apse of SS. Nereus and Achilleus.

1 66 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

The Romans unhappy in their fallen state, the
fatal wreck of ancient pride, deserted by their em-
perors, distracted by internal disorder and continuous
war, their city reduced to a dependency of Ravenna,
taken and sacked by Goths, Vandals and Heruli ;
ruined and impoverished in men and means, and com-
pleting a period of alternating pillage and servitude
during little less than a century and a half, at last to
find itself, about the middle of the sixth century, the
vassal of the East had lost all spirit for the finer arts
of life. What little original power they had ever pos-
sessed in them had now been crushed by national
disaster, and a darkness had fallen upon them that
was not to be lifted for centuries. Individuals there
doubtless were, lovers of the arts of peace, who, in
the quieter moments of that distracted life, had clung
to the associations of happier days, and had main-
tained some traditions of their arts ; but there is no
record and but little evidence of them left. The
Church, their only source of comfort and quiet occu-
pation, employed them at various intervals of time,
but under masters from elsewhere whom the East or
the Exarchate could spare.

The works of this art in Rome, spread over a
period of four centuries, with various fortune, and
sometimes with long intervals of sleep, were but of
inferior class to what was being produced elsewhere.
The collapse of all original power in art was evident
from the repetition of the same subject in four dif-
ferent churches, each inferior to its predecessor ; and
at last, by the monopoly of all art in the hands of
artists from the East, who, regardless of Rome, adopted
in their works Greek inscriptions, attitudes, costumes,
and compositions, the gorgeous ornament of oriental
taste in their accessories, as their favourite saint, S.
Agnese, was displayed in the splendid dress and

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 167

jewelry of an Eastern empress ; and at last so en-
tirely Greek as, under the eyes of Roman pontiffs,
to figure the Saviour in the Greek attitude of bene-
diction. The interest which the mosaics at Rome
arouse since the fifth century, when the last great
work had been realised in the church of SS. Cosmo
and Damian, is dashed with the melancholy of de-
clining life. That church once exhibited in its
triumphal arch and apse a glorious work of archi-
tectural painting in mosaic ; but the building was
subsequently altered, and the fine completeness of its
mosaic picture was destroyed by diminution of its
walls. It had doubtless from the first a certain
severity of character which the types and habits of
the Gothic invaders had introduced, and the Byzan-
tine spirit had stereotyped on its composition ; but
the original effect of it must have been exceedingly
grand. It possessed no single element of old Roman
pictorial composition ; but broad and simple in its
arrangement of numerous groups of figures, with that
of Christ for the centre, on which the whole scheme
culminated, it was also embellished with such beauty
of religious symbolism as filled this vast composition
with the deepest and most affecting interest. Above,
upon the wall over the apse, is the figure of the
Lamb of God lying upon a jewelled altar, with the
cross above it, and the seven golden candlesticks
standing on either side. Below, in, the form of a
frieze, at the base of the whole composition, the
figurative river Jordan flows forth, and on its bank
the Lamb stands, with six others approaching Him from
either side out of the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem,
emblematic of the churches of the Old and New Testa-
ments, from opposite directions, united in Himself. To
the comparatively rude spectators of those days of
darkness and trouble it must have been like an open

1 68 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

book of sublime poetry, heightened by the inspira-
tions of the purest piety, with a glory of effect that
seemed to break upon them from heaven. In its
original condition it was wider, and supported on each
side beneath by those grandly -conceived groups of
glorified martyrs, in white robes, presenting their
crowns to Christ, as the copy of this subject in the
same position in the church of Santa Prassede still re-
presents them.

It is the completeness of the composition thus
secured on the walls of Santa Prassede that, in spite of its
great inferiority, produced so grand an effect. This
repetition (with a few changes among the figures) was
made about A.D. 820, little short of 300 years after the
original in SS. Cosmo and Damian, and twice again,
at each time marred by the evidences of rapidly declin-
ing art, in the churches of S. Cecilia and S. Mark.

The iconoclastic edicts of Leo the Tsaurian in A.D.
726 at Constantinople gave such a blow to art as it
never recovered till the revival in the twelfth century.
Many of the best artists migrated. Some came to
Rome and established themselves in a college known
as the Schola Greca, close to a church which received
the name of S. Maria in Cosmedia from the beauty of
their works in it ; but though their influence is very
evident, there is no distinct reference to them in the
records of any important work which followed. It was
not till the time of Leo III., about half a century later,
that any energy was thrown into this art. This friend
of Charlemagne was in his sphere a worthy coadjutor
of the Emperor, and as active in the employment of
the arts as in all else, but the best of the mosaics
executed for him have perished. One only of the most
important, the triclinium of the Lateran palace, is still
seen in its original place, in part the copy in part the
restored remnant of what fire, accident, and neglect had

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 169

left, and the much injured portraits of the Pope and
the Emperor, now preserved in the Vatican.

But "the stars in their. courses fought against" the
arts, and anarchy and barbarism were spreading
their deep shadows over society and government. All
art that could properly be called Italian had died out
heart-broken, and in all that related to it, the Greek
influence, depressed and depressing, became more and
more pronounced. The weak hands to whom it had
been relinquished could produce no warmth to save the
expiring flames. Still even in the feebleness of its
waning life there had been in the very nature of mosaic
a quality and effect of massiveness and breadth that
saved it in great degree from the offences to which
other arts were liable ; but even that grandeur, which
results from simplicity and solemnity alone, gradually
sank into gloom ; and at last all its tenderer elements
of beauty disappeared, as the songs of birds die away
before the deepening chills of winter.

In the meantime another phase of art had been
developed at Constantinople, the phase of splendour.
The natural disposition of its eastern people, the haste
and reckless cost of a new centre of civilised life, artifi-
cially excited, infused it with the prevailing energy.
The art of mosaic with which only we are here con-
cerned, had to take its part in the universal indulgence
of display, and contributed its quota of magnificence by
the effect of gold, spread over vast architectural spaces
as the background of its coloured subjects. The origin
of these gold backgrounds was probably no more than a
new phase of what had been a practice among the arts
of ancient Byzantium, and in reality due to the exten-
sive use of gold plates in the more ancient oriental
decoration. Gold tesserae had long been used at
Rome, but not as grounds for pictures. The East
afforded no precedent for gold ground mosaic, nor had

i;o THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

it been used in classic Greece, but plates of gold and
architecture overlaid with gold, as distinguished from
gilding, had been for centuries the recognised mode of
regal and religious decoration in those Eastern lands
which had been the first nurseries of the arts. The
ruins of t Chaldaean architecture have afforded the evi-
dence of towers and fagades having thus been plated
with gold, and of walls of rooms ornamented with gold
plates in the place of pictures. The facility for such
splendour of effect was now immediately at hand in the
gilt glass tesserae for mosaics ; their cost was compara-
tively nil y their extent unlimited, and the opportunity of
display was all that could be desired by the gorgeous
taste of the imperial founders and citizens of Constanti-
nople.

The conversion of Byzantium into the imperial city
of Constantinople gave such a spring to the arts as
seemed to promise their revival in force. The energy
of novelty, the ambition of wealth, the motive power of
a new religious ideal, and all else that could contribute
to stir artistic enthusiasm were concentrated on that
favoured spot. Ancient Greece was despoiled of its
treasures, and what Rome had left was accumulated at
Constantinople. But the models of antiquity had no
elements, but those of abstract beauty, in common with
the part that fine art was now called upon to play.
Their beauty was transcendent and their forms perfect,
and they had reached the acme of what human genius
could effect for the glory of their own ideal. Those
works might glorify a city and satisfy the display an
oriental population loved. They had sprung from an
enthusiasm common to all mankind, and had risen to
be idolised by it, but their very perfection was a bar
to progress. Genius had exhausted itself upon them.
They had told their tale and had finished their special
ministry. The happiness they gave they could give

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 171

still, and would give as long as their frail materials
would last. All that was pure and beautiful in them,
all that their rich eloquence could speak of what was
common to the divine element in humanity, was and
ever would be theirs, but art had now other demands
to meet, and, as of old, so still must she draw from the
same Nature the models of her works, but a Nature seen
under a new aspect and with all the circumstances of
its life actuated by other motives and pointing to
another destiny.

Constantine was a great builder, and pre-eminently
of churches, and in all of them mosaic or inlaid marbles
were the chief mode of ornament Eusebius describes,
perhaps with too great fervour, the emperor's great
basilica at Jerusalem, as exhibiting a splendour only
comparable to what the prophets had foretold of the
new Jerusalem ; the walls were inlaid with marbles, and
were enriched with gold, silver, and precious stones.
But little remains of any mosaics that can be with
certainty attributed to him, beside the Roman church
of Santa Costanza and of the Lateran baptistery ; for
those of the first S. Peter's at Rome, at Constantinople,
and Jerusalem have perished.

The history of Constantinople was one of trouble
and disturbance. The palace of Constantine was
burnt, and a time of general displacement and restless-
ness followed the reign of its founder, till the city rose
again in greatness and beauty in the days of Justinian.
He too was a mighty builder of palaces and churches.
Next to the imperial palace, of which nothing but
magnificent description remains, the church of the Holy
Apostles had been the most important work of Con-
stantine. It was the first built in the form of the cross,
with a long nave and a dome over the centre, covered
with bronze. His tomb was under this dome, and the
whole interior was coated with rich marbles. It was

172 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

ruined by an earthquake, and its place is now occupied
by the mosque of Mahomet II. A nobler edifice now
rose under the auspices of Justinian, dedicated to Holy
Wisdom in the centre of his renovated city, to be its
glory for all time Agia Sophia. Its foundation stone
was laid on the 23d of February 531. The arts broke
forth anew, pressed into the service of this great build-
ing, and among them, as sculpture was not yet realised
in its Christian sense, and painting had been relegated
to the humbler sphere of the easel and illumination,
architecture and mosaic reigned supreme. The interior
of Santa Sophia by the harmonised elements of space,
power, and grace, presents the sublimest effect of which
its style of architecture is capable. The modes and
forms of architectural grandeur are severally distinct,
incomparable, and unique. The monuments of Egypt,
the temples of Greece, the cathedrals of Europe have
each their own, and are each supremely expressive of
their own intent. This wondrous Agia Sophia was
absolutely unique ; and for the purpose of worship in a
faith that realised to the imagination the sublimest con-
ceptions of Deity, this work of purest art fulfilled and
satisfied all aspirations.

Its vast dome is constructed with a number of
narrow ribs, richly coloured, and with plain spaces of
gold between them rising to a central circle, now
painted over, but originally filled in mosaic with a
colossal figure of Christ seated in majesty, the ray-
shaped golden spaces of the dome, which are now
meaningless, forming then a splendid glory radiating
over the whole vast space, as though they emanated from
the central figure. Below it the four corner pendent-
ives, from [which the dome springs, are covered with
the wings of four gigantic cherubim, thus completing
the sublime conception of the central subject. The
figure of Christ is described by those who saw it long

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 173

ago as seated within a rainbow (in iride) expressive of
the " rainbow round about the throne ;" and, if we may
be allowed to complete the picture by analogy from
others elsewhere, this rainbow surrounded the circular
panel, as, in the form of a vesica, it was commonly
used in subsequent times, and whether on a blue
ground, as in another part of the church, or on gold,
the central figure was seated not upon a throne, as it is
in the narthex, but upon a globe iridescent with stars. 1
The figure of the globe had been known in very ancient
art as the symbol of eternity and the universe, but its
acceptance and conversion to Christian art as an
appropriate symbol, and as the throne of One who was
its creative Word and final Judge, had not been seen
before. This grand idea, found in other works of
immediately subsequent date, must have had some
great exemplar, and none more likely than this in a
building from which so much has been copied and
repeated in all directions. This mode of composing
the subject of the Majesty is found in mosaic in the
church of S. Vitale at Ravenna, which was built after
the model of Santa Sophia and ornamented by the same
school of mosaicists. It is found also at Rome over
the great arch of the basilica of San Lorenzo, dating
from a few years only after Santa Sophia, and in the apse
of St. Theodore, and in the seventh century mosaic
work of the lateral apse of Santa Costanza, and in the
baptistery of San Giovanni at Florence in a mosaic by
Andrea Tafi, in the thirteenth century. It is also found
in other forms of art, such as in Byzantine, ivory carv-

1 Du Cange's Historia Byzantina, book iii., page 30, edition 1680.
" In interiore Tholi, seu ut vocant Trulli, centre ac Testitudine, Justinia-
nus opere musivo Christum in iride sedentem orbis judicantis effigie,
describi curavit ut avroirrai testantur." " In the inner central part and
dome of the cupola, or as they call it, Trullus, Justinian caused to be
represented in mosaic work Christ within a rainbow seated after the
fashion of one judging the world, as the very eye-witnesses testify."

174 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

ing, 1 where the figure is seated on a globe covered with
stars, and it was painted by the Giottesque Cavallini in
the apse of S. Georgio in Velabro at Rome, in the
place of a previously existing mosaic. Many single
figures, including all the authors of both the Old and
New Testaments, are spread about upon the flat and
arched surfaces, but the only important subject visible
at the time the interior was being cleaned and repaired
in I 847, and of which a coloured drawing was taken, 2
is that of Pentecost, which covers one of the domes of
the women's aisle, on the south side. The breadth and
grandeur of its composition affords some idea of what
the whole interior must have originally displayed. In
the crown of this dome Christ sits enthroned with the
blue of heaven around Him, enclosed within a broad
aureole of gold. From His figure proceed twelve white
rays which fall on the heads of the apostles standing
around below, and groups of the first Christian disciples
fill the four angular spaces from which the cupola
springs. As a complete subject it is unique. The best
known work in this grand church is that in the
narthex, which is one of the finest existing mosaics,
exhibiting the typal composition of the Majesty,
followed in all succeeding ages from that to the present,
in every form of art throughout all Christendom. It is
in the lunette over the king's entrance, where on a gold
ground the figure of Christ sits on a jewelled throne,
in the attitude of blessing with the right hand and hold-
ing a book in the left, bearing the inscription on its open
pages, " Peace to you, I am the Light of the world."
Right and left are circular medallions containing busts
of the blessed Virgin and St. Michael, and on the pave-
ment at Christ's feet Justinian crowned prostrates him-

1 A Byzantine ivory plaque, in the Soltikoff collection figured in
Labarte's Moyen Age, vol. i. p. 46.

2 Saltzenberg, Alt. Christ liche . . . von Constant inopeL Berlin, 1854.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 175

self. Such are shortly the main features of mosaic art
at Santa Sophia, the architectural type of all succeed-
ing Christian churches and Mahomedan mosques of the
East.

But it is not only in such sites of wealth and
government that important works of this art are still
to be found. At the foot of Mount Sinai, where
tradition assigns the first building to the time of the
apostles, 1 in the present church, 2 built, and with its
monastery endowed and fortified by Justinian, the
eastern wall, arch, and apse are covered with con-
temporary mosaics from designs adapted to the peculiar
interest of the surrounding associations. The church
of the monastery, in the wild open desert, the most
isolated in the world, with the grand, triple-headed
Mount Sinai rising above it, is dedicated to St.
Catherine ; and over the semicircular vault of the
bema in which the relics of the saint are preserved, on
the wall high up toward the left, the figure of Moses is
represented kneeling before the burning bush ; on the
right side he stands, having just received the two tables
in his hands, a light breaking forth from above, with
its rays falling upon him. All detail in these pictures
has been obscured by the smoke of the altar candles,
accumulated upon them for many centuries ; but suffi-
cient can be seen to show that the subject of the
Transfiguration fills the vault of the bema. The figure
of Christ, with his hands joined upon his breast, stands
within an oval aureole, occupying the centre, with those
of Moses and Elias, also standing and in the attitude
of benediction. On the right and left, separated from
these on each side, and within circular medallions, are
the portraits of Justinian and Theodora ; and the
composition is completed by a series of heads within

1 Neale's Holy Eastern Church, vol. i.

2 Voyage de i? Arable Petrce, Leon de Laborde.

1 76 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

circular borders, representing the apostles and the chief
functionaries of the monastery at the time of its estab-
lishment, viz. " the very saintly priest " Longinus and
Hugomenos, the name of each being inlaid by every
figure. The inscription, beginning with the invocation
of the Holy Trinity (not forgetting Mount Sinai here),
forms the base line of the whole, supported by the
busts of all the prophets of the Old Testament.

Wanting in the peculiar interest of so sacred a site,
but interesting and important in their several associa-
tions, a great part of the works which that age pro-
duced in the important cities of Thessalonica, Trebizond,
and Ravenna still remain for our admiration. In the
two first-named places there are churches dating cer-
tainly from the time of Constantine, even if not earlier,
and there are mosaics earlier than the reign of Justinian ;
but in the principal of those which remain it is evident
that the artists followed the style of the masterpieces
of Constantinople. They planned no great pictures,
nor cared for dramatic action nor historic subject, but
peopled their vast golden surfaces of cupola and wall
with single figures, each, in his own individual capacity,
taking part in some great event ; as in the dome of Sa.
Sophia at Thessalonica, where, in a double row, the
apostles with the blessed Virgin, in the early Christian
attitude of prayer, with two angels beside her, stand, as
in awe and adoration, witnessing the ascension of Christ,
below whose figure and the flying angels supporting
the vesica which surrounded it, is inlaid the text,
" Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into
heaven ?" The central figure, with the exception of
the feet, has been blotted out and covered with an
Arabic text ; and, indeed, in most places Mahomedan
paint or plaster has hidden the principal figures of
Christian iconography.

The church of St. George, a round church in the

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 177

same place, has a very different design in its cupola.
We see there the architectural background of a sanc-
tuary, with columns, round arches under pediments,
and partly closed by looped-up curtains, in front of
which stand single figures of ecclesiastics splendidly
vested, with their names above them of Saints who
died before the time of Constantine a subject of
gorgeous effect, but better suited for a wall than for a
cupola.

At Trebizond the fine churches of St. Mary and
Sa. Sophia, rich with mosaics and paintings, have been
with rare exception covered with whitewash ; but the
floor of Sa. Sophia is famous for its mosaic pavement
of the kind known as Opus Grecanicum, 1 which is
an enriched modification of the Roman Opus Alexand-
rinum, varied with slabs of sectile marble, and richly
inlaid, as on the floors of St. Mark's at Venice, St.
Lorenzo and Sa. Maria in Trastevere at Rome, Sa.
Sophia at Constantinople, and many other places, pre-
eminently here at Trebizond.

The buildings and mosaics at Ravenna are too well
known, and their story has been too well told, to need
repetition ; but the great artistic features which charac-
terise them must not be passed without a word. They
surprise us indeed by their extent and their technical
excellence ; but the qualities which at once command
our admiration are the grandeur of idea which prevailed
throughout and inspired their compositions, the sincerity
of their enthusiasm, and an architectonic sense, applying

1 The so-called Opus Grecanicum, as it is commonly found in Italy,
derives great brilliancy from its consisting of coloured marbles set in a
white ground, the white marble slabs of the pavement being cut out at a very
slight depth according to the pattern required, with marbles and sometimes
glass mosaic set in the grooves thus obtained. In this manner also screens,
walls, pulpits, and shrines were decorated in mosaic by the famous school
of the Cosmati. But Pliny, Ixxxvi. ch. 35, describes as "genus Pavimenti
Grecanici " an inlaid floor of porphyry and serpentine, which is the essen-
tial composition, viz. of purple and green, of the Opus Alexandrinum.

1 78 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

ornament and pictorial design with complete mastery to
the forms and effects of architecture. The want of variety
in the figures, which form the two long series on the walls
of S. Apollinare Nuovo, may be evident to all eyes ;
but the quiet and stately expression of those dignified
figures, following in procession with their crowns in
their hands, on one side from the old seaport town of
Classe, and on the other from the palace attributed to
Theodoric, taken all together as a mode of covering such
a wall with an appropriate sacred subject, are worthy of
all admiration. On one side male saints and martyrs
are conducted to the feet of Christ by the first martyr,
St. Stephen. 1 On the other side a procession of female
saints in a long row, each with her name above her,
approach, not, as too commonly and carelessly described,
to the adoration of the blessed Virgin, but, as they
are there depicted, following the lead of the three Magi,
who bow before the divine Child seated on her knees,
and represented in the attitude of blessing, to receive
the gifts they present a subject as old as the art of
early Roman catacombs.

The Christian Greek artists delighted in the poetry
of symbolic expression, and have so filled our minds
with it through their works, that we are apt to pass it
by as a matter of course, and to ignore the interest of
its original production. The art of their classic ances-
tors had been constantly enlivened by allusion and
emblem, but there was in it no source or motive for
such depth of sentiment and awe of expression as the
sublime realities of the Christian revelation produced
on those who had the handling of its subjects in the
forms of fine art. The mosaics of Rome and Ravenna
that are traceable to Byzantine artists, or to those
influenced by them, are rich in this mode of devotional

1 Originally so, but that figure has been lost and clumsily substituted
by an angel.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 179

expression, as in the church of SS. Cosmo and Damian
at Rome, already described, and pre-eminently at
Ravenna, among many works which are extant there.

The most remarkable and complete example of
this mode of treatment is the subject of the Transfigura-
tion in the apse of the church of S. Apollinare in
Classe (A.D. 567), where in place of the figure of Christ
stands the cross alone, richly jewelled, with the head of
Christ set as a medallion in the centre of it, and the
half figures of Moses and Elias rising from clouds on
either side. Above the cross are inlaid in capital
letters the word 'IX0T2, representing here the initial
letters of the Greek words for " Jesus Christ the Son of
God the Saviour." Beneath the cross, where the figures
of the three witnessing disciples are usually grouped,
are three sheep looking upward to the cross ; and below
them stands the patron of the church, S. Apollinare,
with his arms extended, and sheep on his right and
left, on a foreground of grass and lilies. The scheme
of the whole work is completed on the wall above the
apse by another medallion head of Christ, supported
by the symbolic figures of the evangelists, and sheep
on either side proceeding toward Him from Bethlehem
and Jerusalem, the two cities "consecrated by their
associations with His birth and death."

Totally different from these, but equally and entirely
symbolic in their treatment, are the two mosaic pictures
representing the Eucharist, one of which is in the choir
of San Vitale, where Melchisedech, supported on the
right and left by Moses and Isaiah, is seen standing
before an altar on which are two loaves and a chalice ;
and in a similar place in the church of S. Apollinare
in Classe the subject is even more complete, where the
figure of Melchisedech at the altar is supported on one
side by Abel holding in his arms a lamb, as though
presenting it before the altar, and on the other

i8o THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESS AT

by Abraham leading forward Isaac with the same
significance.

These afford a good idea of the religious poetry of
the artists of those days. What was done in the time that
Theodoric was in possession is not accurately known,
beyond that of his having sent to Rome for marble
masons, among whom mosaicists were especially in-
cluded, 1 for his palace and the Arian cathedral and bap-
tistery begun by him ; but before his reign two important
works, which are still extant, had been completed for
the Empress Galla Placidia, one known as her mauso-
leum, the other as the orthodox baptistery, both richly
and beautifully clothed with mosaics. The mausoleum
is built upon the plan of a Greek cross, with a central
dome in which are represented the starry heavens, and
a golden cross at the summit, and enriched all about
the arches and spandrels with other figures natural and
emblematic. But this chapel is most famous for that
symbolic figure of Our Lord so loved and so often
repeated by the early Christians the Good Shepherd.
He is here represented amid a rocky landscape, seated

1 Letter of King Theodoric to Agapetus, " Pnefectus Urbis " (this
letter has been commonly cited as addressed to Pope Agapetus, but there
was no pope of that name till 535, nine years after Theodoric's death)
" I am going to build a great Basilica of Hercules at Ravenna, for I wish
my age to match preceding ones in the beauty of its buildings as it does
in the happiness of the lives of my subjects. Send me, therefore, skilful
workers in Mosaic."

Cassiodorus was private secretary, "comes rerum privatarum," and
chancellor to Theodoric, who reigned as King of Italy in Ravenna from
A.D. 493 to 526. The letter quoted above is one of the king's letters
preserved by him, but the opinion about the art of mosaic from a man
of his high accomplishments may interest the reader. He writes thus,
" Send us from your city some of your most skilful marble workers, who
may join together those pieces which have been exquisitely divided, and
connecting together their exquisite veins of colour, may admirably repre-
sent the natural appearance. From art proceeds this gift which conquers
Nature. And thus the discoloured surface of the marble is woven into
the loveliest variety of pictures ; the value of the work now as always being
increased by the minute labour which has to be expended on the produc-
tion of the Beautiful." (Letters of Cassiodorus, Hodgkin, p. 147. Lon-
don, 1886.)

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 181

and with sheep around him, one of which He stoops
to caress, and with the other hand He holds a cross.
The figure is classic in the gracefulness of its attitude,
and beautiful also in the harmony of its colouring.
Indeed, whether in design, colour, or expression, it is
the most impressive representation of this lovely sub-
ject in early Christian art.

The artists at Ravenna were, however, as successful
in representing historic and dramatic subjects as the
mystic and ideal. Of that kind the two great pictures
of Justinian and Theodora, surrounded by their courtly
attendants at the consecration of the church of S.
Vitale, are well-known examples, valuable for portraiture,
costume, and historical incident. But after that time
the arts at Ravenna soon came to their close, and as the
capital of the Exarchate its glory was short-lived. At
headquarters intrigue, crime, and disaster desolated
Constantinople ; and Ravenna itself shared in the
troubles of the age, changing its masters rapidly from
the empire to the Lombards, from them to the Franks,
and at last to the see of Rome ; and little more than
two centuries after its finest works had been completed,
a shadow fell" on it, as on those that are out of sight
and out of mind, and its disregarded mosaics were
robbed with the sanction of its absent rulers.

The gloom of a dark age had settled upon Europe.
The world was at war, and gave no heed to the arts of
peace. The East was in confusion, and Rome had been
handed over to the care, civil, military, and diplomatic,
of those whose office was founded, and whose educa-
tion had trained them, for other than mundane affairs,
and the result was inevitable ruin. But the time of the
North had come, and the genius of Charlemagne was
consolidating an empire on the Rhine. As politician,
soldier, and churchman, he was the equal of the best,
and superior to them all in courage, grasp, and will.

1 82 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

He felt and acted on the truth of the adage about art
that he may have never heard, "emollit mores"; and
into no subject of all that home and foreign difficulties
forced upon him, did he act with more energy than for
the introduction of civilising arts among his turbulent
and even barbarous subjects. Fixing the northern
centre of empire at Aquis Grani (Aix la Chapelle), the
place of invaluably healing springs, the first appendage
to his palace was a cathedral. He knew from his
southern experience what art was, and he sent there for
his workmen and his artists ; but whatever their nation-
ality may have been, their art was Byzantine. He
wanted mosaic for his palace and his church ; but it
was an art that for two hundred years the Romans had
found no zest nor heart to cultivate. Time pressed, and
materials must be found ready to his hand, so Ravenna
was pillaged with licensed robbery. 1 With the written
authority of Pope Adrian the First, the tesserae were
stripped from the walls and the marbles from the pave-
ments, and the cathedral at Aix was clothed with their
stolen glories. Pictures of sacred subjects were thus
executed on its walls, and upon the cupola was dis-
played the subject of Christ enthroned with the elders
casting their crowns before Him, a fine choice of sub-
ject as the first tribute of art to religion by the first
Christian emperor of the north ; but no part of these
works remain ; and only a bad engraving preserves a
tradition of the subject of that cupola. 2

Little is known of the immediate results of this intro-
duction of the arts into Northern Germany ; but scattered
notices of its continuance come from Cologne, Lyons,

1 Letters of Pope Adrian the First are preserved in the Vatican. In
one answering the application of Charlemagne, the Pope writes thus :
" Carolo Regi musiva et marmora urbis Ravennoe, tarn in Templis quam
in Parietibus et stratis sita sicut petierat donat. " In another letter
similar words conclude, " vobis concedimus auferanda."

2 Ciampini, Vetera Man., in loco., and Barbier de Montault, Die
Mosaiken irn Miinster zu Aachen.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 183

Hildesheim, and the convent of Centula in Picardy,
where the abbot, a friend of Charlemagne, availed him-
self of the artists introduced by the emperor ; and here
and there a few relics of the art are preserved, as at
Germigny des Pres in Loiret, faint reflections of the
light that had gleamed and died away at Aix.

The only really fine work of that century (about
835-40) was one executed in the interesting church of S.
Ambrogio at Milan, in which is perpetuated by mosaic
the story of the saint having fallen asleep during the
performance of mass there, and dreaming of the death
of S. Martin of Tours, which occurred at that time.
The upper part of the composition exhibits the figure
of Christ in glory with flying figures of archangels, and
below them saints standing on either side. It was
about the same time that the first mosaic was intro-
duced at Venice, in the church of S. Margaret, long
since lost. 1

In the East all record of the arts of this age are
hidden beneath the mists of troubled earth and heaven.
Mahomedan victories prevailed far and wide, and
mosques were rising with costly magnificence ; and as
mosaic was admirably adapted for their arabesque orna-
ment, it is not surprising to hear that at the con-
clusion of peace at Constantinople, the Caliph Walid
stipulated for a contribution of a quantity of mosaic
tesserae for his mosque at Damascus ; and again, two
hundred years later, we learn that Romanus II. pre-
sented to the Caliph Abderraman glass tesserae for the

1 In a general sketch of this very wide subject, the writer trusts his
readers will perceive how impossible it would be to refer to any more
than representative examples of this art, without disturbing the course of
general interest, wearying the reader with descriptions, and producing a
result more like a catalogue than a history. He therefore somewhat un-
willingly omits reference to many examples belonging to the Christian era
in France, Germany, and Italy, and confines description to such as are
not intimately known, or possess some speciality that has not been suffi-
ciently noticed.

184 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

kibla of his mosque at Cordova. Thus the art dragged
on a faint existence beneath the shadows of a dark age.
Monastic seclusion afforded its safest retreat, where a
few quiet men in the quiet places of the earth kept up
its life ; and it was thus among the inaccessible shrines
of Mount Athos that the best artists found their home
and the safest deposit of their art's traditions.

It was about the year i ooo A.D. that the first dawn
of reviving art in Europe appeared at the court of the
successors of Charlemagne at Aix, and with it the first
hopes of civilising influences. Such was the condition
of life, even in the highest circles of the court and
nobility at that age, as the pages of painful history
have but too vividly pictured, that if there was indeed
a dawn of a more genial age, it was but a sad one, for its
sun had risen in deepest mists that would lift only after
long waiting for the day. In the time of the young
Emperor Otho the Third, his mother, the widow empress
and regent of the empire, who was a Greek, invited
from her native land men skilled in various arts, to
pick up any traditions that Charlemagne's artists had
left, and to introduce some cultivation among her rude
people. The cathedral of Hildesheim again possessed
an energetic bishop, Bernward by name, the young
emperor's tutor, who is credited by his biographer with
having added mosaics to the adornment of his church,
and as having worked at them with his own hands. 1
He also enumerates the subjects represented, but with
insufficient accuracy about their method ; but at any
rate an inference in favour of their having been executed
in true mosaic is fair, from that art being intimately
connected with those of glass making and enamelling,
about the introduction of which by those very Greeks,
and with wide ultimate effect, there is ample evidence.

1 " Musivum . . . propria industria, nullo mostrante composuit."
Taiigmar Chronicle.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 185

It was full half a century later that a similar age of
revival dawned in Italy, where the day broke more
quickly, for there was more sun to brighten it and more
aptitude in the people. It was due to the impressions
received in Constantinople by the cardinal abbot of
Monte Cassino when there on a diplomatic service
between the pope and the emperor, that on returning
to his home, the contrast of its cheerless walls with
what the buildings of the East had presented to him
called into activity the taste that these had aroused.
His biographer describes art as dead in Italy : so to
the East again the appeal was made ; and under the
abbot's spirited influence the Greeks, established at
Monte Cassino, initiated those schools of many arts to
which Italy mainly owes the education of her reviving
genius.

It was a few years later that the first mosaics were
begun in St. Mark's at Venice, of which some, with
happier fate than those at Monte Cassino, still remain
as precious reflections of the first gladdening rays of
light in that new morning of art and civilisation.

The life thus regained by art was real. For three
centuries no mosaic had been executed at Rome ; but
now the age was startled by its sudden reappearance
on the walls of one that was then, and still is, among
the grandest of its churches, Sa. Maria in Trastevere
(A.D. 1 130-43). Its fagade and the wall of its apse are
covered with elaborate works to which age only adds
to that respect and interest which their own time ac-
corded to them. The principal subject on the exterior is
that of the wise and foolish virgins, with the group of the
Infant Christ and His mother in their midst. The great
mosaic of the interior is, in spite of all the peculiarities
of its antique style, magnificent. It exhibits a scene
of celestial glory, which is commonly described as the
coronation of the blessed Virgin. Such might for mani-

i86 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

fest reasons be expected, but its own account of itself
is otherwise. At the base of the composition is the
flock of twelve sheep, much as they are seen in other
mosaics right and left of the Lamb on the mount, from
which flow the four rivers of Paradise. Above is a
single range of figures, the evident work of original
genius inspired by the traditions of the Greek school,
but with power to throw its own free life into its work,
and make it all Italian. The scene represented is
Christ seated on His throne, which is rich with drapery
and jewelry, and with figures of saints standing on
either side, St. Peter being the nearest on His left. On
the same throne is seated a female figure designed with
great grace and beauty, her features and expression
being those of youth, with her braided hair falling
behind her shoulders, so richly jewelled as to look like
a wreath of gems ; a nimbus is round her head, and
her dress is splendid with embroidery and jewels.
There is no crown on her head, nor is she bending to
receive one as in all the subjects of her coronation.
Our Lord is seated by her side holding an open book,
and instead of a posture of respect and honour, as
though crowning or enthroning His mother, He is repre-
sented in the attitude of familiar affection, embracing
her neck and laying His hand upon her opposite shoulder.
The subject is plain, but still plainer as described by
itself, for the scroll held open by both her hands and
the book held by Christ, are inlaid with parts of texts
from the Song of Solomon about the Bride and Bride-
groom, descriptive of such a scene as the artist has
here delineated, " His left hand is under my head and
His right hand doth embrace me," and, on the open
book, " Come, my chosen one, and I will place thee on
my throne," " electa " being used for " dilecta " in the
quotation, " Come, my beloved," etc., from which the
inscription is paraphrased. This great picture is just

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 187

such as an artist, designing in the completest but
simple manner compatible with the art of that time,
would have composed it if inspired by the words in
the book of the Revelation of St. John, " The marriage
of the Lamb is come, and His wife had made her-
self ready," and " Come hither, I will show thee the
bride, the Lamb's wife" (Rev. xxi. 19). This subject
was well known to art at and before that time, as illus-
trated in MS. illuminations, where Christ is seated, as
in this mosaic, on His throne with a female figure
crowned and by his side, and the meaning of the group
made clear by the inscribed words, " Jesus et Ecclesia,"
and in another case, "Jesus Christus et Ecclesia sua."

Whatever interpretation may be given to this great
mosaic, it most certainly is not that of the " Coronation
of the Virgin." That subject, represented by the blessed
Virgin being crowned by the hand of Christ as the Queen
of Heaven, had not yet been known in art. In this case
there is no crown ; but a crowned figure thus seated
would not necessarily be that of His mother, for as such
it was already known and written as " Ecclesia." The
peculiar alteration of the word " dilecta," " beloved "
(which might apply to both), into the word " electa "
suggests a special purpose, and designates the figure in
this mosaic as the representative of His " elect," that
is to say, His Church, His Bride. She is represented
in that bridal song of Holy Writ, the Song of Solomon,
as we see her here, beautiful ; and in the triumphant
language of the 45th Psalm, the same figure appears
in the glorification of God's elect, poetically personified
as " the King's daughter," and as " a Queen in a vesture
of gold wrought about with divers colours," and de-
scribed as being " brought to the King, . . . with
joy and gladness . . . and shall enter into the King's
palace." " Thy throne, O God, endureth for ever."
This grand subject of the triumph or glorification of

i88 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

the Church appears to have been the original idea and
composition, from which the splendid illustrations of
the Coronation of the Virgin, in every form of art, were
ultimately developed, as the subject itself developed in
the twelfth and subsequent centuries. 1

The introduction of the figure of Ecclesia was well
illustrated in a mosaic of the same period, viz. about
A.D. 1210, with which Pope Innocent III. adorned the
tribune of the basilica of St. Peter at Rome, and of
which Ciampini has given an engraving from a painted
copy taken at the time of the demolition of the ancient
Church. The subject of it was extensive and gave
evidence of the influence of Greek artists still at Rome,
the Saviour being represented in the Greek attitude of
benediction ; but the only purpose for which this
mosaic is referred to here is from its comprising a
figure of Ecclesia which is found in the remarkable
group of the Pope and " the Church " (as a female
crowned figure) standing on the right and left of the
symbolic Lamb, in the midst of the company of dis-
ciples, who are here as elsewhere symbolised by sheep
approaching this group from each side. The grand
female figures representing the Christian and Jewish
Churches in a mosaic of the fifth century in the church
of Santa Sabina at Rome are well known as among
the finest specimens of art that remain of that date
(A.D. 424), recalling the style of the antique in propor-
tion and design. These representatives of the two
churches are distinguished by inscriptions, and, before
the greater part of the composition to which they

1 The misstatements and misrepresentations of this mosaic as that of
the Coronation of the Virgin have been corrected by the inexorable truth
of photography. In the engravings of it the female figure is crowned
magnificently. Among others, in Mrs. Jameson's Legend of the Madonna
at page 16, where the figure is called " 1'incoronata, " she is so crowned,
evidently copied from an Italian engraving; and among Mr. Parker's
photographs of Roman mosaics in the art library at S. Kensington is
another engraving or etching where the figure is similarly misrepresented.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 189

belong was destroyed in the seventeenth century, their
attendant apostles stood above them, that of the Christian
Church " Ecclesia ex gentibus " being thus accompanied
by St. Paul, and the " Ecclesia ex circumcisione " by St.
Peter. 1

The personification of the Church as the bride of
Christ, sometimes crowned, sometimes enthroned, alone
or contrasted with the figure of the Jewish Church, and
often in connection with the subject of the crucifixion,
is common throughout early and mediaeval art ; but as
the illustrative examples of it that I would venture to
give are not in mosaic, I defer them to another place. 2

As mosaic pictures of historical subjects, distinct
from scriptural or legendary, are at this period very
rare, those which in St. Mark's at Venice occupy a
large space in the south transept are all the more
valuable, and interesting also from the story which they
illustrate. The subject of them is the consecration of
the present Church in 1085. These two pictures are
curiosities of design, without pretence of detail or pro-
portion, giving a complete idea of the interior, by the
simple scheme of an architectural section showing one
side of the choir and nave in their earliest condition,
and the insides of the half-domes of the five cupolas
with their crosses and the sky above them. But the
special interest in these pictures is the account which
they preserve of an event of the utmost importance to
the subsequent fortunes of this Church, viz. the dis-
covery (the " invention ") of the relics of St. Mark.
The first in order of the two represents the ceremony
of the consecration. The bishop is officiating at the
altar beneath a canopy of twisted shafts with golden
capitals supporting a vault of blue mosaic framed in

1 These are shown in Ciampini's engraving in his Vetera Monumenta,
in loco.

2 Essay on "The Adornment of Sacred Buildings," Part II.

190 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

gilt metal work. He is richly vested in a purple cope,
clasped on his breast with a morse of inlaid jewels ;
behind him, within a choir distinguished by a low white
screen wall, a number of bishops in various coloured
copes and of inferior clergy in white, prostrate them-
selves to the ground ; and beyond them stands the
dignified figure of Doge Vital Falier in rapt attention
and reverential attitude, followed by members of his
council, like himself bowing before the altar. He wears
a tall brown cap with jewelled bands, and a rich dress
of green with gold borders, and a cloak of gold tissue,
as his figure in the next picture shows it, lined with
fur. The nave of the church is crowded with laity, the
men grouped first, the women toward the west. But
all this was but the preparation for the great event of
the day, which cannot be better described than by
Corner, as quoted in The Stones of Venice}' But to
appreciate this it must be remembered that the original
church in which the relics of St. Mark were enshrined
was burnt down in 976 and rebuilt and reconsecrated
in 1085, an interval of above a century, when such con-
fusion existed as can alone account for the relics of St.
Mark being lost, in fact destroyed by the fire, because
it needed a miracle to restore them. Flaminio Corner 2
thus describes the scene

" After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo,
the place in which the body of the holy evangelist
rested had been altogether forgotten ; so that the Doge
Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the
venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not
only to the pious Doge but to all the citizens and
people, so that at last, moved by confidence in the
divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer
and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure,

1 Vol. ii. page 60.

2 F. Corner, Notizie Storiche delle Chiese di Venezia. 1758.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 191

which did not now depend upon any human effort. A
general fast being therefrom proclaimed and a solemn
procession being appointed for the 25th of June, while
the people assembled in the church interceded with
God in fervent prayers for the desired boon, they
beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a slight
shaking in the marbles of a pillar, near the place where
the altar of the cross is now, which, presently falling to
the earth, exposed to the view of the rejoicing people
the chest of bronze in which the body of the evangelist
was laid."

The second picture, to the right, represents what
those words describe. The doors of the nave are
thrown open, and a procession headed by the bishop
in the attitude of prayer approaches the wonder of the
day. A white marble pier has broken asunder in the
midst, and has exposed a recess in which the relics lie.
The Doge, with hands raised as in prayer, and a group
of his council follow, and behind them come the citizens,
men first then women and children, in attitudes ex-
pressive of astonishment and reverence. Such is the
foundation of the faith in the present relics of St. Mark.
The pictures are valuable also for their illustration of
the costume and manners of the day, and of the charac-
ter of the marble and gold mosaic of the architecture.

The art thus revived soon broke out into a chorus
of fine works from east to west. In the east the
interior of Coristantine's basilica of the Nativity at
Bethlehem was clothed with sacred subjects for the
Emperor Manuel Comnenus in the middle of the
twelfth century, by the mosaicist, Ephrem, those of the
choir relating to Christ's infancy, those in the nave to
the general history of His career. In the west, in
Sicily, under Norman rule, some of the finest works of
the age were produced, even to profusion, at Cefalu, at
Palermo, and in the basilica at Monreale which crowns

192 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

the valley golden with orange gardens above that city.
These mosaics are such in quantity and quality as no
description could adequately portray. They owe their
extent and richness to the devotion of two Norman
sovereigns, Roger the Second during the first half of
the twelfth century, and William the Good immediately
after him. Those at Cefalu are much ruined, but were
the most refined of them all, executed by direction of
King Roger in 1148. Those of the Capella Palatina
are second only to these, and illustrate well the art as
attained by the united Greek and native artists, of
which the numerous Greek and Latin inscriptions all
over the building give evidence.

The subjects with which the nave, transepts, and
choir of the great basilica of Monreale are covered,
exhaust the principal incidents of sacred history. At
the extreme east a colossal bust of Christ, with the
typical group of the Virgin and Child beneath it, are the
culminating objects of its long vista ; and these with
ranks of single figures covering the sanctuary and
choir, all on gold and otherwise richly ornamented
grounds throughout, produce at once a dignity and
splendour of effect unsurpassed by any building of its
date. It has the great advantage of contemporaneous
works throughout its architecture and decoration,
securing to it the repose of unity which all the
splendour of its material and variety of ornament does
not disturb. The great size of the building has also
its share in the grandeur of effect ; and the whole is
well brought together and harmonised by the sober
richness of its inlaid marble floor. It lacks only one
great feature in which its neighbour the Capella Pala-
tina at Palermo and the unrivalled St. Mark's at Venice
surpass it, namely, a vaulted and mosaicked roof, for
here it is only of open timber illuminated with colours.
Irrespective of the artistic activity this great work dis-

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 193

plays, the amount of industry alone which it represents
is wonderful ; for mosaic compared with other modes
of painting is like the stippling of a miniature. Its
chronicler states that it was the work of 150 mosaicists
during three years. Among the accessories which con-
tribute to the completeness of the effect is the royal
throne in the choir, an imposing and sumptuous work
of mosaic, of the kind subsequently perfected by the
school of the Cosmati ; and above it on the south wall
a mosaic picture of Christ crowning " Rex Guilielmus,"
the Norman " King William the Good," to whom this
great building owes its completion. Its style through-
out well represents the characteristics of its day, viz.
the transition from the trammels of Byzantine prescrip-
tion to freedom and originality.

But such freedom is not found everywhere at that
time ; there were few if any but Greeks and their
Italian pupils who practised this art, and although
they had been the safe keepers of the art's traditions,
their artists had fallen very low in its work. Venice
was then their principal resort in Italy, and even later,
for it was to Venice that the painter Tafi was sent in
1225 to obtain instruction and assistance for the work
the Florentines had commissioned him to execute in
mosaic in their baptistery. About half a century before
that time a great mosaic covered the western wall of
the cathedral of Torcello, the great cathedral of ancient
Venice, begun in the seventh century and completed in
1008, and now left desolate in that island of poetic
loneliness, with its baptistery and that little gem of
architecture, the church of Sa. Fosca, as the sole occu-
pants of that once crowded spot, where now the sigh-
ing of the wind about its reedy banks alone breaks the
silence of the lagoon.

The subjects of the Torcello mosaic are divided in
several compartments across the western wall. Of

194 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

these the two highest contain the scenes of the cruci-
fixion and the descent to Hades, the three lower ones
representing on one side Paradise, and on the other,
with more than Dantesque horror, the terrible scenes of
hell. The execution of divine punishment is here
depicted by a stream of fire meandering among the
figures below the throne till it breaks out into flames
among the condemned in hell. The horrors of the
representation are such as rather to mar than to en-
hance the enjoyment which the opposite scenes of
Paradise are intended to convey. The land of the
blessed appears as a garden, with the tree of life at its
entrance and an angel guarding the gate. Abraham
sits in the midst of it, and outside St. John the Baptist
and St. Peter offer entrance to the saved, and St. John
the Evangelist and the Virgin welcome them, their
figures being invested with all the beauty the old artist
could express.

The mosaics of Murano, where the single figure of
the blessed Virgin with the Child in her arms stands
alone, beautiful and majestic, in the apse above the altar
of its old cathedral and those of Venice, are as well known
as those of Torcello are too commonly neglected and
ignored. Together they illustrate the whole history of
contemporary art. It had shown itself in its utter de-
cadence at St. Mark's, but it was now awaking to a
higher ideal, as that wondrous Duomo exhibits it in
every phase. The mosaics of the western and central
domes and the porch best illustrate the art of this date,
from the last years of the eleventh to the end of the
twelfth century. The subject of the western cupola,
which surmounts the nave, is Pentecost, and is most
effectively expressed by the rays of the symbolic dove
descending on the heads of the twelve apostles, while
below them, round the cupola, are groups of persons
representing separately, and with their names above

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 195

them, the many nations speaking those many tongues
with which the chosen twelve had been endowed. The
pendentives below are appropriately filled with colossal
figures of the four archangels. The cupola next beyond
it, over the cross of the transepts, has the glorious sub-
ject of the general benediction of Christ at his ascen-
sion, with attendant figures grouped all round beneath,
with the olive-tree of the Mount of Olives between
each of them ; and on the pendentives supporting the
dome the four evangelists are seated with the symbolic
figures of the four rivers of Paradise pouring out the
streams of the Gospel to the four quarters of the world.

The works of this period in the porch are exceed-
ingly numerous, including in their subjects the whole
history of the book of Genesis, and of the wandering of
the Israelites in the desert, mostly of great originality
in design, but rather to be seen than to be described.

In the early years of this renaissance a fashion had
widely prevailed north and south of the Alps of lavish-
ing work and material upon great pavements. South
of the Alps those at St. Mark's and Murano and
Palermo are the earliest. North of the Alps they are
also always called mosaics ; and no doubt in greater
part they were so, with large slabs of coloured marble
helping to cover space impossible for tesserae ; but many
of them and other such works of that age have
perished ; for there was an iconoclasm in the north-west
in the middle of the twelfth century, excited by the
spiritual enthusiasm of St. Bernard of Clairvault, to
whose denunciations, mistaking with reckless imparti-
ality the elements of education in a rude age for
elements of idolatry, the loss of many precious works
are traced. One at least of them which has been en-
tirely ruined was too grand a work to be passed without
record, namely, that of the great choir of St. Remi, at
Rheims. It was covered with a marble marquetry of

196 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

real and symbolical subjects of great variety and refine-
ment, described by its chronicler as " representing an
infinity of figures as though drawn with the brush." 1
At the entrance of the choir lay a great figure of King
David playing his harp ; and beyond it numerous groups
arranged in large circles and squares, the nearest of
which had for its principal figure St. Jerome, with
prophets, evangelists, and saints around him, each dis-
tinguished by his name inlaid. The next compartment
contained figures pouring out water from their urns,
the original mode of symbolising the four rivers of
Paradise, and the dispersal of the four gospels over the
world ; and in the centre a woman riding on a dolphin
represented the earth and sea, the words " Terra" and
" Mare " being inscribed beside them. The next great
square was filled with scrolling foliage, and beyond it
another with impersonations of the four seasons ; and
by way of a pendent to the Terra and Mare was intro-
duced the figure of a man seated by a river, described
as " Orbis terrse," occupying the centre. The adjacent
compartment appears to have been a fine composition,
of which the figures representing the seven liberal arts
were the principal, and beyond them was an oblong
division enclosing large circles, in one case having
Moses seated in the centre with an angel standing on
his knee, and around him figures representing the
twelve months, the virtues, and the four points of the
compass, balanced in the other circle by the animals
representative of the constellations of the Great and
Little Bear surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac.
For the sanctuary and steps of the altar were reserved
the symbolic subjects of the sacrifice of Isaac, Jacob's
ladder, and others, the remaining parts of the floor
being inlaid with jasper and other precious marbles,

1 Berger, Histoire des grands Chemins, gives a long detailed account of
it, vide Annales Arc7uz, t vol. x. p. 6. 1850.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 197

" set as jewels are set in rings." In front of the abbot's
chair was the figure of Wisdom, " Sapientia," thrusting a
pointed staff at Idleness, and Ignorance crouched at her
feet. Such was this great pavement at Rheims, a
wonder of its kind and of its age, executed in the last
years of the eleventh century, and an irreparable loss
for our own. To the same age, if not a little earlier,
belongs the pavement in the cathedral of Novara, which
was set in black and white, not so effective artistically,
but richer in the more exclusively religious subjects and
symbolism, including those of the Lamb among the
seven candlesticks, the pelican feeding its young, the
phoenix rising from the fire, the vine and the peacock,
the dove drinking from the chalice, and much else, an in-
teresting record of the feeling and art of its day, and, with
better fortune than that at Rheims, preserved to our time.
The large pavements of mosaic character in the
early middle ages, north of the Alps, were, however, of
such a style as is not to be entirely classed with
mosaics. So many have been destroyed that it is hard
to make sure from contemporary accounts exactly what
they were ; but by reasonable inferences they were less
of true mosaic, if indeed at all so in some cases, than of
inlaid pieces on the principle of what is known as
Florentine mosaic. Of this style, but in fictile work,
there is an interesting English example of the four-
teenth century on the floor of Prior Crawden's chapel
among the old buildings of St. Etheldreda's convent at
Ely. It occupies the altar pace. The subject of it is
the Fall, and the colours of its enamelled pieces remain
in parts sufficient to indicate its original condition.
Adam and Eve, the serpent and the tree, form the old
composition, the flatly-coloured forms being aided by
incised black lines. On each side the spaces are
covered, in the same kind of fictile inlay, with figures of
lions and geometrical patterns very variously coloured.

198 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

But the attempt to include such work with mosaic
would lead to the interminable subject of " sectile " and
" tarsia," from the enamelled walls of the great mosque
at Ispahan, and of Omar at Jerusalem, to the inlaid
precious stones and marbles on the monuments of the
Taj Mahal, and of Itmud-ud-Doulah at Agra, and to
such floors as that of Siena Cathedral, where in " sectile
mosaic " of coloured marbles, great scriptural and
emblematic compositions cover the entire space of nave,
transepts, and choir, but indeed the subject would not
stop there, for such sectile work is as fine in other
material as marbles, and would range from the fine old
Roman work of "The Rape of Hylas" 1 inlaid in precious
stones, to the exquisite devices designed by young
Raphael, and executed in coloured woods in the churches
of Perugia. I venture therefore to omit all such and to
return to the works of the truer, i.e. tessellated, mosaic.

Among the favourite subjects of designs for pave-
ments were the labyrinth, the zodiac, and the calendar,
this last being usually treated much in the same way
as in MS. illuminations, with a ring of circles filled
with emblematic figures of the months engaged upon
their seasonable labours. At Aosta is a unique
example of this subject in which, with the twelve
months arranged in order all round, in the central
circle is seated on a throne a grand female figure of
" the year," plainly designated Annus, with a nimbus
round her head, and the sun and moon to the right
and left, a richly-coloured work of tessellated mosaic
of the close of the eleventh century. 2

1 Two fine examples of sectile mosaic were found in the hall or basilica
of Junius Bassus (consul, A.D. 317), one the Rape of Hylas, the other a
group of a consul or other Roman official in a chariot with mounted
attendants, etc. Vide Ciampini, Vet. Mon. Mosaic, in loco, and an
elaborate article on them and sectile mosaic generally, by Mr. Alex.
Nesbitt, Archaologia, vol. 45.

2 Annales Archaologiques, t. xvii. for 1837, in which coloured engrav-
ings of this and another mosaic in the same place are given.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 199

The labyrinth is archaeologically too large a subject
to be treated here, but in relation to mosaic it forms
quite an important feature, and ranges in every variety
of character from the inlaid floor, where for penitential
purposes its intricacies were threaded sometimes on the
feet, sometimes on the knees, and sometimes with the
fingers, as in the labyrinth engraved upon one of the
piers of the porch of the cathedral at Lucca, to others
where it was merely used as an ornamental device and
often richly coloured in marble, enamelled tiles and
mosaic in classic and Christian art, varying in style
from those on the old Roman floors of Bignor in
England, and at Caerleon in Wales, to the mediaeval
pavement inlaid in black and white under the western
tower of Ely Cathedral.

The associations of ancient and mediaeval art were
singularly brought together by these labyrinths, as
those of the Roman mosaic at Salzburg and the
Christian example at Chartres are sufficient to illus-
trate, where in each case the centres were originally
occupied by the classic fable of Theseus slaying the
Minotaur in the famous labyrinth in Crete, which
certainly in Christian art, and very probably in Pagan,
symbolised the heroism of self-devotion overcoming evil.
The passages of the Christian labyrinth were sometimes
engraved with the verses of the Miserere for repetition
by the penitents as they followed the track, and for
all others their moral was to " represent the difficult
ways of life, before arriving at celestial rest." In the
ancient basilica at Orleansville in Algeria, founded as
early as A.D. 328, the Church, " Sancta Ecclesia," is
written in mosaic in the centre of the labyrinth, as the
haven of the soul's rest, with pathways sometimes
approaching, sometimes diverging from it, as in the
waywardness of life. Every century till the close of
the fourteenth, affords examples of pavements orna-

200 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

mented with labyrinths. On the floor of the grand
Lombard church of San Michele at Pavia is a fine
one dating from the sixth century, on which also the
figures of Theseus and the Minotaur originally filled
the centre. The labyrinths, thus designed for devo-
tional purposes, were, when space allowed them, of very
large dimensions ; for instance, the early thirteenth
century example at Rheims measured 35 feet in dia-
meter, octagon in form, with projecting bastions, and
was used penitentially in place of pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, and hence called "the road to Jerusalem."
Another of the same century, but still larger, at Amiens,
measured 42 feet in diameter, having for its central
device an inlaid brass cross as the object of attainment.
The great circular labyrinth which occupied the centre
of the floor in the nave of Chartres Cathedral was of
such extent as to require an hour to trace its passages,
and hence called " La Lieue." Its paths were inlaid
white, with the Miserere engraved all along them, the
divisions and barriers being blue, and in the central
medallion the figures of Theseus and the Minotaur,
explicable in such a situation only by the attribution
of the deepest Christian symbolism, Among the latest
labyrinths is that one which forms the centre of the
pavement in encaustic tiles of the chapter - house at
Bayeux in Normandy, where the enamelled colouring
has been worn off by the persistent devotion of the
Chanoines. There is much interest in this subject
from the curious variety of devices, which, however, do
not affect mosaic, such as the labyrinth worked in
embroidery on one of the imperial robes of state at
Rome in the ninth century, 1 several engraved upon
walls, as those of Poictiers Cathedral and Lucca, and
one encrusted in lead at the west end of the cathedral

1 Graphia aiiretz urbis Roma, pp. 92 and 178. A. F. Ozanan. Also
Archceological Journal^ 1858. E. Trollope.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 201

at Sens, and the still more curious labyrinths cut in
turf in numerous places in England and Wales, for the
games of swains and lasses of old times. After the
fifteenth century, whether for religious use or ornament,
the device appears to have been discontinued, till
restored in modern times among the pleasant conceits
of ornamental gardening ; among which, in the days
of Queen Elizabeth, fancy called them Troy-town or
Julian's Bower.

But enough of pavements. In Italy the art of
mosaic was now, during the twelfth century, rapidly
developed upon walls and vaulting, principally by
artists from Siena and Florence, whence the names of
the Greek Apollonius and the Italian Cimabue and
Mino da Turrita, Duccio and Tafi, Gaddi and Giotto,
awaken associations of such interest in history, art,
and religion as, once known, haunt the memory for
life.

Their works must be seen to be understood. They
abound with much zeal and poetry, and at once engage
our sympathy and admiration by the earnestness of
feeling and the grand artistic genius they display.
Words can do but little more than chronicle their
subjects, for to embody their poetry by any other
mode of expression than their own, or to convey that
devotional sense to which they owe their inspiration is
impossible. Both modes of composition, the symbolic
and the dramatic, were revived together. The con-
templative Sienese, the practical Florentine, the ideal
Greek, infused their works with this variety of their
conceptions. The symbolism which had characterised
the mosaics of Ravenna was now consummated at
Rome over the altars of San Clemente and the apsidal
recesses of the Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore,
affording examples of a reviving art that for magnifi-
cence of effect and expressive grandeur, under the

202 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

obligations of architectural constraint, have not been
surpassed.

The ornamentation of the apse of San Clemente is
essentially symbolic. The four arms of the cross, which
form its central motive, are inlaid with white doves,
and in the centre is the figure of the Crucified of such
exceedingly small size as all but to escape observation,
as though to avoid to the utmost all dramatic represent-
ation. Enclosed, within a branch of thorn bent in the
form of a vesica, small figures of the Virgin and St.
John stand close against the lower arm of the cross,
and from its base, considerably below them, spring vine
tendrils which cover the entire vault with their graceful
curves. Numerous emblematic and other figures fill
the vacant spaces, and among them are seen the four
fathers of the Western Church seated writing. The
stream of the water of life breaks out as a river from
the foot of the cross, and on each side deer stand
and drink from it. A broad band, like a frieze at the
springing of the vault, is occupied by twelve sheep with
the symbolic Lamb in the centre of them, and on the
wall beyond it, at each end of it, are represented
the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The complete
text of the " Gloria in excelsis " surrounds the arch, and
on the wall above it is the bust of the Saviour in the
act of benediction, with figures, on each side, of St. Paul,
St. Laurence, and Isaiah on the dexter, and opposite
them St. Peter, St. Clement, and Jeremiah. With
regard to the inscriptions, it is remarkable that the two
essentially Roman martyrs are distinguished by the
Greek appellations of "agios Paulos" and "agios
Petros," the rest in Latin.

The great mosaic in a similar position in the
Lateran is a stately composition admirably combining
its purpose as a dignified architectural ornament with
the calm expression of devotional religion. It is

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 203

entirely free from dramatic effect. Its central subject
is as conventional as that of San Clemente, and even
more intently symbolic. Its central figure is a huge
cross, the consummating symbol of the Christian faith,
built up of ornamental forms like one vast jewel, with
no figure on it, but a small medallion in its centre con-
taining the subject of the baptism of Christ. From
above, the Holy Spirit as a dove sheds down rays like
streams of water falling on each side of the cross upon
the symbolic Calvary, and at its base a small building
represents the gates of Paradise with an angel guarding
it, and the tree of life above it with the Phoenix, the
symbol of immortality, seated on its branches. The
four rivers with their names written, Pison, Euphrates,
Tigris, Gion, flow forth, with groups of sheep and deer
drinking from them. The broad stream "Jordanes"
flows below, about which winged children are sailing
and playing with swans and other birds. On each side
of the cross, on a border of grass strewn with flowers,
stand calm figures of the Virgin and St. John the
Baptist in the place of honour, and beyond them on
each side three, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Francis,
and St. John Evangelist, St. Anthony, and St. Andrew,
all with raised hands turned toward the cross. Above
all this is a separate compartment of blue sky chequered
with many-coloured clouds ; and immediately above the
cross is a bust of Christ arched over by a choir of seraphs.
This grand composition is supported by a deep
band of mosaic filling up the spaces between the
windows below, and containing many saintly figures
standing with palm-trees between them. Severe
criticism would find fault with anything, but certainly
here, fine as the work is, it is liable to remark on the
displeasing adoption of various scales for the figures, as
though representing their spiritual dignity by their
physical size, by making the saints Francis and

204 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Anthony diminutive in comparison with the grander
figures around them, and worse still with that of Pope
Nicolas IV., who crouches at the feet of the Virgin.
But the bust of Christ above, frequently thus intro-
duced, and in this case with a really fine head, certainly
mars the quietude of the general proportions by its
colossal size, and by its obtrusive reality it spoils the
quiet completeness of the symbolism, to which the
whole centre of the composition is otherwise devoted.
It peeps out from behind nothing, as though it had no
place there, and the personages below are adoring not
Him but the cross. But this head has a miraculous
story, having been always regarded by the people as
representing the head of Christ Himself, which in that
place appeared to Constantine on the occasion of the
consecration of his church in 323-24. The legend
goes on to state that it had escaped seven fires unhurt,
and its removal and replacement without injury ; but
the extant order of Nicolas IV. in 1290 that it should
be placed there seems to resolve the mystery, as by the
style of the head might be expected, that it is, at least
mainly, the work of the two artists whose signatures
exist below. This mosaic has a further interest in its
preserving the names of its artists, the one who signs
the base of the mosaic of the semi-cupola being Jacobus
Toriti l pict. ; and among the figures between the win-
dows below are represented two Franciscan monks
kneeling, one without any inscription, who may there-
fore represent Toriti, whose name is on the mosaic above
him, carrying in his hand the compass and the square ;
the other, a younger monk, with the inscription " Fr.

1 There has been some confusion about this artist owing to similarity
of names. Vasari is very hazy on the subject. This Jacobus, who signed
his family name Toriti and Torriti, was a Roman. The Jacobus with
whom he has been confounded was a Florentine, his predecessor, who had
been engaged on the baptistery at Florence above half a century before.
A historian of his order had styled him from the place of his birth "Da
Turrita" hence the mistake.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 205

Jacob, de Camerino," carrying in one hand a trowel and
in the other the long pointed hammer peculiar to his art.

Of the three other great apsidal mosaics of the
thirteenth century at Rome, viz. those of .St. Peter's, St.
Paul's outside the walls, and Sa. Maria Maggiore, only
the last remains. St. Paul's was destroyed by fire, St.
Peter's by vandalism. That of Sa. Maria Maggiore,
but little affected by injury and repair, is a grand monu-
ment of Italy's first great renaissance of art and genius.
It is the work of the same artist, who either composed or
so far reconstituted the great work in the apse of the
Lateran as to have practically made it his own, and has
signed it here as there " Jacobus Torriti pictor," adding
on the opposite corner the date of this work 1295.
The design is as simple as it is grand in its architectonic
conception. In a great central medallion, occupying a
third of the semi-dome, is represented, of colossal
dimensions, Christ in the act of crowning His mother.
They sit upon a spacious and richly-ornamented throne,
relieved upon a background of the blue heavens gemmed
with stars ; a crowd of angels are below them on each
side, and beyond them figures of saints standing in
attitudes of adoration. The rest of the vault is filled,
upon a gold ground, with scrolls of foliage and birds
seated on the branches. Below it the waters of the
Jordan symbolise the separation of this troublous world
from the celestial scene above. If the drawing of the
figures may be charged with fault it is but that common
to its age, and if the colour may be criticised as strong,
it is but what the wealth of coloured marbles, metals,
and golden ornament of the sanctuary and altar beneath
had prepared for it. Torriti's art was that of an archi-
tectural mosaicist, and he was master of it.

This grand basilica had derived its original name
of Sa. Maria ad Nives from the strange circumstances
alleged to have attended the selection of the site.

206 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Nothing is too marvellous for a legend. It tells that
in the year 352 the blessed Virgin appeared simul-
taneously in dreams to the Bishop of Rome, Liberius,
and to a certain good patrician John, who desired to build
a church in her honour, and indicated to them both that
its place would be marked by a fall of snow. The
truth of these dreams was realised by the bishop, the
patrician, and their attendants rinding at the highest
point of the Esquiline Hill a patch of snow in the form
of the ground-plan of a basilica ; so the church was
built, and called after that strange revelation " ad
Nives." This legend affords the subjects of a series of
mosaics which covered the facade in the first years of
the fourteenth century, by an artist who has signed his
name above them, " Philipp. Rusuti fecit hoc opus."
A majesty of the old typical character occupies the
centre, with the Virgin standing on one side and St
John Baptist on the other, with St Peter, St Paul, and
other apostles ; and below them various picturesque
illustrations of the bishop and the good John asleep,
with the Virgin appearing to them, and other subse-
quent incidents of the fall of snow and the foundation
of the church ; but with indifference to such works,
characteristic of the last century, a new facade of heavy
arches and balconies was erected in 1741 in front of
these mosaics, destroying some and obscuring the rest
Enough, however, remains 1 to show by these works the
interesting advance this art had made.

The genius of the West had now asserted itself,
and worked clear of that Greek tutelage which it had
too long allowed. The Greek school was effete. It
had faithfully preserved the traditions of its technicality,
but its art was dead. Mosaic was one of the passions
of Italian art in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ;

1 An excellent chromo-lithograph of them is given by De Rossi,
Mosaici delU Chiesc di Roma.

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 207

and now fine works were multiplied to such a degree
as to defy description. Gaddo Gaddi, the father of a
family of artists, was a mosaicist, a friend of Cimabue
and Tafi, and a fellow -workman with Torriti and
Rusuti. His works in St. Peter's and elsewhere were
numerous and important, such as those which covered
the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral at Arezzo, but time
and accident have dealt hardly with them, leaving
scarcely any but the figures of the apostles in the
baptistery and the Coronation of the Virgin in the
cathedral of Florence.

At that time a remarkable family of artists, the
Cosmati, distinguished themselves at Rome. They
were adepts at sculpture, architecture, and in a less
degree in painting also : but most famous for the
refinement in their works of mosaic, which was rather
decorative than architectural, and devoted rather to
the ornamentation of monuments and the accessories
of buildings than to great works of pictorial design.
Among their pupils was Pietro Cavallini, who, by a
maze of hypothesis, has been associated with the
mosaics of the shrine of Edward the Confessor in
Westminster Abbey, where the work is certainly of the
Cosmati character of this age, but with which Cavallini
could have had nothing to do. 1 He was an accomplished
artist, the pride of that refined school of mosaicists and
the pupil of Giotto in painting ; but like Gaddi, he too

1 The shrine was completed in 1270. The dates of Cavallini's birth
vary in his biographies by Lanzi and Vasari ; according to the former he
was born in 1259, and would have been eleven years old at the comple-
tion of that monument. According to Vasari he was born in 1279, nine
years after that completion. The inscription on the shrine is "Petrus
duxit in actum Romanus civis." George Vertue, whose Anecdotes of
Painting were published by Horace Walpole, appears to have caught at
the name Pietro, and knowing of Cavallini as a mosaicist pupil of the
Roman Cosmati of that age and style, decided, regardless of dates, that
the Petrus Romanus civis could be no other than that distinguished artist.
Vide for this, and the equally futile idea of Cavallini having designed Queen
Eleanor's (Gothic) crosses, Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, vol. i. pp.
30-35-

208 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

has been unfortunate, for his great works, which covered
the walls of the nave and the fagade of St. Paul's at
Rome, perished in the fire which destroyed that basilica
in 1823; but in Sa. Maria in Trastevere his fine mosaic
pictures illustrating the life of the blessed Virgin still
adorn the walls of the apse.

The supplementary effect of colouring by mosaics
on the exteriors of important buildings of this age was
finely exhibited on the fagade of the cathedral at
Orvieto, where a Sienese artist, Andrea, worked for
some years ; and on that of Siena from Michele
Memmo in the fourteenth to David Ghirlandajo in the
latter part of the fifteenth century. At Rome the
fagade of St. Peter's was richly ornamented in this
manner with the great Apocalyptic scene of the com-
pany of heaven before the throne of Christ, the principal
personages of the New Testament being grouped
around Him, and the elders casting their crowns at
His feet. The great mosaics on the fronts of St. Paul's
and Sa. Maria Maggiore have been already mentioned,
and those which still decorate the front of Sa. Maria in
Trastevere. The Navicella by Giotto was one of the most
famous of this class. The original of it was over the
main entrance in the portico of St. Peter's ; but having
been removed three times, twice to outside walls and
once inside, it was entirely wrecked, and the present
copy of it, partly traditional partly from an old cartoon,
represents the old composition, but is of entirely modern
work. The subject of it is St. Peter walking on the
waves, a scene composed with great animation and
telling the story effectively ; but whether Giotto ever
worked upon the mosaic is not known ; his part would
rather have been in the design than in the time-con-
suming speciality of setting the tesserae, which in this
case, according to Vasari, was mainly the work of his
pupil, Pietro Cavallini. The question may probably be

vi CHRISTIAN MOSAIC 209

asked and answered in the same way about Cimabue,
who, in the first years of the fourteenth century, was
associated with the mosaicists at work in the cathedral
of Pisa, where Tura and subsequently Vicino were the
principal artists ; but no actual mosaic work is attributed
to Cimabue's own hand.

After the twelfth century mosaic appears rarely
north of the Alps. The architects and artists spent all
their enthusiasm and their means in developing their
new ideal of pointed architecture, and what mosaic they
used was their own version of it, in the sectile glass of
their windows and pavements of enamelled tiles. South
of the Alps, although the development of wall painting
in tempera and fresco had won the public taste and
had dethroned the supremacy of mosaic, this latter art
was still cultivated, and many names of the leading
painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are
associated with it, such as Lippi, Baldovinetti, Ghir-
landajo, Botticelli, sometimes for the repair of old
works and sometimes on originals. Their work was
what would be expected from such men most refined ;
but the architectural sense that gave the older mosaics
their great character in monumental art had lost its
power and had no place in them. A contrary ideal had
crossed its path, the ideal of individuality. The frescoes
and wall paintings of that age were works of individual
excellence, conceived in relation to themselves alone,
and beautiful in themselves, but without relation to the
walls they covered. The painter did not think of them ;
but mosaic had been an art devised for them, and had
become part of them in fact as much as in idea, uniting
the arts of painter and architect, and participating in the
grandeur of their broad harmony. Baldovinetti, the
Florentine painter, was the most earnest to maintain
the honour of the art ; and Peselli, whose name is well
known among the interesting annals of the early

210 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY vi

Florentine school of painting, ornamented with mosaic,
in 1416, Orcagna's lovely shrine in the church of Or'
San Michele. Even Raphael was pressed into the
service, but the works executed from his designs in
Sa. Maria del Popolo at Rome are not worthy of him.
They represent illusive openings in the roof, through
which the figures of the Almighty and of the cycle of
the planets are seen from below. 1 The architectonic
ideal was no more.

The real centre of activity in the art was now St.
Mark's at Venice, where the old traditions were main-
tained to the utmost in their conflict with the inde-
pendent school of painting, then rapidly advancing
upon them. In 1430 Michele Giamboni adorned the
walls of the chapel of the Mascoli in St. Mark's with
illustrations of the life of the blessed Virgin, designed
and wrought by him ; a work of considerable extent,
and inspired with a charming simplicity and earnest-
ness. But by the middle of the following century that
phase of monumental art was over ; and Titian, Tin-
toretto, Pordenone, and their followers, drew cartoons
and painted pictures, and skilled mosaicists copied
them upon walls and vaulting without regard for what
surrounded them, or the faintest attention to congruity
of style or effect ; and thus the shadows gathered
round this grand old art, as its day drew rapidly to
its close. Another art and another ideal had risen
to their zenith, and the last honours of monumental
mosaic were lost amid the glare and flourish of an
indifferent age.

1 They were designed by Raphael for the Chigi Chapel in that church,
and executed by a Venetian, Luca or Luigi della Pace, who dates his work
1516. Raphael and the banker Agost. Chigi died in the same month
of 1520, and the chapel was unfinished at that date (C. and C., vol. ii.,
pp. 252 and 337). The whole subject is fully discussed in the Life of
Raphael, by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii., pp. 337-4 and notes '> and
in the Critical Account of Drawings by Michael Angela and Raphael, by
Mr. T. C. Robinson. Oxford, 1870, pp. 265-69.

ESSAY VII

THE ART AND THE ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING

ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL

WHEN Pliny wrote these words of commendation
about the use of glass for artistic purposes " nee
est alia nunc materia sequatior, aut etiam picturae ac-
commodatior " (" nothing adapts itself more pleasantly
to the art of the painter than glass"), it was in very
general use, and the choice specimens of it were highly
prized among those graceful works that adorned the
luxury of life. He saw it artistically in many forms
brought to perfection, but the most effective of them all
was unknown to him ; and it was not till among the
darkest days of a succeeding age that the art of glass
painting for translucent pictorial effect came into use.
That it was actually invented in those ill-recorded days
of the middle ages cannot be affirmed ; for like all
other arts it had come of the growth of opportunities ;
and until the amount and price of the material made it
available, the ancient use of it sufficed only to suggest
that which not till centuries later became possible, viz.
the employment of opaque enamel to define ornamental
design upon the colours of glass used transparently.
Its development, as we now know it, was due to the
requirements and tastes of conventual life in the middle
ages.

212 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

If such use of glass was practised to any extent
in classical times, it is at least unrecorded. A mode of
painting with the materials of glass upon glass, which is
in fact enamelling, had indeed been common for many
centuries B.C., but that was mostly if not exclusively for
opaque effects visible rather upon than through the sur-
faces. Such were those pictures upon circular plates of
glass which Suetonius describes as ornamenting the
walls of Horace's bedroom, and a fair illustration of
what such paintings may have been is afforded by a
circular plaque discovered early in last century in the
cemetery of St. Agnes at Rome, and figured among
Buonarrotti's elaborate illustrations of ancient glass. 1
It is a work of painting with and upon glass of the first
or second century A.D., and a short description of it is
well worth giving here. It formed the foot of a large
glass vase or cup, such as was given as a prize to a
victor at the public games. The ground of it was blue,
and within an arabesque border there was a group of
two reclining figures ; one of them was that of a young
woman with children and picturesque accessories about
her, her dress was silver, her hair of a light chestnut
colour, the arabesques and cornucopia being gold ; the
male figure, personating a river deity, was of gold, and
its drapery silver striped with purple, the water from a
vase beneath his arm was sea green ; the fruit carried
by one of the children in the folds of its tunic were
coloured red and gold, and those in the cornucopia were
all of their natural colours, the winged children above
them and the crown of flowers carried by one of them
were gold and crimson. A small relic of a similar kind
of painting was found at Cumae in 1 8 1 9 ; it was a panel
of vitreous paste, and the subject painted on it was the
prow of a ship lying near a pier with a lighthouse upon
it, the anchor and a trident being the only accessories.

1 Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antic hi di vetro, 1716.

viz ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 213

Another treatment of a similar subject on a glass
vessel l shows the pier with round arches, the ship being
moored in front of the lighthouse, and round the cover
a red circle was drawn bordered with fillets of gold and
gold spots, surrounded by a garland of flowers painted
in red and gold. Such effective illustrations of figure
subjects painted in various colours upon glass could not
fail to have become general, as imitations of marbles
and alabaster were, among the glass plaques commonly
used for ornament, inlaid upon walls, but only a few
smaller examples have been found. Among relics of
similar art of about A.D. 200, a remarkable disk was
found at Cologne in 1866, covered with gold illumina-
tion of sacred subjects with many colours introduced.
Among them was one of Daniel clothed in a tunic of
crimson and gold, with lions on each side and trees
rising up behind coloured emerald green. In the sub-
ject of the three figures in the fiery furnace the flames
are painted red. The water round the monster, from
whose mouth Jonah is emerging, is coloured blue ; and
other subjects such as the Nativity, Isaac, and the
paralytic carrying his bed, have backgrounds of emerald
coloured trees. The enamelled colours are opaque, and
the effects entirely upon the surface. 2 Other examples
might be adduced, but these may suffice to show how
glass was painted in its earliest days.

The representation of ornament and pictorial
designs by gilding alone, which became common at
Rome in and after the second century (A.D.) was a form
of art that was developed with very great beauty of
effect. It was an art followed by the Alexandrian,
Greek, and Roman artists, and is seen in the utmost
refinement in two basins found at Canosa, and now in

1 Campana Collection, Rome.

2 Illustrated Catalogue, Slade Collection, by Mr. Alex. Nesbitt, 1871,
page 50. For old Christian glass with occasional colour introduced, -vide
Diet. Christ. Antiq., vol. i., page 731 and note.

214 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

the British Museum, on which the gold design consists
of delicate conventional foliage, and flowers springing
from a central rosette, and enclosed in a rich border
worthy of Greek art of the finest period. The effect is
produced by engraving upon thin gold attached to the
glass, and protected by another coat above it, a system
which subsequently came into common use upon the
feet of vases, and on plaques enclosing portraits and
groups of figures, emblems, and inscriptions, both Pagan
and Christian, during the first four centuries A.D. A
remarkable specimen of this work is upon a vase, for-
merly in Mr. Horace Walpole's collection, representing
in one part Cupid and Psyche in a cypress grove, with
children playing about them, on another part of which
is a draped bust within a wreathed vine branch. On
Jewish and early Christian glass in this style elaborate
subjects are represented, repeating in miniature those of
the catacombs.

The method of painting with glass fused into and
upon glass was an art of great antiquity, and is seen
in the combination of opaque and transparent
ornament found in Phoenician beads and gems, and
on Egyptian bottles and small amphorae decorated
with bands of various design, such as chevrons and
palmated leaf-like patterns in a great variety of colours.
Many of these are of high antiquity ; for instance, there
is a small turquoise blue bottle in the Egyptian collec-
tion of the British Museum, of which the handle is
ornamented with lines of black, white, and yellow on
the blue ground, a ring of gold colour round its edge,
and on the side a small yellow branch with the hiero-
glyph of Thothmes the Third in the same colour, i.e.
B.C. 1600. Among the ruins of Nimrond many relics
of coloured glass were found, and as some evidence of
their date, there was found with them a vessel of dull
white glass bearing the name of Sargon, who reigned

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 215

B.C. 722. A very ancient mode of painting with the
materials of glass was also that of fusing vitreous
enamels on blocks of cement or terra-cotta and on tiles,
of which fine examples are illustrated in the works of
Botta, Layard, and Place from Nineveh and Korsa-
bad, among which are figures of men and animals, and
numerous ornamental devices variously coloured, and
used as architectural enrichments inlaid upon walls.
In Egypt this had been from early times a favourite
mode of ornament. In Phoenicia and Egypt coloured
glass with surface ornament of many patterns was
equally famous, and in both those countries the first
element of glass painting by multiplying its colours
had in remote times been brought to such perfection
that gems, precious stones, and marbles were suc-
cessfully imitated, and objects thus falsified in glass
were regarded as jewels and called by their names.
Such was the emerald sceptre of Sesostris, the great
table of a single emerald found in the pyramid of Cheops,
and the column in the temple of Hercules at Tyre.
Sidon also was celebrated for its art of imitative jewelry
of many colours, especially for its jasper and emerald,
and for coloured ornaments moulded in relief. Egypt
had excelled in the imitation of ruby, emerald, jasper,
turquoise, and lapis lazuli, and from Alexandria and
later Rome came many of those colours, besides por-
phyry and onyx, agate, sard, and sapphire. Imitative
obsidian was also made at Rome, where Pliny describes
statuettes of Augustus as " vitri obsidiani." The
imitative murrhine, of which the original material was
of fabulous value among the dilettanti of Rome, 1 was
made at Thebes, if the authority of Arrian is to be
trusted, " vasa vitrea et murrhina in urbe Diospoli
elaborata ; " and at Alexandria, on the authority of
Pliny, " fit et album et murrhinum imitatum." Its

1 W. King, Precious Stones, 1865, and Antique Gems, 1860.

216 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

imitation was, with the exception of that of pure rock
crystal, the most costly of all glass, and, if truly repre-
sented by the few specimens that remain, it affords a
rich effect of wavy streaks of indigo, purple, green, and
white, blending into each other with beautiful opalescence.
One of the most effective representations of pic-
torial design in ancient glass was that of cameo relief,
such as the Portland and Aldjo vases, the small blue
amphora in the museum at Naples, and other known
specimens. The subject on the first of these is the
meeting of Peleus and Thetis, with other figures among
the rocks and trees of Mount Pelion. The Neapolitan
vase has also a cameo surface of blue ornamented with
elaborate subjects in white relief, the principal of which
are groups of children in a vineyard plucking and
treading the grapes and playing on musical instruments,
very gracefully designed. This had long been a
favourite style of work in glass, and we find glass copies
of fine cameo gems in many colours to have been worn
at Athens in the palmiest days of its arts. 1 At Rome
in the time of the empire the use of glass for coloured
ornament became universal, and walls, ceilings, and
friezes were inlaid with painted panels of it, and
figures and pictures in relief, as in the theatre of
Scaurus, the baths of Agrippa, and in private houses, as
in that of Horace mentioned above, and the famous
house of Firmus, the rich merchant and petty tyrant
of the time of Aurelian, which is described by his
biographer, Vopiscus, as encrusted with " vitreae quadra-
turae " (glass pictures) ; and as Statius describes that of
Claudius Etruscus, " effulgent camerae vario fastigia
vitro." Ceilings in his time were usually painted and
enriched with ornamental medallions, cameos, and
panels of figure subjects, and these " were brilliant with
coloured glass."

1 Boekh, Corp. inscrip., n. 150.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 217

Such are a few well-known examples selected as
sufficient at least to indicate the method of using
coloured glass for ornament and painting with glass
upon glass among the nations of antiquity, but it will
be noticed throughout that there is neither relic nor
record of actual glass painting depending on translu-
cency for its effect. Of the artists themselves and their
monograms many are known, but not upon glass
assignable to a time earlier than the close of the Roman
republic. Four of the best known of them were
Sidonians, and the names of most of them were Greek,
such as Alexandros and Ennion, whose name is stamped
on glass found on the site of the ancient Panticape,
near Kertch on the Bosphorus, and like other artists
he added " eirouei " (he made it) to his name. Ariston
and Neon are two others who sign themselves as
Sidonians ; and Eirenaios of Sidon, whose name is
signed on an amber-coloured seal, and his date is indi-
cated by a blue medallion apparently taken from an
intaglio gem of the Emperor Caligula. Artas of Sidon
is a name well known by his bilingual stamps of various
colours in Greek and Latin, to which he commonly
adds in Greek that " he made this " ; as also Nicocles,
who designates himself of Sparta ; and Dorus the
Rhodian. It may not, however, be a matter of certainty
whether these were the signatures of the artists or of
merely the makers of the glass, but it is probable that,
as was the case in the Christian middle ages, the maker
and the artist were often the same, for glass was not
then used as now for the commonest purposes of life, but
when employed as an art manufacture its works were
individual productions, and were as much or more
valued for their coloured and gold ornamentation than
for their material or form ; so when found stamped
"Ariston of Sidon made this," or " Eirenaios did it," it
is fair to infer generally that we have the artist's mark.

2i 8 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

It is in vain that we search for positive information
of translucent glass painting till the tenth or eleventh
century A.D. Many theoretical conclusions about the
origin of it have been drawn ; as by Winckelmann, whose
idea is a very possible one, that the mosaics in glass
tesserae and sectile marble marquetry, of walls and
floors, suggested similar designs in windows ; another
German antiquary supposes its derivation from the
curtains and carpets used before the introduction of
glass in windows, the figures and patterns of their
embroidery having suggested the same on glass ;
another advocate for the early use of glass painting
in classical times conceives that when Martial wrote,
" Sed rus est mihi magnus in fenestra," he might have
had a window painted like a landscape. But this
is properly explained by Mazois in his Palace of
ScauruS) describing the method of closing and de-
corating windows before the use of glass, where he
adds that the Romans usually " closed their lowest
windows with iron grills, and those of the floors above
were ornamented with cases full of plants and flowers,
which gave to each room a pleasant and gardenesque
effect (' quelque chose de gai et de champetre ')." The
employment of glass in windows, although quite com-
monly used in other ways, appears not to have be-
come by any means rapidly universal, if we may judge
by the employment of transparent alabaster in the win-
dows of the south aisle of the cathedral of Torcello,
early in the eleventh century, and at San Miniato at
Florence, at a time when glass was practically com-
mon and glass mosaic universal. Many quotations
are made which go no farther than to prove the use
of coloured glass, and possibly of a mosaic pattern, as
in the small square panes set in the pierced slabs of
marble which formed the windows of Sa. Sophia at
Constantinople, and as Prudentius, of the fourth and

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 219

early fifth century, describes the large coloured win-
dows in the first church of St. Paul at Rome. Ciam-
pini states among the acts of the Emperor Honorius
(A.D. 400) that in rebuilding the church of Sa. Agnese
he decorated it with richly-coloured glass. The church
built by St. Patient at Lyons, A.D. 450, is described by
S. Apollinaris as having windows decorated " versi-
coloribus figuris" and " sapphiratos lapillos." So too
St. Fortunatus, Bishop of Poictiers, at the end of the
sixth century, wrote of the effect of coloured glass in
the interior of the church of Notre Dame, built by
Childebert ; and Anastasius, the librarian at Rome, in
his Life of Leo III., A.D. 795, writes of the enrichments
of the basilica of St. John Lateran by that builder and
art-loving Pope " Fenestras de absida ex vitro diversis
coloribus conclusit." St. Philibertae, the founder of
the abbey of Jumieges, about A.D. 655, introduced
glass into the windows there ; but these are only
modestly described as pleasant to read by, "Lumen
optabile tribuens legentibus," which suggests the
greenish and otherwise imperfectly white glass of
earlier times to have been the kind introduced into
England by the workers in glass brought from France
by St. Benedict Biscop in the latter part of the
seventh century, and St. Wilfrid for his churches,
described by Bede, at Hexham, York, and Ripon.

At last, in the middle of the ninth century, we
come upon a definite statement of a window filled with
a picture mosaic of transparent glass, which appears to
me the earliest notice known. Gregorius, in his History of
Mediaeval Rome, produces a passage from the pontificals,
recording the restoration of the church of Sa. Maria in
Trastevere at Rome by Pope Benedict VIII. in 855.
It was on the site of the first church that had been
built by Pope Callixtus. The windows are there
described as ornamented with coloured design of

220 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

transparent glass mosaic, " Fenestras vero vitreis
coloribus, et pictura musivi decoravit." It would
have been hard to believe that in the studied beauty
of such a building as that, and of another still more
magnificent viz. the basilica of St. Paul that the
windows described as being of glass of many colours
could have been a mere network of confusion without
device ; but that they would have represented, in
transparent glass, the ornamental designs already com-
mon upon the architecture, walls, and pavement. In
that quotation we have, therefore, the evidence con-
firmatory of so natural a deduction.

This method of ornamenting windows was at that
time adopted in the Mahomedan buildings in the East.
The glass was inlaid in a diaper pattern on the outer
side of a framework of plaster, the inner side of which
was level with the interior wall, and was protected
outside by an open reticulation of tiles. The glass
was very thin, the depth of colouring not necessarily
depending on its thickness. The deepest ruby is
hardly ever more than an eighth of an inch thick
in Gothic glass, strengthened by being spread on a
basis of pure white. The oriental glass was simply
the ruby without the white. So too were the other
colours. That thin glass was set in frames of which
the openings showed many patterns, some being geo-
metrical and some having the form of plants and
flowers growing from a vase, which became a common
subject in oriental wall mosaic. In the more ancient or
in the wealthier mosques this framework was of pierced
marble, in others it was of plaster ; and the glass was
cemented to the back of the framework with colours
arranged according to the carved or moulded device.

The only other case that I can discover of this
style of windows, and use of glass in the Christian
art of Western Europe, is in the history of the con-

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 221

vent of Monte Cassino. Its historian Leo, recording
the rebuilding of the church of that convent by the
Abbot Desiderius between the years 1050 and 1071,
describes the windows in the nave, the sanctuary, and
the aisles, and states that the artists were obtained
from Constantinople, who were expert in the art of
glass and mosaic. The windows of the nave and
sanctuary he describes as of glass, set in lead, and
strengthened with iron bars ; but those in the aisles
on each side were worked in plaster with patterns,
equally beautifully as the others. 1 These last were
precisely of the same kind as the oriental windows
I have just described. The whole account of that
great convent of Monte Cassino is a most interest-
ing record, going into great variety of detail, for
the antiquary and lover of old art invaluable. It
may have been that in the earlier examples to which
I referred viz. those of Sa. Agnese of the fifth
century and of Pope Leo III. of the eighth cen-
tury, and those of the basilica of St. Paul outside
Rome the construction and design may have been
such as those about which there remains no doubt
at Monte Cassino and in the church of Sa. Maria
in Trastevere, but the accounts of them are not de-
finitely so. The " versicoloribus figuris " (i.e. variously
coloured patterns] in the windows of St. Patient's
Church at Lyons, A.D. 450, can hardly have been
other than of transparent glass mosaic ; and, if so,
they are the earliest recorded, but those of the
Trastevere at Rome are the earliest plainly described
as " pictura musivi" A.D. S55. 2

1 " Quse vero in lateribus utriusque porticus sunt gypseas quidem sed
eque pulcras effecit."

2 In the small square reticulation of the pierced windows, A.D. 538,
of Sa. Sophia, Constantinople, " tenui pariete fenestellis vitreis pleno,"
and in those described by Gregory of Tours, A.D. 525, " fenestras ex
more habens quse vitro tignis incluso clauduntur " may have possibly been
of this kind also, but coloured glass is in neither case certain.

222 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

That painting figures and subjects on glass was
continued to be practised at Constantinople might
be naturally inferred from its common use quite
early in the days of the Roman Empire ; but the
question is whether the art of painting such subjects
on transparent glass, as it began to show itself in
Europe about A.D. 1000, originated at that head-
quarter of art traditions, Constantinople, or where?
The story of the portrait of the Emperor Constantine
the Seventh, sent by him in the year 949 to the Caliph
Abd-ur-rahmon, 1 and stated to have been executed
upon coloured glass, is a description that does not
settle the question, being equally applicable to the
old opaque glass system or to a cameo, or even of
etched gold, which was often used on a coloured
ground. Indeed, the invention of glass painting as
an art which began to be applied to windows is not
easily timed and placed. A learned antiquary 2 claims
that honour for his city, Limoges ; but though some-
thing may be said for it, nothing can be proved to
to that effect. Filiasi, in his curiosities of mediaeval
commerce, 3 states that artificers in glass were sent
from Constantinople to France in A.D. 687, and these
were, in all probability, artists and not merely manu-
facturers of glass, which was well known at Limoges
before that date, as St. Ouen, describing the entry
of St. Eloi into that city, about A.D. 650, adds that
a number of persons got into the church of St.
Sulpice by breaking through two large glass windows
near the entrance. An independent testimony as to
the early use of glass by the French is also afforded
by the monk Theophilus, who wrote that " Franci
in hoc opus peritissimi," and " quidquid in fenestra-
rum preciosa verietate diliget Francia ; " but no place

1 Vitreous art, Manchester Exhibition, Augs. Franks.

2 The Abbe Texier, Peinture siir verre en Limousin.

commercio.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 223

is specified. Certainly Limoges, as an ancient city
of Roman foundation and preserving the traditions
of Roman arts, may have been early a centre of this
art and of trade in it, as by the latter part of the
twelfth century it had established its fame for it and
the associated art of enamel ; but long before that
date both the arts of enamelling and glass painting
had been successfully established in Lorraine and the
Rhenish provinces of Germany.

The often-quoted passage from the records of the
Abbey of St. Benignus at Dijon describes the figure
of St. Paschasia, as painted in a glass window of the
church, which was rebuilt there A.D. 1001. The anna-
list, writing in 1052, mentions this window with
admiration, as existing in his time, and known as
an ancient one. His words are, " Antiquitus facta,
et usque ad nostra perdurans tempora eleganti per-
monstrabat pictura ; " but how far this antiquity may
reach beyond, if beyond at all, the rebuilding of that
church, he does not state. That abbey had been
much favoured by Charles le Chauve (who died in
A.D. 877), and the previous church had been rebuilt
in his time. It is also known that that king was a
great patron of " glaziers," under which name glass
painters were included at that time, by his having
granted, at the Abbey of St. Amand, to two glaziers,
Regenulf and Balderic, in A.D. 863, two houses "en
jouissance commune avec 1'abbaye." If that win-
dow of St. Paschasia was really so " antiquitus facta "
as to have been brought from that first church, it
certainly would be the first painted window on re-
cord ; but the window no more exists, and nothing
can be more definitely known about it. At any rate
its date would not be later than the earliest years of
the eleventh century.

This was precisely the time when the famous St.

224 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Bernwald, bishop of Hildesheim, in northern Germany,
at the end of the tenth century, and fifty or sixty years
later the Cardinal Abbot Deiderius, at Monte Cassino,
in Southern Italy, established their schools of art, which
spread their influence far and wide among the deepest
shadows of the middle ages. A century or more before
that date an impulse had been given to the arts by the
works of Charlemagne ; but the times were too disturbed
for any artistic influence to be long maintained after
his death. About the year 977 a more peaceful era
was begun, in the days of Otho II., who had married in
972 a Greek princess, Theophania, daughter of the
Byzantine emperor Romaniis the Second ; and through
her interest many artists were invited from Constan-
tinople. Otho died early, leaving his infant son to the
care of the empress, whose chaplain, Bernward, became
bishop of Hildesheim, and died there in 1021. He
was a man thoroughly imbued with the love of .art,
working with his own hands at the completion of his
cathedral, and establishing a school with many native
pupils under the Byzantine artists then living there.
The eight cathedrals established by Charlemagne in
that part of his empire became, as Gibbon writes of
them, "the first schools and cities of that savage land,
and the religion and humanity of the children atoned in
some degree for the massacre of the parents." Hildes-
heim was one of these ; and Cologne, subsequently the
residence of the empress, became the next centre
whence the cultivation of fine art was developed in
northern Europe. Enamelling was a favourite art
there ; and the names of two enamel painters, Gilbertus
of Cologne and Nicholas of Verdun, are preserved from
those early times.

Glass painting was an art nearly allied to enamel-
ling from the similarity of the materials and apparatus,
and frequently pursued by the same persons, and it is

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 225

to that part of Germany, Lorraine, Alsace, and the
neighbouring Rhine provinces that we may look with
some confidence, if not for its actual origin, at least for
the earliest development of that form of it which was
developed in the middle ages. At Neiiviller, on the
lower Rhine, is a relic of perhaps the oldest existing
painted window. The original church was built there
in 741, and the present church has attached to it what
appears to be a part of that more ancient building, in
which is a small window painted with the figure of St.
Thomas Martyr. The ground colour of it is ruby, and
within a border of conventional foliage the half-length
figure is draped with a blue cloak fastened at the neck
with a double brooch, and round the head is a white
rayed nimbus with the name of the saint above. The
design is of extreme Byzantine style. 1

At the Benedictine abbey of Tegernsee, in Bavaria,
have been preserved letters written between the years
982 and 1000, and among them one from the abbot
relating to the death of the Empress Theophania (A.D.
999), and desiring to institute an annual memorial of
her. It is recorded in the annals of that abbey that
glass works were established there in the year 1003,
and the records exist of many commissions for painted
windows having been received there, to be supplied to
distant places, with the directions as to the subjects to
be delineated in them. 2 This establishment appears to
have lasted for a great length of time, for the name of
Eberhardt as one of its glass painters is preserved there
in a document of the thirteenth century, relating to the
amount paid to him by Duke Albert of Austria. The
monk Theophilus, from whom the earliest account of
glass painting is obtained, lived, if not at the time,
certainly very shortly after the death of the Empress

1 Lasterie, Peinture sur verre, Appendix.

2 Baron de Schauenberg, Peinture sur verre. Societe literaire de
Strasburg. 1865.

226 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Theophania. His proper name appears to have been
Riidiger, or latinised Rugerus, that of Theophilus being
his name assumed as a monk. He was not a Greek,
but by the adoption of that name he exhibited his
Greek sympathies, and his writings bear witness to
Byzantine influence. The first mediaeval writer who
mentions his work, Diversarum Artium Sckedula, states
that he received it from a monastery in Germany, and
the principal and completest copies of it appear to
have been traced to that country. 1 In a thirteenth-
century MS. copy of it found at Cambridge, and now
in the British Museum, it is implied that the author
was a Lombard, as the work begins with these words,
" Sic incipit Tractatus Lombardicus qualiter tempe-
rantur colores ad depingendum," for which it may
be supposed some evidence existed at that time
(nearly two centuries after his death), but which
is now lost. A claim has been made for that abbey
of Tergernsee as that at which he lived ; 2 and putting
all the strings of the story together, there appear to be
some fair reasons for that inference. He was deeply
versed in all the arts then practised by the Greeks, on
which account such a man had special claims to be re-
ceived among those artists who had been invited to the
court of Theophania, if not from Constantinople, at least
from among the pupils of the Schola Greca at Rome, or
from the north of Italy, where works under Greek artists
were at that time attracting attention. The change of
the Empress's residence to Cologne, the works going on
at Heidelberg, Bamberg, and in other parts of Germany,
and finally her death, may be supposed to have
scattered the original company of artists, and in some
way the abbey of Tergernsee was beholden to her, as
shown by the abbot's letter referred to above ; and the

1 Hendrie's Theophilus % Introduction.

2 Baron Schauenberg : a lecture delivered to the Societe literaire at
Strasburg, 1865.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 227

establishment of glass painters there was evidently one
of leading importance, which the records of its wide
employment testify. This Rugerus or Riidiger, whose
artistic education may have been among the Byzantine
artists engaged in Lombardy, and whence his title
Lombardicus, but whose literary works have been
mainly traced to Germany, is believed to have retired
some time after the Empress's death to the quiet seclu-
sion of that abbey, and there to have written his
famous work, which is one that could only have been
produced by an artist of great practical experience, and
embracing detailed instruction on painting in general,
carving and moulding ivory, mosaic, glass painting, art
metal work, enamelling, organ -building, etc. ; and he
wrote as others of his time and after him have done
under a sense of the sacredness of art employed in the
service of religion, begging for " the prayers of those of
his readers who have profited by him ... as he wrote
not for human praise nor for temporal recompense, but
to glorify God by helping and advancing men."

Whence then can we trace the origin of the art as
Theophilus teaches it, and as it is still practised in our
own days ? The completeness of his instructions im-
plies the knowledge of an art then in full practice, but
whence did he get it ? Among the artists at Con-
stantinople there is no record of its use. In Rome and
in Italy it was not at all generally practised till cen-
turies later, although Heraclius, who lived at Rome, whose
work is specially designated as de coloribus et artibus
Romanorum, and who is believed by sufficient collateral
evidence to have lived in the earliest years of the
eleventh century, wrote of glass painting in terms
similar to those of Theophilus. The employment of
coloured glass in windows, and the mosaic designs used
in them were in his time very common throughout the
East and in Italy, but not glass painting as he de-

228 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

scribes it ; nor has it left even a silhouette of its exist-
ence in the East. In France and in Germany the
exigencies of climate encouraged a far more general use
of glass, and the Byzantine or semi-Greek artists from
Rome, who from the days of Charlemagne worked
there, had brought with them to the more northern
countries such a knowledge of the kindred arts of
enamelling, mosaic, and wall painting as would be
almost involuntarily transferred to the broad surfaces
of the glass windows then but lately come into use,
and certainly suggested by them.

By all the positive and negative evidence that can
be found, it appears that glass painting began about
that time, and not improbably making its first essays
from previous examples of painting on glass with some
distemper medium. It is impossible to say at what
place that art originated. From the similarity of the
instructions given for it by Heraclius at Rome, and
Theophilus in Germany, writing about half a century
later, the probability of a common origin is inevitably
suggested, and that one only place was Constantinople.
The first elements of the art may very possibly have
been realised there where glass was used in every
artistic form, and have been sufficiently matured to
have provided both those writers with their knowledge.
Constantinople may even still earlier have received it
from late Roman artists but all is theory the fact
being that it never rose at either of the great centres to
a position of practical importance. If it had ever lived
in either of them, practically it died ; preserved only in
the written secrets of medical and artistic manuscripts.
That part of Europe, where Charlemagne gave the first
and Theophania the second impulse to the cultivation
of the arts, appears to have been the site of its practical
origin in the form subsequently developed, as we now
know it. It was evidently well understood and prac-

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 229

tised by Theophilus, and therefore initiated before his
time, but the completeness of it had been attained at
the time he wrote by the perfecting of the enameller's
materials and processes applied to the burning-in the
design upon the surface of the glass. The artists for
whom Charlemagne had sent were by his special order
restricted to such as could be provided from within the
limits of his own empire, i.e. from Rome and Lom-
bardy for in Germany there were few if any ; but
even if from Rome, they were half Byzantine ; and it
is a plain fact that those artists who worked at his
"chapel" at Aix have left no record of this art, nor did
they practise it there, though glass was common to them
in their use of mosaic. It was in their time that the
great ecclesiastical establishments in Germany were
founded, and the arts, freeing themselves from either
Roman or Byzantine influences, became nationalised in
them. Those artists cannot have failed to leave their
pupils and their influence ; and within the limit of a
century and a half between their great patron's death
and the arrival of their successors at the court of Theo-
phania that art appears to have had its north European
birth ; and from those men, then and there by all the
facts that reasonable inference allows, Theophilus, Pres-
byter et Monac/ius, German by birth or German by
adoption, but Greek by education, learnt his art, ob-
tained his experience, and subsequently wrote .his
treatise at the close of the eleventh century in his
retirement at Tegernsee.

The art spread widely and rapidly, as it is known
by the records or remains of it at distant places in
Germany, France, and England. Still Lorraine and
the Rhenish provinces, as the fountain-head of all such
arts, north of the Alps, held their own, and it was
thence that the Abbot Suger sent A.D. 1147 for the
artists in enamel to complete the enrichment of his

230 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

cathedral of St. Denis, near Paris. The extent to
which glass painting had reached by his time is illus-
trated by the statement that his windows "are the
works of skilled masters from various nations." In
Suger's own account of the administration of his abbey
he describes the windows as inlaid with sapphires,
which reminds one of the habit in very ancient days of
calling glass objects by the names of the jewels they
imitated ; and he states that the treasury of his abbey
was opened to the glass painters. With regard to the
use of valuable materials in the production of glass we
may remember what Pliny wrote about the finest glass
of the East that it was made with rock crystal ; and,
nearer to our own time, that the same process was
used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in
the best glass-houses of Venice j 1 but Suger's record
is very positive about it, as he writes " vitri vestiti, 2
et saphirorum materiae ; . . . materiam saphirorum
locupletem administravit" The use of rock crystal
in glass making is at once understood from that crystal
being the purest natural form of silica, the funda-
mental material of glass ; and the use of sapphires
is simply explained on reference to the directions of
Theophilus, where in his twelfth chapter he directs how
the deep blue glass was to be made which forms the
characteristic ground and diapers of the early windows
of that time, and of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
generally as at Canterbury, Chartres, Cologne, etc., which
he describes as being made from " saphireum " pro-
duced from tesserae of " pagan mosaics " the " saphiri
Greci pounded between two porphyry slabs," which
melted down and spread and fused upon a sheet of

1 King, Precious Stones, p. 345.

2 "Vitri vestiti," coated glass ; i.e. a sheet of white glass with another of
sapphire or ruby fused together. Ruby glass was made in this manner
throughout the middle ages, and in modern times other colours are so
treated for effects of abrasion.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 231

white glass formed " tables of sapphire very precious,"
" and useful in windows ;" not that all blue glass was
made out of the tesserae of despoiled mosaics, for
similar tesserae and other objects of the same colour
were at that time commonly used in the East and at
Constantinople, whence his technical traditions had
come, and where the secrets of the craft were preserved
from the treasury of antiquity. Those cubes of blue
glass which Theophilus describes as saphiri Greci would
have ranked as gems in Suger's collection, and were
without doubt the reputed sapphires used by his glass
painters.

Such was the novel and startling development of
fine art at that time that the splendour-loving abbot
found himself the object of severest criticism. He had
been for long associated with royalty, as the favourite
of Louis le Gros, and at his death the regent for the
young Louis VII. ; his tastes had been trained to the
standard of all that their courts and wealth could pro-
duce, and as Abbot of St. Denis it was but consistent
with such an education to lavish all that the arts of his
time could produce to complete his abbey church. But
this burst of artistic splendour brought him under
the lash of the great Cistercian St. Bernard, Abbot of
Clairvaux, who remonstrated with severity worthy of
his order, launching at him a quotation from Persius,
" Say, O high priests, what place has gold in the sanctu-
ary ? " and " But I say, tell me, O ye poor, what worth
has gold in the holy place ? your church glitters with
wealth upon its walls, but it is barren to the poor ;
. . . He has covered his stones with gold, and has left
his children naked ! " Such words and sentiments
with all their worth and weight, were the expressions,
and not impossibly the exaggerated expressions of the
great leader of a religious order whose practice was
regulated upon the severest of self-imposed poverty ;

232 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

for the special characteristic of such institutions as the
Abbey of St. Denis was, even to a fault, the ministry
and doles of charity, and attendance on the sick poor.
On that very ground, therefore, such denunciations as
those of the great St. Bernard have been ignored or
contradicted by the enthusiasm of all generations of
men, whose impulse repudiated such limits, and who, in
the spirit of that ancient wisdom which had grouped as
three Graces, the true, the beautiful, and the good, have
through all time expressed their devotion by offering
their best ; that best being the most beautiful they could
find, their spontaneous, most natural, and truest sacrifice.
Such men as have covered their temple walls with
gold have not been commonly such as left their breth-
ren naked. Even the Cistercians soon yielded to the
inevitable impulse ; and dissatisfied with that beauti-
ful grisaille of silvery white glass which was due to
their influence, and adopted far and wide in the thir-
teenth century, soon yielded to the common craving for
colour ; and in their windows were painted, contrary to
all his orders, the figure of their own St. Bernard, and
panels, pictured with all the incidents of his life ; and
we who in England can grieve over the ruins of the
Cistercian Tintern, have at least in them the fairest
architectural example of what the beauty-loving genius of
their Order could produce ; and in the eastern windows
of Lichfield Cathedral we see the consummation at
which their art of glass painting could arrive, in the glass
brought there from the desecrated Cistercian convent
of Herckenrode. Such works were interdicted when in
the first days of their piety their convent was estab-
lished in the twelfth century, for in their cartularies are
preserved these severe injunctions of their founder,
" Let the glass of their windows be white, without
pictures or crosses, ... let not sculptures and paint-
ings be made in any of our churches or monasteries ;

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 233

we interdict them, because while attention is drawn to
them, the use of profitable meditation, and the discipline
of religious gravity is apt to be neglected"; 1 but the
experience of life and human infirmity appears to have
taught them, as it has taught others, that fine art
inspired by sacred motive is most useful, not only to
teach the ignorant, but to fill the void of vacant
minds.

Thus began the career of that art which every-
where followed in close companionship with pointed
architecture from east to west, developing its styles side
by side with it, assimilating the best of its crisp and
graceful ornament, and combining more than any other
of the associated arts with the beauty of architectural
effect. Those styles were as much marked by special
technicalities as by their variety of artistic composi-
tion. The glass painter used no colours, but taking
the various tints and hues produced by the glass-
founder, he painted upon them in monochrome,
producing by the simple process of a few dark
lines a perfect clearness of design, that left the
transparency of the glass unimpeded, glowing like
a sheet of jewelry. This was pre-eminently the
case in the earliest style ; for then the medallions in
which the figure subjects were designed were so
crowded, or the figures themselves so small, that at the
most moderate distance the whole window resolved
itself into a display of jewels ; as though the object of
the artist had been less to illustrate a story than to
glorify the sacred place by the splendour of its illumina-
tion. After a while this system was modified by im-
provement in the art of drawing, when single and
grouped figures became more prominent, and archi-
tectural accessions and canopies took such a place in
the design as to suggest that the architect himself had

1 Annaks Cistercienses. Lyons, 1642.

234 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

drawn them. If we may judge from the works of
Wilars de Honecort, 1 an architect of the I3th century,
who has left among his drawings scores of studies of
figures, draperies, and proportion, the figures in the
windows may sometimes have been the work of the
architect also ; for in those days he was apt to be more
than in name alone the chief artist. Arts were less
subdivided in those times than they are now, so the
glass painter often embraced in his work the whole art
of his profession from the first preparation of the glass
to the painting of the finished window ; as in the case
of the Alsatian glass painter Jean de Kirkheim, who
had executed great works in Strasburg Cathedral
(about A.D. 1340), where he is described as "Vitreator
factor vitrorum, glasseator, Pictor."

The interest of all such work done in England in
those times has been grievously impaired by the whole-
sale destruction of records, such as foreign abbeys and
other great establishments have been more fortunate in
preserving, unless some at least of our own still lie un-
disturbed beneath the sacred dust of the record office.
The violence of their destruction was, however, some-
times equalled by the ingenuity of their preservation,
as of those of Newstead Abbey which lay for centuries
unsuspected in the brass ball of its lectern, now stand-
ing in the choir of Southwell Minster. A story has
indeed been preserved in the cartularies of the Abbey of
Braine near Soissons of a painted window having been
sent in 1153 for the east end of that abbey by Matilda
of Boulogne, Queen of King Stephen of England (or
by her order previous to her death in 1152) to Agnes
de Baudemont (" sa parente "), foundress of that abbey ;
but no more is known of it ; and whether the glass
were of English work or not is not recorded. The

1 Facsimile of the Sketchbook of Vilars de Honecort. London.
Willis. 1859.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 235

church is now a ruin. There is no doubt that much
glass used in England at that time was foreign, as for
instance the windows for Rivaulx Abbey, which were
sent from France in 1 140. It is not known where the
contemporary windows were painted which William of
Malmesbury describes, with great admiration, in the choir
of Canterbury Cathedral, windows which must have
perished in the fire which destroyed the whole of the
choir in the year 1 174, nearly 30 years after his death ;
but the employment of a French architect, William of
Sens (at that time famous for its glass), to rebuild that
choir, significantly refers the association of art works in
that place to a foreign origin. The earliest recorded
commission for a painted window in England appears
to have been in the early part of the thirteenth century,
quoted by Horace Walpole, vol. i. p. 7, to the effect of
an order by Henry III. for the whitewashing of the
Chapel of St. John in the Tower, and for making three
glass windows in which were to be represented " a little
Virgin Mary holding the child, and the Trinity, and St.
John the Apostle." Very much painting was ordered
by the King as decorative work in rooms and chapels
at Woodstock, at Westminster, and Winchester, etc.,
which suggests considerable artistic activity ; but there
is no reference that can clear up the nationality of the
artists.

The early glass painters in all countries appear
to have rarely signed their works. The few names
that I have already mentioned are preserved not in
windows but in archives ; the earliest known window
signature quoted by general writers being that of
Clement of Chartres (vitrearius Carnotensis) in a
window of the cathedral at Rouen (about A.D. 1270).
It is not till 1303 that we come upon the name of an
English glass painter which is preserved in the history
of Exeter Cathedral, where for 140 feet of painted

236 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

glass and other such work in the windows there, "Walter
the glazier" was paid various sums. By reasonable
inference, work may be attributed to native artists in
the thirteenth century from the architectural style of
the designs, and by the character of drawing in known
English illuminated MSS. ; but by the end of that
century and beginning of the fourteenth there can be
no doubt about English glass painters ; for a few years
after Walter of Exeter, the name of Robert of York is
preserved, as having been paid in 1338 at the rate of
twelve pence per foot for his painted glass. 1 He
painted the great west window of York Cathedral. At
the close of that century (A.D. 1391) the name of
another glass painter is found among the records of
Exeter Cathedral, Robert Lyen, whose name rather
suggests a foreign origin ; but as he is designated
" glazier and citizen of Exeter," he may be accepted as
an Englishman ; his work was the present east window,
which is composed partly of his own work and partly
the adaptation of the former window ; and happily for
himself and for the good of his work he was paid by
yearly salary, and thus trusted to do his best as every
good artist ought to be ; and paid extra on some
detail in the use of old and new glass, and so much
weekly for an assistant. 2

The high estimation of men of this craft in former
times has been signalised by the special protection and
liberties granted to them ; as by an edict of Constan-
tine A.D. 337 the "vitrarii and diatritarii " (artificers
and artists in glass and glass cutting) were associated
with architects and painters in exemptions from all
public taxes and imposts. In the same manner the
Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian relieved the
artists in glass and mosaic from all public charges.

1 Weale's Quarterly Papers, vol. i.

2 Vide Britton's History of Exeter Cathedral.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 237

At Venice the master glaziers of Murano were honoured
by high social privileges, admitting them to inter-
marriage with the Venetian nobility, and to the rank
of nobles with their titles inscribed in their Libro d'oro.
The island was governed by magistrates independent
of Venice, and by a special code of laws, one of which
assigned the penalty of death to any one who disclosed
the secrets of the craft. Both Charles V. and Charles
VI. of France granted special liberties to glass painters
" peintres vitriers," that they should be free of all taxes
and rates " garde de porte, guet, arriere guet, et autres
subventions quelconques," A.D. 1390. In Lorraine the
" gentilshommes verriers " received the right of nobility
from the Dukes of Lorraine in the fifteenth century.
In Normandy they possessed local privileges of freedom
and social position as "gentilshommes artistes verriers
Normans." Early in the fifteenth century Rene, King
of Anjou, was a patron of this art, and himself an adept
at it ; as described among the incidents of his varied
life, when made prisoner in 1430 by the Count Vaude-
mont, he was imprisoned at Dijon, where he relieved
his tedious hours by glass painting, some of his subjects
being portraits of Philippe le Bon and himself, and orna-
mental designs principally the emblazonment of coats
of arms, which were subsequently presented to the
chapel of the Chartreuse and preserved there. Of all
window inscriptions, York Cathedral contains one of
the most remarkable, showing the social position of the
glass painter of the day, when the knighted mayor ot
that city, Sir John Pety, was also the glass painter of
its cathedral, and of other churches in his city. The
opportunity has been taken of making one of his works
in the cathedral a memorial to him, by the introduction
of a kneeling figure of himself and an inscription be-
neath it to this effect, " Orate pro" anim& Johannis Pety,
glasiarii et Majoris Ebor : qui obiit I2th Nov. 1508."

238 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

In no country has the destruction of works of this
frail art been at once so wanton and lamentable as in
Italy. Those works were numerous and beautiful,
some of them from the hands of Italy's greatest masters,
but they have disappeared no one knows how, or left to
perish from indifference. There was no excuse, as
elsewhere, of religious fanaticism or political revolution ;
for art was a common ground of peace, and even the
ferocity of Italian passion paused before it, and ven-
geance found no pleasure in its destruction. It was an
art that had not at once captivated the national taste,
as elsewhere in Christendom. With the general use of
mosaic and wall painting, rude as they were between
the decline and revival of the fifth and twelfth centuries,
Italian interiors needed no artifice of coloured light to
make them pleasant, or to alter the beauty of their
natural sunshine. Coloured glass was used as an ele-
ment of wealth and splendour in a few grand basilicas,
but such was the native indifference to it that when
Venice, its chief emporium for glass, developed its
works, glass painting made no part, and coloured win-
dow glass but an insignificant part among its industries.
The Venetians were pre-eminently colourists, but in
their use of glass it is remarkable that throughout
Venetian territory their windows are, with rare excep-
tions, white. Like pointed architecture, glass painting
was in Italy an imported art, and its earliest known
works bear such marks of northern relationship that
the rich jewelry of the windows of San Francesco
d'Assisi would have graced with equal consistency the
choirs and chapels of Canterbury or Chartres. The
effect of a few fragments of classic art in the Campo
Santo at Pisa upon Niccola Pisano is well known. It
marked the revival of true art in Italy : and so too
with other arts, the works and styles of their northern
neighbours, which, on entirely independent principles,

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 239

and with a genius specially its own, had grown up
and developed before and during his life (1207-78),
sufficed to suggest to the appreciative Italian sense the
artistic expression of a prevailing and popular idea.
So glass painting was accepted and flourished. The
literary notices of it are numerous, occurring in local
histories, and in biographies, often where least expected.
They abound in archives of ancient establishments,
recording the names of the artists, the patrons, the
subjects, and often the contract of price and time
allowed.

Among the memorials of Florence there is preserved
an account of a convent outside the Porta a Pinti, form-
erly occupied by a community of the order of the
Gesuati. It had been known by the name of S. Giusto
alle mura> from its having been built against the walls
of the city, and was thus exposed to the ravages of the
siege in 1529, when it was entirely ruined. The
monks had established themselves therein 1383, and
the tenor of their occupations suggests a pleasant picture
among the episodes of conventual life. They were
famous for their ingenuity in various arts, " in opere di
mano eccellenti," and among them pre-eminently for
glass painting. Their workroom is described as having
a good light on the second floor, and beside it they
had their distillery for scents and medicines, and for
the preparation of colours. Their prior prepared with
his own hands the ultramarine for Pietro Perugino for
the frescoes which he painted on the walls of the con-
vent ; and for Michael Angelo, upon his undertaking
the frescoes on the vaulting of the Sistine Chapel in
the Vatican. 1 They produced also all manner of plea-
sant things " for the convenience and comforts of life,"

1 Among the Buonarotti archives at Florence occurs the following
letter from Michael Angelo to the prior of the Gesuati at Florence :

" FRATE JACOPO I, being about to cause to be painted certain things
here, or to paint them, it occurs to me to let you know that I have need

240 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

which Lastri 1 describes as " the best and finest that
could be imagined ;" but although occupied by the
special rule of their order in numerous avocations,
including those already mentioned, and embroidery,
architecture both civil and military, and engineering,
they were more especially known as " Frati dipintori di
vetri da finestre" (Brethren painters of glass for win-
dows), and for their works at Florence, Perugia, Arezzo,
Pisa, and elsewhere, some of the leading artists of the
day furnished them with designs, among whom were Fr.
Granacci, a pupil of Ghirlandajo, and Pietro Perugino.
Other conventual establishments of Florence had also
their glass painters of great eminence at that time, and
among them one Fra Bernardino di Stefano of Santa
Maria Novella, who is called in the necrology of the
convent " Magister fenestraram vitrearum optimus," the
best of glass painters, who painted the great circular
window (still in its place) of the fagade of the cathedral
at Florence, from the designs of Ghiberti, and two
others in the clerestory of the nave, from designs by
the same hand.

That art had by this time attained a place of high
consideration ; indeed before the end of the fourteenth
century it had won the national taste throughout
northern and central Italy ; but like pointed architec-
ture, it rarely penetrated the south. Siena and Pisa
had their schools of this art ; and in the former place
occurs one of the few known window signatures of
Italian glass painters of the fourteenth century, viz.,
that of " Jacopo Castelli," an artist of Siena, in a win-
dow of the church of S. Francesco at Pisa in 1390.

of a certain quantity of beautiful blues, and if you can serve me through
your brethren here with the quantity which you have, of fine quality and
at a just price, before taking it I will pay you here or there as you prefer.
Yours, MICHELAGNIOLO Sculptor, Rome.

"May 13, 1508."

1 Uosservatore Fiorentino.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 241

Of the school of Pisa many artists names have been
preserved, among whom are the two who, about the
year 1460, filled with their painted glass the arcade on
two sides of the Campo Santo, for the preservation of
the frescoes there from the action of the sea breezes, by
name B- da Scarperia and Leonardo, a Florentine.
Among others of that school was one B. Pollini, a Sar-
dinian by birth, whose fame is preserved in the annals of
the convent of Santa Caterina, as a great glass painter,
" fenestras vitreas operabatur optime," but as a man
also of such accomplishments as would have well quali-
fied him for a fellowship in the graceful society of the
Oxford College of All Souls in the palmy days of past
generations, for he is described in the same annals as
" a man highly esteemed, pure in mind, refined in
manners, and charming in conversation ; he sang well,
he wrote beautifully, and was master of his art." l He
died about 1340.

This art had its Beato Angelico in the person of a
young German artist, afterwards known as Fra Beato
Giacomo d'Ulma, the son of a merchant at Ulm, whose
education in mechanical arts had trained his hand for
the neat technicality of glass painting, to which the
taste and aptitude of his youth had drawn him. Being
impelled by strong religious fervour to visit the tomb
of the apostles at Rome, he arrived there at the age of
twenty-five in 1432 ; but his means failing for want of
employment, he entered the military service of King
Alphonso at Naples. This mode of life, however,
proved most distasteful to him, and after four years he
travelled homeward, stopping at Bologna, where he
entered the order of Frati Predicatori of the convent of
S. Domenico ; and there he spent a devoted life, suc-
ceeding, as, his biographer says, "some other saintly
men have done, in making the pursuit of art a means

1 Michele, Memorie dei Pittori Domenicani, v., p. 350, text and note.

242 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

toward the perfection of religious life." Here he
resumed his favourite art, and after a long life left
many important works, of which the best known are
the great windows in the church of S. Petronio, exe-
cuted with the assistance of his favourite pupils Frati
Ambrogino and Anastasio, in his adopted city Bologna.
A very different man from this saintly German
was the Frenchman from Verdun, whose story has been
well told by Vasari, under the name of Guglielmo di
Marcilla. The occasion of his coming to Italy was the
building at the Vatican for Pope Julius II. by Bra-
mante, which that pope required to be decorated with
painted glass, for which Raphael had furnished the de-
signs, and having heard great accounts of a Frenchman
of the name of Claude, he invited him to Rome. 1
Guglielmo was a friend of this Claude, and so accom-
plished in all the technicality of his art that Claude
persuaded him to accompany him. Guglielmo had
entered the Dominican order, not like the Beato Gia-
como for religious reasons, but to escape the secular
courts of justice, with which he was threatened for an
unfortunate affair in which he had been accidentally
implicated. When this trouble had blown over, so far
as he was concerned, he yielded to Claude's persuasions,
and throwing up his conventual obligations he went to
Rome. Not long after their arrival, Claude died of

1 These windows were destroyed at the siege of Rome by the Conne-
table de Bourbon in 1527, to make bullets of the lead in which the glass
was set. The loss of them is the more to be regretted because the
account of them that they were not only executed under the direction of
Raphael, but from his designs, is probably true. The direction of all
decorative art at the Vatican was consigned to him by Julius II., and to
such as Raphael whose art was universal, and nothing too great or too
small for it, designs for glass painting would have been but a slight addi-
tion to the list. He designed for tapestry as of those of Hampton Court,
for carving and inlaid woodwork as in the fine tarsiatura of the church of
the Casinensi at Perugia, for mosaic as in the church of Santa Maria del
Popolo at Rome, as an architect at the Vatican, and a sculptor in the
figure of Jonah in the Chigi chapel, which is by his hand. His only re-
corded design for glass is thus unhappily lost.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 243

fever, leaving his responsibilities to his companion, who
from deficiency of artistic education was thrown into
much difficulty. He had the wisdom, however, to
place himself at once under tuition, and applying all
he learned to his own special art, he attained such
eminence, that his works have been allowed by universal
judgment to be the masterpieces of that art in Italy.
Marchese in his lives of Dominican artists confirms
this opinion, for when writing of a certain Fra Barto-
lomeo of Perugia (who was elected Superior of the
Dominican convent there in 1413), as the greatest of
native Italian glass painters, after a description of one
special work by him in the church of San Domenico,
he says of it that " such were its merits in size, compo-
sition, and colour, as to yield to none in Italy save only
those in Arezzo by Giuglielmo di Marcillat."

The stages of progress in this art had been much
the same north and south of the Alps ; the character
of the advance from the thirteenth to the fourteenth
century having been from exclusive conventionalism to
Nature, from the fourteenth to the fifteenth that of
improvement in the higher qualities of design, and in
the following century by the introduction of the use of
coloured glass enamels, affording to the glass painter
as varied a palette as the painter in oil. Guglielmo
adopted this system completely. His ambition was to
rival in glass all the efforts of the picture and wall
painter ; and such was his success that Vasari writes
in admiration, especially of his works at Cortona and
Arezzo, that " one would say that they were composed
of living figures and not of coloured and transparent
glass, but in truth marvellous pictures." Whether such
elaboration was the proper province of so frail a material
as glass was a question that these works soon settled
in his mind, for he threw up the art and turned fresco
painter.

244 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

It is remarkable how much the success of this art
in Italy was due to northern influence. Notwith-
standing its popularity and the eminence in it of many
native artists, the invigoration of its styles was greatly
due to the infusion of new blood from beyond the Alps.
Its best materials were imported ; as Vasari says, the
best glass for it came from Germany, France, and
England, and the best smalti, i.e. coloured enamels,
were German. With rare exception, the artists who
left the greatest mark upon their age were foreign, or
the Italian pupils of foreign masters ; as the Beato
Giacomo from Ulm and the school which he established
at Bologna, and Claude and Guglielmo from France,
and Pastorino, the pupil of the latter, who executed the
great window of the facade of Siena Cathedral from the
design attributed to Perino del Vaga (1548-49). At
Venice and Treviso a German monk of the minor order
of Franciscans, who was known as the Frater Teutonicus,
seems to have been the leading spirit of his art in all
that neighbourhood early in the fourteenth century. His
works became the models of the art, and the copies of
them are described as having been carried out in due
respect to him, "pictse ad modum Teutonicum ;"
numerous works elsewhere are attributed to another
foreigner, Luca d'Ollanda, an ideal name, that through-
out Italy covers a multitude from Germany and the
north.

Baldinucci, in his Life of Lorenzo Ghiberti, and giving
an account of the windows in the cathedral of Florence,
writes that Ghiberti'was not only one of the greatest
of Italian sculptors, but " being curious in everything
appertaining to the arts, he turned his attention to the
noble work of that kind of painting which is called the
mosaic of coloured glass." Ghiberti, not satisfied with
the Italian glass and its painters, having heard of a
Florentine who had begun his education as a glass

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 245

painter in the convent of the Gesuati at Florence, and
had perfected his art at Lubec, represented the case to
the council of the Operai. In Lastri's Osservatore
Florentine is given the text of a document drawn up
by this council of artificers in 1436, resolving that this
accomplished glass painter should be invited to Florence
to paint the windows " in Sa. Maria del Fiore ; that he
should be brought with all his family without cost, and
be protected from all harm and loss, that he might
work in security, and that his art might reflect honour
on his native Florence." Ghiberti designed the win-
dows, and Livi da Gambasso painted them " in his
German manner" The window representing the corona-
tion of the Virgin was also painted by him from the
design of Donatello.

The grand ruins which add the poetry of regret to
the natural beauty of Scotch scenery must once have
possessed windows glowing with this art. Two years
before the eminent glass painter, just mentioned, Livi da
Gambasso came to Florence, in reply to the invitation
dated in 1436, he was at work in Scotland. Among
the same archives is preserved a letter dated August
26, 1434, addressed to him in Scotland, pressing him
to come to Florence. It is there recorded as a " Letter
written to the master glass painter Gambassi, then in
Scotland, and who made works in glass of various
kinds, and was held to be the best glass painter in the
world." That such an artist should have been engaged
there implies no ordinary estimation of that art in
Scotland, nor would an artist of such eminence have
attended to any but invitations from important persons
and for important works. But all have perished, and
the record of them is lost. 1

1 The writer on this subject in the Ency. Brit., vol. x. p. 670, Mr.
Heath Wilson, himself a Scotchman, thus concludes his notice, "It is
now vain to express the feeling with which Scotch people must regret the
destruction of the works of this excellent artist in Holyrood Chapel." The

246 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

The colour-loving Spaniards had of old been suc-
cessful in their production of artistic glass, in which, in
the time of the Roman empire, they had been acknow-
ledged to have rivalled the works at Rome. In Chris-
tian times, with the introduction of pointed architecture,
they revived the art in its wider form of ornamental
windows, but neither so early, nor with the help of
designs by their more distinguished native artists, as
was the case in Italy. The names of numerous Spanish
glass painters have been preserved, but among those
who followed that art in Spain so many have foreign
designations, or by their names are so evidently of
northern origin, such as Mercier, Ulrich, Arnao de
Flandre, Albert and Nicolas de Holanda, Karl de Bruga,
etc., as to show how Spain, no less than Italy, had
availed itself of the genius of the north.

The glass in its cathedrals are as pure as can be
found in Europe ; but the detail of its history is not so
easily obtained as elsewhere. Toledo had been famous for
its painted glass as early as the thirteenth century ; and
from the recorded names of its artists, there appears
to have been a continuous succession of native and
Flemish glass painters there from the beginning of the
fifteenth to that of the eighteenth century ; indeed the
art had become such a complete speciality there that
the chapter of the cathedral established a school of it
in 1542, with the provision for a continuous professor-
ship. The windows in that cathedral are very numerous,
as might be supposed in so great a building of five
aisles, besides their projected chapels ; the glass, which

best relics of old Scotch glass are heraldic, of which several exist in the
chapel of St. M. Magdalene, Cowgate, Edinburgh, of about A.D. 1556,
and a few others elsewhere, as in Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire, dated
"Alex. Seton, Lord Fyvie, 1599." In the Stoball Chapel, Cargill, near
Perth, some scraps of very rich colours are preserved in the windows. A
small portion of coloured glass was found at Melrose Abbey in 1 742, vide
Proceedings Soc. Antiq.^ ii. 33, and others from Dunblane Cathedral and
Dunfermline Abbey.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 247

is generally of high class, was painted by both native
and Flemish artists ; but here, at any rate, Spain holds
her own, the finest window being the work of a
Spaniard, Gonzalo de Cordova (1510-13). The
greatest loss of what by all accounts appear to have
been the finest works in Spain was at Burgos, where all
the glass of the cathedral was destroyed by an explo-
sion in the Castle in 1813. Near it a Carthusian
convent, known as " la Cartuja," illustrates the constant
reference to Flanders for glass, whence it was obtained
complete for insertion into its windows. It is still in
the chapel, but is not of the highest class. The most
eminent glass painter in Spain appears to have been
Micer Cristobal, who is designated as " Aleman " (i 504),
but whether he was German, as this would imply, or
French, is not certain, the designation Alengon being
also associated with his name. His works are in the
cathedral of Seville ; but at Avila, Barcelona, and
Leon, no less than at Seville and Toledo, and at
Oviedo, where the two wheel windows of the transepts
are famous works, Spanish artists took their honourable
share ; the last who was eminent among them being
Sanchez Martinez, who was appointed professor of the
school of glass painters at Toledo in 1713, where he
wrote a book upon his art, and dedicated it to the
chapter of the cathedral. 1

It would be tedious to attempt any adequate
account of the great works of this art in France, Ger-
many, Holland, and Belgium. Their masterpieces are
too numerous to be recorded here, or to find a place
for their worthy description. The special features of
every date and style in France, from the early windows

1 For notes about this art in various parts of Spain, written with much
artistic appreciation, vide O'Shea's Spain and Portugal. There is great
want of a history of this art in Spain. S. Martinez's book might have
been very valuable ; but, after diligent inquiry through the best sources,
I am unable to find any account of its publication.

248 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

of Bourges and Chartres to the latest by Jean Cousin
and Pinaigrier, are too well known to need further
reference.

The cause of its decline was the same here as else-
where. The enamellers of Limoges had so developed
the production of colours for their art, that being also
glass painters, they introduced a system which became
universally popular, not only in France, but wherever
the art was followed. The ruby, the sapphire, the
emerald, the jasper, and other grand and simple colours
had been known by very ancient tradition ; and chem-
istry had done but little to effect any changes in the
art during the first four centuries of its development.
The warm tint that served as early as the thirteenth
century, if not earlier, for flesh, and the yellow stain
from silver, were among the few mediaeval additions to
the old list ; but at the beginning of the sixteenth
century a revolution overthrew the ancient practice, and
in place of the grand old-fashioned colours, white glass
came into use to be painted upon with enamels, as in
oil or water colour ; and new technicalities introduced
in the previous century now became universal, such as
the abrasion of colour on one side of the pane and
enamelling it with various colours on the other, and so
forth, till glass painting changed its function, and
produced cabinet pictures, landscape transparencies,
miniatures, and copies of the works of great masters in
oil and fresco, as when Bernard Palissy, whose greatest
fame had been as a discoverer in the art of coloured
pottery, painted on glass copies of Raphael's history of
Cupid and Psyche for the family of Montmorency at
Ecouen.

In the Netherlands the advance of chemical know-
ledge had equally prepared the way, as at Limoges, for
its application to the colouring of glass : and this style
of the art developed greatly in the time of Charles V.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 249

and under the administration of Marguerite d'Autriche,
who greatly patronised the glass painters. Among the
greatest works thus executed were those in the cathedral
of St. Gudule at Brussels, where Jan Haeck and Bernard
von Orley, an artist of considerable merit also as an oil
painter, carried out this system with great effect, but
exhibiting the utter loss of that luminous colour that
had been the glory of days then gone by.

In Germany, from the earliest appearance of the
art in Europe to its decline, it had continued a national
favourite, and its most 'famous artists have left their
influence upon its compositions ; but they are not
always easily identified with their works for want of
signatures. Aldegrever, a Westphalian by birth, began
his early art experiences in France by designs for glass
painting. His signature is on some fine glass in the
choir of the church at Conches ; but he soon discon-
tinued this class of work, and entered the school of
engravers under Albert Durer at Nuremberg. Of
Albert Durer himself there is no doubt about his in-
fluence on this art, but no works can with certainty be
assigned to him ; the only ones with any probability of
truth being those on the north side of the nave of the
cathedral at Cologne, that are associated with his name.
His biographer describes him as " the founder of an im-
proved school of more correct perspective and archi-
tecture, and for sacred subjects, particularly for painted
glass ;" and, indeed, as he worked in so many arts, it is
fairly possible that this may have been one of them ;
especially as it is known from entries in his diary that
glass painters were among his intimate friends, where for
instance, in the year 1521, he has written "presented
to Master Aert, the glass painter, a copy of the life of
Our Lady ; " and in another place " I presented two
of my great works to Kcenig, the glass painter." Braun
and Dierrick, who had distinguished themselves in the

250 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

same art, were also among his friends ; but with respect
to the personal history and the works of these men, the
loss by the violence of the Gueux outbreak at the
establishment of the Inquisition in that country by
Philip II., and the loss of all that is precious in the
authority of documentary history by the great fire at
Liege, is incalculable.

The influence of his school is noticeable far and
wide. The grand windows of St. Jaques at Liege bear
witness to it. Some of those in the church of Fair-
ford in Gloucestershire, have been attributed to him
from a casual remark by Van Dyck, who " came to
see the Fairford windows, and told me the drawing
was by Albert Durer ;" l those windows were brought
there between 1491 and 1500, at which last year
Albert Durer was twenty-nine years of age. But it is
not his genius alone that can be thus plainly traced :
for the refined style of the Van Eycks, and the still
more refined school of Hemling, left their fair impress
on the glass painting of their age. There are a good
many relics of what once were the works of this late
Flemish school in England ; and it would have been
well if there had been none other. The two Crabeths
at Gouda had carried their special style and technicality
to the utmost limit that it would bear ; and those who
developed a school upon their style, brought the art to
its inevitable close. In spite of all the faults of their
enamel system, and the qualities which distinguish the
Dutch school of figure painting, the works of the two
brothers Crabeth at Gouda have received much admir-
ation ; but whatever good they contain only deepens the
regret at their rejection of the great qualities that had
once distinguished the then declining art. One brother

1 Cough's Collection of Gloucestershire Papers. Bodleian Library,
Oxford, and The Fairford Windows, by Rev. T. G. Joyce, 1872. Van
Dyck's father was a glass painter.

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 251

had worked for the church under its Roman Catholic
masters, the other under the Protestants ; and Adrian
de Vriee rivalled him in a work in the church at Gouda
(then cathedral no more), composed with such freedom
as the veriest pagan would have scarcely surpassed, in
what has always since been known as " the liberty of
conscience " window.

England suffered from the imported works of their
followers, and of those of them who settled here. Van
Linge came to England in the time of James I. He
inherited a failing system, he brought bad principles,
and he left bad precedents. His dense enamels are
peeling off the glass : the result is offensive and irre-
mediable ; and those gloomy and inauspicious-looking
saints, who darken the windows of the chapel of Lin-
coln's Inn, are the last shadows which collect about his
expiring school. So much for the once-glowing and
beautiful art in glass. Its days were numbered. There
was, however, one man still, an Englishman of worthy
fame, one Godfrey, whose works were much admired in
France. But the spark could last no longer ; and in
spite of Sir James Thornhill's cartoons for William Price
at Oxford, the genuine and graceful talent of Mrs.
Pearson, and Sir Joshua Reynolds's designs for Thorn-
ton's window, of what Horace Walpole called "the
washy virtues," the last glimmer of this art died away.

The habit adopted by glass painters, alike in all
countries, of availing themselves occasionally of other
men's designs, must not be understood as detracting from
their merit ; for such designs made independently of the
knowledge of the peculiar exigencies of the art, could
only be rendered into glass by an ability of artistic and
technical character altogether special. In the rarest
instance would the drawing completed by a sculptor or
painter be possible in glass ; its detail might be undesir-
able, its refinements impossible, its colouring unsuitable.

252 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

The art had a special skill and genius of its own, and
on them depended the success, whether the conception
of the subject or the drawing of it were the original
work of the actual glass painter, or, as in Italy, by the
distinguished men whose names have been mentioned ;
or, as more commonly the case in Germany, France,
and England, by those wandering artists of many
accomplishments who passed from abbey to abbey
illuminating their books, painting their walls or design-
ing for their windows, but whose names are lost to
fame.

The relics of this art are but remnants of the works
which ornamented the civic, palatial, and ecclesiastical
buildings of the middle ages ; and the words of lament
used by the biographer of the Beato Giacomo may be
well applied far and wide to countless other works than
his, where he writes, " one grieves at the unhappy con-
ditions of this art, of which the productions are allowed
no hope of enduring life, where the work of long study
and of infinite diligence is often in shortest time and
for slightest cause destroyed." Such expressions may
well expand upon a very wide horizon of regret in the
thought of what those works contained ; of how they
pictured not only the incidents of well-known secular
and sacred history, but illustrations also of such sub-
jects of local and personal interest and traditions as
once were familiar in the by-ways of a manuscript
literature long since lost ; of events and subjects which
occupied the thoughts and conversation of the best and
most intelligent men of their age, which made those
simple paintings precious, but are now lost among the
shadows of their common ruin. Beside all these there
were also figured the memorials of national and religious
customs, of civic ceremonials and domestic habits, of
costumes, manners, trade, and war, the incidents of
daily life, the condition of their arts, the architecture of

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 253

their streets, the decoration of their houses, and much
else that brought to the memory true records of the
past, rude perhaps in their representation, but touch-
ing by their simple familiarity gems of art that have
been left unheeded to perish with the annals they con-
tained.

This art so captivated public taste in the middle
ages as to affect the development of the great art
which at first it pretended only to adorn ; the archi-
tecture of that age so yielding to its charms as to
expand itself purposely for their display. Thus the
windows of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in-
creased in height and breadth ; and in the fourteenth
and fifteenth so universally did this fashion prevail that
the constructive principles of buildings were affected by
it, and all the weight of the groined roof and the
arcades within, and of the spires and towers without,
was left to rest on slender piers and flying buttresses,
which alone remained for their support, the solid walls
having given place to sheets of pictured glass.

The earliest form of this development was in the
great wheel windows, commonly placed at the ends of
transepts of important buildings, and occasionally at
the west end, filling up the whole interior space be-
neath the groining. Among the earliest of these was
the circular window of the north transept of Lincoln
Cathedral, part of the work of the great St. Hugh,
and dating from about or before A.D. 1200. The
wide central quatrefoil and numerous circular open-
ings in its pierced or plate tracery still contain their
original glass : the general subject of the whole series
being that of the Church triumphant, the outer circles
containing at the top the figure of our Lord in
majesty, seated on a rainbow ; and in the others
angels holding the instruments of the Passion, scenes
from the general Resurrection, and single figures of

254 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

saints ; and in the large central space is a representa-
tion of Paradise, with Christ seated among the blessed.

The excellent effect of these wheel windows in-
duced their adoption by Gothic architects of all
countries during this and the following centuries, and
was probably, also, the origin of the development of
ordinary window-heads to the entire space under the
groining. Among the finest early specimens of this
fashion are the windows of the Ste. Chapelle at Paris,
the building of which was completed in 1248, and
the greater part of which contain their original glass.
The desire to obtain the greatest possible space for
these openings is well illustrated by the east window
of Gloucester Cathedral, where the walls of the most
eastern bay are sloped outwards to obtain an extra
space for the mouldings of the window frame, and
thus to secure the entire width of the choir for the
glass. This great window still contains its original
glass, dating from about A.D. 1370, the parts repaired
being supplied by old fragments from windows of the
clerestory and Lady Chapel. The subjects painted are
a series of single figures under canopies, with the group
of the coronation of the blessed Virgin above them.

This architectural development led to changes in
the artist's employment of the glass, and the greater
liberty thus obtained affected the character of its
painting and ornament. The improvement made in
the production of the glass itself and in the chemicals
of its colouring, and the advance in design and draw-
ing, combined to enlarge the whole sphere of the
subjects and treatment ; so the artists, no longer
confined by the comparative costliness of the materials
and the small pieces which, in the earlier styles, they
had to deal with, adopted a more ambitious course,
and drawing more directly upon nature for their com-
positions, with freer minds and freer pencils, they de-

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 255

lighted the world with the enthusiasm of that mingled
piety and genius that added living fire to the glory of
their work.

But this liberty brought danger with it, as liberty
always does where high principle is sapped by ambi-
tion. Their sphere enlarged, their knowledge and
skill developed, exhibited themselves in the charm
of individual expression. Their figures had more
truth, their draperies more grace, their detail more
exactness, their ornament more wealth ; their com-
positions, enlarged in scale, looked no longer like a
mosaic of transparent gems, but a picture and a
representation that interpreted itself by the clearness
of its pictorial composition, whether far or near, and
thus, with a subtlety scarcely noticed by themselves,
their work approached a naturalism and a pictorial
reality that was at last the ruin of their art. It
happily took centuries before that degradation brought
it to its close. It had been by that thoroughly archi-
tectonic sense which prevailed in its earlier phases,
and till the closing years of the fifteenth century, that
this noble art, with all the dignified reserve of self-
respect, had held its right place among its compeers ;
but as time advanced it happened with it, as with
other things, that the idea of development became
confounded with that of progress, and a system was
introduced which delighted the unthinking popular
sense with much that was admirable in the strictest
sense of art, and glorious in effect, but with it also
a loss of principle and a flattery of ambition that
brought it to a lingering but certain fall.

No change more lamentable can overtake an art than
that which tempts it to a sphere not properly its own.
It is a fundamental principle in art that all its pro-
ductions are subject to the restrictions which the
nature of their materials and the nature of human

256 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

sight impose. We have now to do with an art
which is especially connected with those of architec-
ture and of picture with the former as an adjunct
and ornament, with the latter as a sister art of colour
and design, but the nature of glass itself differs from
anything else that these arts have to do with. Both
these arts are based on definite principles and bound
by definite limitations. Let a picture be black as
night or fresh as morning, severe or sketchy, it will
be good only if it have not transgressed the laws of
chiaroscuro, of form and colour, and of linear and
atmospheric perspective all of which involve prin-
ciples that are inviolable ; and beyond them no good
work of picture painting ever was or ever can be
produced. They are the natural laws of the materials
in relation to sight. The other art, architecture,
whether classic, Gothic, modern, or aught else, has
equally its laws and limits. It cannot without ruin
trangress the powers of its own materials, nor can it,
without offence, violate that science of numbers which
we call proportion. Is, then, glass painting to be free
of all control the only art let loose in the vanity of
unmitigated fancy ?

Pictorial effect is a quality common to sculpture,
picture, mosaic, and glass, though different in each.
In the two first it is always regulated by the space
it occupies. No figure-painter, no sculptor of alto
or basso relievo, would so treat a subject, extending
over a series of distinct spaces, as to ignore the forms
of the architectural construction which bounded them.
Each group would be complete ; their connection
would be made by the interest of their story. The
metopes of the Parthenon, to a certain degree, illus-
trate this. It is much to be regretted that glass
painters are impatient of this law, which binds all
other arts. They also violate the very nature of their

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 257

own materials in the attempted pictorial effects of
atmosphere. These are attainable only by modula-
tion of colour and loss of outline ; and neither of
these are properly producible, for modulation is im-
possible where every piece of glass is of a different
tint, and loss of outline is impossible where every
piece is held in its place by a black frame of lead.
It is answered that these effects are possible, and
easily produced by painting in coloured enamels.
Let the answer hold good ; but we come then to
the question of other limits limits of the right and
wrong of human labour, and limits of the duty to
human sight. Excessive " finish" is not a necessary
quality of high art ; the highest art is that in which
the greatest conception is the best expressed. The
too high-wrought picture in glass condemns itself by
the prodigality of human labour on a material so
fragile that the least injury would mar it ; and, if
the artist were dead or distant, it would be irre-
parable. It condemns itself also by offering such
work as no eye can rest upon to analyse without pain
and fatigue. The fault of ambition lies in the pre-
tension of an unjustifiable independence. If the
glass painter be impatient of all limits, whether of
architecture or of the special qualities of his own
materials limits, too, of the pleasure, power, or en-
durance of human sight and the use or abuse of his
labour let him throw up his art and take to canvas.
Then he may labour without stint and satiate the eye
without fatigue ; but if he is to be a glass painter, let
him honour his own art, and neither borrow the
specialities nor wander into the province of another.

With respect to this beautiful art, I must venture
to repeat what I have said of painting in other forms,
that it is an insult to art that all its forms and phases
should be forced into one groove or ground to one

258 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

level. A perfect work of art must be thought out in
its own language. A picture-painter rarely designs
well for glass, because he cannot think in glass, and
he is often a bad judge of works in glass for the like
reason that he is always thinking in his own art-
language, and mistakes for good what another art has
borrowed and mimicked from his own. Hence it
comes to pass that this beautiful art of glass painting is
often misconceived both by artists and by the public.
The art, with all its limitations, is large enough to
open a field for ever to real genius. A man cannot
draw too well for it, nor think too poetically ; only let
him remember ivhat he has for the translation of his
thoughts glass, lead, and light

The history of this art in England has as yet been
but imperfectly written. There are materials for it,
scattered and miscellaneous as they are, not for mere
records and dry descriptions of the works themselves,
most of which now lie in their ruins, sacred to the
memory of the Reformation and the Protectorate, but
rather for a book which would sketch the ins and outs
of artistic life in England in the middle ages, its styles
and schools, its connection with foreign countries, its
patronage, its roving confraternities, and so forth. It
might bring together in this way a mingled mass of
anecdote, archaeology, and memoir, which would fill
very agreeably a gap that is still left open in English
literature.

Some references have already been made to English
glass painters. Of later ones, John Thornton, the
" glazyer " of Coventry, was the most famous. He
undertook the great east window of York Cathedral in
1405, and left a monument of genuine English work
as fine as any foreign school of the age could produce,
executed, as by the words of his contract he agreed,
" to portray the said windows with his own hand, and

viz ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 259

the histories, images, and other things to be painted in
it." The subjects of his work range over a wide page
of sacred writ. At the top is a small figure of Christ
in majesty, with figures of saints and angels in the
tracery below it; then subjects selected from the creation
to the death of Absalom, and below them scenes from
the book of the Revelation, and individual dignitaries
of Church and State.

At a later date it became common for the " glaziers,"
i.e. the providers and painters of the glass, to be supplied
with designs from other and sometimes foreign hands,
as in the contract for the Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick
with J. Prudde, glazier of Westminster, in which it is
agreed that he rt shall embellish matters, images, and
stories that shall be delivered and appointed by the
said executors by patterns in paper ... to be pictured
in rich colours at the charges of the said glazier."

Another similar contract for thus providing the
design is authorised by the will of King Henry VII.
for his chapel at Westminster, that " the stories, images,"
etc., for the window be " redily devised and in picture
delivered to ... the master of the works of Our said
Chapel." One of the glaziers thus employed was a
man who acquired well -merited fame, one Bernard
Flower, who was also engaged in a contract for some
of the windows of Henry VIII.'s Chapel at King's
College, Cambridge. These were executed between
the years 1526 and 1531 by contract with four
" glaziers " living in Southwark, Middlesex, London,
and Westminster, i.e. glass painters' establishments
capable of furnishing the designs and executing those
works, according to the words of the contract, in " suer
and perfyte glasse and oryent colours and imagery of
the story of the Olde Lawe and ye Newe Lawe;" and,
further, to complete the windows of Bernard Flower,
who had died ; in all which the influence of various

260 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

schools and the work of many hands are easily trace-
able, both English and foreign.

But let us now turn to the practical phase of the
subject to glass painting as a means of artistic ex-
pression. Our lesson must be learnt from the successes
and failures of former times ; and it must not be for-
gotten that we have difficulties which at no other time
were ever dreamt of. In former times Art flowed
onward in one pleasant and continuous stream, but
with us it is one continuous cataract. There are no
quiet waters of comfort : the unhappy glass painter
launched upon them may be a perfect master of his
craft, but the public, with vulgar pertinacity, persist in
steering him ; one way he turns to please himself, one
way to please his patrons ; and if he does not alto-
gether lose his self-possession in this vortex of conten-
tion and questionable taste, it is but to open his eyes
on the Scylla of the classic school on one side, and the
Gothic Charybdis on the other. Right principles alone
can be the guiding light on his horizon.

But why speak of styles ? There is a far greater
matter than them one which involves the whole
future of glass painting and that is the self-denying
mastery which will recognise, and act upon the recogni-
tion, that glass painting is a special art, with its own laws,
its own powers, its own limits ; that the laws of picture
have no more to do with it than those of sculpture have ;
that it is light that has to be dealt with, not shadow ;
translucent glass, not solid canvas ; open air, not a
picture-frame. If men set about glass painting, with
some such spirit as this, they would find no difficulty
about styles. We need talk no more of good or bad
drawing that phase is over ; but the fight must now
be for what people are not so ready to adopt, viz. the
limitation of the art to its proper sphere. But it is
immediately objected that this places a limit on the

vii ART AND ARTISTS OF GLASS PAINTING 261

development and excellence of art ; though it is indeed
the precise opposite of this. The range of the art of
painting is not to be restricted. It would be so if it
were to follow the same rules and principles, under all
the various and even opposite circumstances in which
it is placed. It is to save it from this restriction that
glass should be recognised as imposing special obliga-
tions on the artist. Art will gain in dignity rather
than suffer loss by this. Its powers and elasticity are
at once recognised rather than confined. It is one
thing in the picture which hangs over the altar, another
thing on the broad expanse of frescoed wall, and an-
other in the window, different (ever so different in
each), but perfect in them all.

Why was it that such men as Lorenzo Ghiberti,
Perugino, Perino del Vaga, Giovanni da Udine, needed
to call to their country of the arts in their very halcyon
days, the northern Jaques PAllemand from Ulm,
Livi from Lubec, and Guillaume from Verdun ? Were
not those giants of art able to manage painted windows?
No, by their own confession, that art was a special one,
not their own. It was not the mere glass that they
wanted from the north ; they had that glass already.
The well-known French and German smalti were at
their hand in universal use in Italy. What they
needed, and what they sent for, were men who could
translate their works into glass. There was the secret :
there was the difficulty. The pencil of Ghiberti had
known what to put on the cartoon, but it was the
German-taught glass painter who knew how, and what
of it to put into glass ; and both were pleased with
each other's works though both were different.

Let there be nothing, therefore, said about placing
a limit on high art. Let us have no limit to the
highest attainment of design ; but let each office of the
art be recognised in its place, and there perform its

262 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY vn

duties. Let us have the picture, the fresco, and the
window, each as beautiful as art can make them, in
each case wrought on different principles, as beautiful
as Perugino used to design them, or as the Beato
Giacomo could translate them into glass.

There need then be no fear for it. As an art it
would then stand firm on the sure ground of its own
merits ; and the artist, relieved from the trammels of
other arts and systems, would revel freely in the glory
of his glass.

ESSAY VIII

THE ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS

PART I PURPOSE EARLY CHRISTIAN EXAMPLES-
PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST CRUCIFIXION

T T has always been under the quiet shade of religious
contemplation that fine art has dedicated its love-
liest conceptions to the ideal of the heart's worship.
The light that gleamed in pagan faiths was but a ray
still vibrating within them from the origin of all faiths
in long anterior days. Imagination, crowded and dis-
turbed by events and uncertainties, convictions and
doubts, at one time darkened by the awe of Nature's
mastery, at another inspired by the grandeur of her
strange relationships of material and life, had raised up
images rather of terror than of love, and had so clouded
the pure ray of Deity that once had shone upon
the dawn of human life, that there remained no more
of it but superstitious reverence, and dreams of ideal
powers haunting the empty places of heaven and earth.
Hence the deep sadness that pervaded all pagan
religions, which their mysteries only deepened, and
their festivities, goaded by riot into artificial joy, failed
to dispel. Still a ray of religious sense remained;
and within all their apparent idolatry of material, their
fears and hopes, and their conscious weakness, an in-
tuitive trust bore testimony to the glimmering light

264 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

within them, that there was a Power supreme to whom
their appeals for support and justice were not addressed
in vain.

The relationship of national character to national
religion has often been exhibited in greater force by its
external expression than by the speciality of its faith ;
because the multitude having but little time and less
ability to study and comprehend the subtleties of
religion, has commonly fallen into a system, partly
routine, partly superstitious ; and by force of circum-
stances has satisfied itself with formalities, offerings, and
sacrifices, as the material symbols of devotional expres-
sion. Individual religion may be very independent of
externals ; but a national religion has always needed a
vast machinery of order both of things and persons ;
and whether Christian or Pagan, the national impulse
has prevailed to dedicate the noblest and best that the
nation could give, as the dignified accessories of its
public worship.

In such places separated for devotion and conse-
crated by association with the highest purposes of
human life, an artist may well pause before he puts his
hands upon these walls and realise the duty and respon-
sibility he undertakes ; for his art, whatever it may be,
is always prominent and must be effective in one or
other direction for benefit or injury ; from its very
nature it must assert itself and be noticed ; and whether
in sculpture or in painting it cannot fail to affect the
general sense of respect or contempt toward the place
it occupies. He needs to realise the speciality of his
position, that his art is an active present power, and for
the future a living witness to generations of his fellow-
men ; and therefore that his work may so affect their
mind that they may read at once the purposes to which
it points apart from and beyond itself; and though
the memory of it may grow vague, and the forms of its

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 265

sacred imagery may fade away, still that the thoughts
which sprang from them may flow brightly to life's
end, and cast a halo about their passing years.

The adornment of sacred buildings has been the
expression of the universal religious sense of mankind.
Under all varieties of belief and practice the temple has
been regarded as the house of God. The pagan temple
was the abode of the visible representative of some
ideal deity, in the splendid figure worshipped in his
honour. The Christian temple has been consecrated by
the promised presence of God, and all that the arts
could do has culminated there to testify to the faith in
the eternal and unseen. In the pagan temple there
might have been some restraint imposed upon the
enrichment of the interior, lest by contrast the splendour
of the idol figure might be diminished. The treatment
of the Christian temple had no such impediment, but
only that of the infirmity of religious expression ; so in
simplicity of spirit and acknowledged weakness, the
highest and best of art that the place and age could
produce has ever thus been lavished upon it. To the
pagan the glorification of his temple was an inherited
and immemorial tradition. To the Hebrew it had been
a work of divine direction, and to the Christian the
involuntary impulse of spiritual aspiration. The
universal consent and demand for such treatment of
their sacred buildings, whether pagan or Christian, came
from human infirmity seeking aids to faith, by satisfy-
ing sense with the signs and symbols of things on which
both memory and hope were centred. They sought
those sacred shrines as generations before had sought
them for the love of that sacred atmosphere which gave
them rest. Association hallowed them, and it was their
artist's privilege to indue their walls with pictured thoughts
and memories which brought together the souls of those
who worshipped there, and of those who had gone before.

266 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

But their endearment was their danger. Who
would offend their household gods ? Who of the
ancients could divest their, minds of the haunting
visions of superstition, and what was that superstition
but the vague reflex of awful truth ? As in the physi-
cal constitution an accident of birth brings out the
latent characteristics of the tribe, and witnesses to the
race from which they sprang, by some startling evidence
of what had been lost even to the vague memory of
tradition ; so in mind, occasional gleams reveal the
latent truth long since forgotten, and a Plato among the
Greeks or an Aurelius or a Cicero among the Romans,
and others such as they, may reflect a ray from those
distant springs of light long lost among the shadows of
human life. But around even such minds as those
comparative darkness reigned. Religion was not
indeed to them, as to their compatriots, a mere political
necessity ; but devotion, another word for love, could
find no place where no Person was, on whom to spend
it. But in the depth of individual mind a latent power
still held a partial sway, and though the accepted
theology was monstrous, the reality of the unseen was a
power beyond it, universal and irresistible ; and the
result was that tribute of mingled fear and hope which
poor humanity gave, by the best of all it knew or had
to give, and expressed its worship, too deep for common
things, in the language and by the aid of genius.

But here was material again, and employed as a
means of spiritual expression ; for art, except in the
words of poetry, has no other language, and there are
those whose spiritual sense is keen and to whom
material expresses no more than material, and is an
offence. It was so in great degree with the first
Christians, The works of classic genius around them,
embodying ideals of religion, had reference both
spiritual and sensual which they knew too well. Art,

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 267

sprung from the purest fountain of life, had been defiled.
From its origin to its end, as presented in their age,
it served fatuous idolatry alone, or grossest luxury.
Its forms were an offence, so they hated rather than
feared them. Their attitude toward the ideal of life
was the absolute opposite of that of the pagan world.
To them a Person engaged not their worship only but
their affections. A visible reality at once human and
divine had engaged them, at once too majestic and too
tender, too holy and too pure for aught of material form
to reach. But the need of it was too strong to last
unsatisfied. The need of visible form to mark the spot
or to secure the record of the blest departed, of the
hope that had now changed to certainty, of the sorrow
that was surpassed by joy for those who had " entered
into life " ; such need of record found its words in signs
and symbols, some new, some old made new by change
of sense, the dove, the olive branch, the anchor, and the
palm, and thus their first germs of art found place among
their silent cemeteries, where still they tell the story of
their faith.

The form they took was such as all the influences
around them would have led us to expect. The
religions of paganism were written in their arts. The
myths, which the finest arts of heathendom had em-
bodied, were allegories of the deepest significance, and
had often had their origin in the purest motive. The
sculpture and painting of antiquity, from the very
nature of their subjects (except such as were devoted
to national history and portraiture), were inspired in the
choice and treatment of all their subjects by that deep
traditional poetry which underlay the relation of the
outer to the inner life of men, of material to mind.
The eyes and thoughts of multitudes, brought up in
such cities as Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome, had
been from childhood habituated to the influence of the

268 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

fine arts in their utmost perfection and power. The
poetry, the allegory, the symbolism, which were the
very life of those glorious works, then abounding all
around them, were among the most powerful elements
of an involuntary education for the inhabitants. The
Christian converts had been as subject to those influ-
ences as any others. They had learnt to abhor the
idolatry and to loathe the abuse of the arts, but it was
impossible for them to change the habitual sentiment
of allegory and symbol to which their minds had been
inevitably trained. The doctrines and the rites of the
new faith they had adopted were deeply figurative, and
like the works of heathen sculpture to which they were
accustomed, whatever was objective in them bore a
recondite and spiritual interpretation. The earliest
lessons of their faith had been conveyed in the allegori-
cal form of parables. The miracles of its Founder had
been shown by Him, as in the case of the multiplica-
tion of the loaves and fishes, to possess a depth of
meaning far beneath and beyond the external acts and
objects themselves. The religious rites prescribed by
Him were profoundly symbolical. The ancient scrip-
tures, to which He had referred his disciples for the
foundation of all He did and taught, embodied all their
historical and prophetic reference to the new faith in
the forms and words of allegory, type, and symbol.

Such concurrent influences, so numerous, so attrac-
tive, and so powerful, could produce but one result.
The early art among the Christians followed naturally
in the course thus prepared for it. The necessity for
secrecy confirmed the use of it It was easy to main-
tain, when clothed in symbol, what, openly exhibited,
would be death. The mysteries of their faith gained
force and value even to themselves when thus used.
The poetry of art could symbolise them with more
subtlety and refinement than any language. Hence

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 269

may in great degree be explained their early reconcilia-
tion to the employment of forms of art, and the
subsequent and rapid development of its use without
prejudice or fear.

If we look for the illustrations of it we must be
contented with its ruins. At that period all art was
in a failing condition. Great works of antiquity
remained but all practical art, in the second century
of our era, had well-nigh ceased, except as a subject of
display and luxury. Originality existed no more. The
old forms and styles alone remained. The artist's pro-
fession could scarcely be followed by the Christians, for
works of heathen sympathies were impossible, and their
opportunities among their own community afforded
them no means of livelihood. They possessed churches
in the principal cities ; but so long as their religion was
periodically tolerated and proscribed, and themselves
protected and persecuted by turns, they found nothing
around them sufficiently stable to encourage any
development of a new art on Christian principles. That
was reserved for other days. Those early disciples, con-
tent to bear their changing fortunes, were content also
to take and to utilise what they found about them,
and they have left the history, not merely of themselves
but of their faith, in the lineaments of a faltering art,
weak at its outset, and weaker in its progress, but
embodying, to the best of their power and of their poor
opportunities, the testimony of their fortitude and
devotion.

The vine, the lamb, the crown, the phoenix, and the
peacock were to them symbols of the deepest interest ;
and the fish and the cross still more intimately told the
story of their creed. To them it was but as yesterday
that the great drama of their redemption had been acted
out. But, as centuries elapsed, and the realities of that
awful history receded farther and farther into the past,

270 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

a craving desire arose for anything that could restore
to them the sense of its proximity, and fill, by some
external and sensible expression, the void where
memory or imagination failed. For this some con-
secutive composition was needed, and consistently with
their tender choice of subjects, one of the earliest of
them was the figure of the Good Shepherd. He is
represented in many ways, sometimes in the attitude
of walking, with a lamb across His shoulders ; some-
times in repose, standing with His sheep about Him,
some feeding, some gazing up at Him, or listening to
His voice. Sometimes He carries the shepherd's crook,
sometimes the pipe with seven tubes, and with all the
signs of pastoral joy around Him, expressed in the
simple landscape forms of flowers, trees, and singing
birds. But this subject was not altogether new. The
simplicity and grace of this easy composition had
already made it a subject of classic art, but totally
devoid of all such surrounding scenery and symbol, in
the Hermes Criophoros, where the god was indeed no
good shepherd, but the herald of the sacrifice of
Arcadian tradition, carrying the ram upon his shoulders ;
or as the protector of Tanagra, carrying the ram round
its walls to save the city from a pestilence. To the
Christians it afforded at once the opportunity of a
beautiful allegory suggested in their Master's own
language ; and thus consecrated to a new ideal, recom-
posed in features and embellished with deep significance,
they painted it and sculptured it with untiring interest
and variety. Thus, too, with most aspiring poetry they
converted many a lurking memory of their former
religion, and purified it in the brightness of their new
faith. So the story of Cupid and Psyche, the per-
sonified emblems of love and the soul, was raised in
the issue of its idea, to symbolise that love which had
won for the soul its eternal life. Thus all that the

vni ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 271

poetry and the innate yearning of the heathen world
had testified to its unexpressed convictions, fell naturally
to Christian use, and then lifted from the realm of
dreams to the certainty of that faith which had inter-
preted them, they were at once adopted without change.
Another significant subject adopted by them very early
from classic art was that of Orpheus with his lyre,
surrounded by the animals whom his music had tamed.
In the early Christian's love of recondite and mystic
symbolism this figure of Orpheus, who had descended
into Hades, had achieved his purpose, and had returned
alive, represented the risen Christ ; and his lyre
symbolised the music of the Gospel subduing the
hearts of men.

But all the favourite subjects of the early Christians
are known too well to be repeated here. The fondness
for clothing abstract truths in allegory and emblem was
fostered by every influence around them. It was a
characteristic of their time. They had known it in
the symbolism of Jewish rites, and in the prophetic
language of the Old Testament, they found it in the
parables and prophecies of their own Scriptures, they
were accustomed to it in heathen art and poetry, and
they read it in the language of the early fathers of the
Church, whose allegorical and mystic interpretations
fostered a similar spirit in their art.

Their works of art were acts of faith. They lost
all thought of self in the glories of that faith for which
they lived and died. The tombs of the martyrs be-
came their altars, and the open halls in front of them
their churches. Their pictures were not devised for
luxury and ornament ; but the more fertile a subject
might be in its illustration of doctrine and belief, the
more it was adopted. Hence the group of the Divine
Infant and His mother expressive of the incarnation of
the Son of God ; of Abraham and Isaac carrying the

272 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

wood, as prophetically illustrative of the preordained
sacrifice of the Crucifixion. With other meanings,
Noah and his ark, episodes in the history of Jonah,
the raising of Lazarus, the giving sight to the blind,
making a series of subjects full of that fact and allegory
combined, which gave them all their value, were painted
on their walls and ceilings continually.

In the works of those early times or rather in the
spirit which inspired them their poetry and their pur-
pose were the germs out of which the religious art of
Christendom has grown, but the style and character of
their design waned away beneath that general influence
of change which then prevailed. They have never been
revived. It is perhaps possible to trace a distant like-
ness to them in the "classic" of a long subsequent age
in the works of such men as Penturicchio, Botticelli,
Perugino, and Piero di Cosimo, who lived in a time of
classic revival, when every influence of learning, litera-
ture, art, and poetry tended to that result. But the
likeness is only slight and transient. The spirits of
those distant times, above a thousand years apart, may
have had much sympathy, but the genius of each age
and race of man was original. From the beginning
art has ever been the fruitful exponent of its own age,
locality, and purpose ; and its varying styles have been
no more than the varying fashions and dialects of its
multiform and inexhaustible language.

Pagan Rome had but little originality in art. Her
artists were mostly Greeks. Scarcely the name of one
painter conspicuous in high art survives. Doubtless
there were native artists, but it was to wandering com-
panies of Greeks that Italy, especially in the south, was
indebted for her fine arts ; and to them we must attri-
bute most of the works of the early Christians, long
before that peculiar Greek type appears which was due
to the Byzantine influence. The Early Christian Church

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 273

in Italy was very Greek. If we may trust so careful a
historian as Dean Milman, we may accept at least as
mainly true this passage, in which he described its early
state : " Their language was Greek, their writers Greek,
their Scriptures Greek ; and many vestiges and tradi-
tions show that their Ritual and their Liturgy were
Greek. Through Greek the communication between the
Churches of Rome and of the West was kept up
with the East." To this Professor Westcott adds,
speaking of the early Church in Rome : " As far as we
can learn, the mass of the poorer population, every-
where the great bulk of the early Christians, was
Greek, either in descent or speech. Among the names
of fifteen bishops of Rome, to the close of the second
century, only four were Latin."

The age of early Christianity was that when the
disruption of the old systems of the world had begun.
The old classic style was fading away in its last weak-
ness. The arts of the Catacombs, like those of Her-
culaneum and Pompeii, only served to reflect, like
marred and broken mirrors, the traditions of the great
arts of old. The genius and glory of the works of
ancient days had waned away ; and the echo of their
distant voices were the only signs of life in the lan-
guage of the arts which remained. The first Christian
possessed, in the only artists he could command, but
poor exponents of the ideas he desired to record. His
artists were probably the poorest decorators of the day.
Here and there a few fair works are found, but they
are slight and sketchy, and mostly devoid of good draw-
ing or composition, as might be expected from such
workmen. But they are not to be condemned for that.
The paintings of the Catacombs were done in the
dark : the best light the artist could command was but
the flare of the torch or flickering lamp beside him.
Nor could they be better seen by those who came

274 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

there. A work of art is not good for its genius and
its science alone. Human skill and time and labour
have their intrinsic value. If those works were slight
and rapid they were all that they needed to be and
so far good as fit for their place, and fit for the impres-
sions and the scanty time of those who saw or cared
for them.

Weak as those works were, their artistic value to
us is very great. They preserve in their feeble linea-
ments and imperfect execution the character and
technicality of the great times. Picture painting in
the greatest days of ancient art was probably very
different from what our eyes are accustomed to.
Figure painting was as beautiful as the perfect taste
and perfect models of ancient Greece could lead us to
expect ; but composition of figure subjects was prob-
ably more sculpturesque than picturesque. All scenic
background was of the simplest kind ; and when natural
or architectural forms were introduced, they were devised
less to complete a picture, as nowadays, with landscape
and perspective, than to fill up by a few accentuated
forms and lines the general composition of the subject.
In ancient art the backgrounds were often plain
monochrome, from which the figures, singly or in
groups, stood out in clear relief, beautiful in their
freedom from all unneeded accessories and all disturb-
ance. Landscape painting, as we understand it now,
was not appreciated. The trees and rocks and other
forms of external nature represented in the back-
grounds of pictures in Herculaneum, Pompeii, and the
Catacombs are conventional in the extreme, and, from
the universality of this treatment, we may fairly believe
that these plain marks of style and character are the
signs of what they had traditionally received from
ancient times. Thus we may regard the classic art
of Grecian painting and of the Roman also, which

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 275

was but its echo as rather based on the principles of
architectural than of the more definitely pictorial art.
Thus was the painting far more beautiful in its sculp-
turesque harmony with the architecture, whether it was
executed on the walls themselves or in pictures hung
upon them far more beautiful indeed in the entire
unity of the general effect than all the resources of
linear and atmospheric perspective in modern art, which
only too commonly belies and contradicts the architec-
ture that it pretends to adorn.

Thus also in Christian art we often find both single
and grouped figures left with only plain monotone back-
grounds ; and this even where natural objects form part
of the illustration, as in such subjects as Moses striking
the rock with the waters flowing out, or Jonah beneath
his gourd, or cast into the sea, or restored to land with
all the many accessories of such subjects, his com-
panions, the ship, the waters, and the whale ; or other
compositions, equally involved, such as the sacrifice of
Isaac ; the baptism of Christ, or the sermon on the
mount ; or that beautifully-symbolic subject of the ship
coming into safe harbour, with furling sails and cargo
stored on deck, and a sure landing-place at hand,
emblematic of the end of the storms of life, and the
soul received into its rest at last. All these and many
other subjects, which involved the necessary introduc-
tion of natural objects to explain them, are treated
with all the traditional simplicity of ancient classic art.
The love and the labour of the artist were thrown into
the expression of his figures, and all else was omitted
but a few conventional or emblematical accessories to
explain his subject and to enhance its dramatic interest

On these good and simple artistic principles all the
painting of the early Christians is based. And although
the style of art was entirely changed in after times,
those principles remained inviolate until the science of

276 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

perspective and the new passion for realistic landscape
painting at the close of the fourteenth century opened
a new era in the theory and practice of fine art.

Thus is it with deepest interest that a Christian
artist turns to the sources whence the arts have sprung,
that from earliest days to his own have stamped on
each age the unfailing evidences of its motives and its
worth. He wanders among those illustrations of sacred
story, a biblical cycle, composed with a manifest sim-
plicity of purpose to satisfy the craving for expression,
to record the truth and to teach it. But he had also
read the written history of those times, and of the
heroism of generations that surpassed romance in
interest and pathos. The records of their history had
described the storms of unpitying savagery that had
swept around their lives, but all that art has engraved
on their movements only commemorates their peace;
if a cross is marked upon their grave it denotes not
suffering but life ; the dove and the olive only symbo-
lise the purity and freshness of their faith, the anchor
and the palm affirm their victory. A sense of the ex-
treme sacredness associated with the history and doc-
trines of their faith was certainly one cause of that
reserve which characterised the early Christian artists.
No doubt the prevailing sentiment would have affected
them which denounced the arts as only pandering to
idolatry, and their own abhorrence of the prevailing
sentiment and misuse of art, in an age of rapidly-
deepening corruption, would have increased the inten-
sity of that reserve ; but the motives of caution and
fear imposed a further and even stronger restraint upon
the outward expression of their faith, too sacred for ex-
posure to inevitable sacrilege, too pure and powerful to
be borne by the pagan magistrate, whose hatred of it
told the conscious shame of his own contrasted life, and
whose fear alone, and not whose scorn, explained his

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 277

violence, leading them to the certainty of trouble or of
death.

It might seem at first sight strange that, in spite of
all such motives and restraints, the one subject in which
art would have been most precious to them has been
left without any faithful witness, the memorial of their
Master's form or countenance. The mind of early
Christendom had been so entirely concentrated on the
character and Gospel of Christ that all material sense
or memory of Him had been overwhelmed in the halo
of His divinity. The pride and grandeur of external
beauty with which the image gods of the heathen had
been invested, and their divinity expressed, little ac-
corded with the first Christian's ideal of his gentle and
self-sacrificing Master. His belief in the awful majesty
that was hidden in that figure overwhelmed his imagin-
ation. He approached its representation in fear, and
took refuge in symbols. But to us who, at this dis-
tance of time, receive in one united sound the echoes of
the many and various notes which directly or indirectly
vibrate through the voices of tradition, it is natural and
with some confidence of truth to suppose, that at that
time when delineative and representative art was the
common and facile practice of the age, there were,
among the first followers of Christ, men whom both
habit and ability would have induced to sketch or even
to complete the memorial image of that Being who
occupied their whole mind with a love and devotion
that were the very first springs of their life. His
countenance would haunt the memory of those who
knew Him, and the imagination of those who had not
seen Him but believed. No conversation among such
disciples could have passed without some personal
reference to their Master. The teaching of His doc-
trines would have involved anecdotes of Himself, His
conduct, His manner, His appearance, and His voice ;

278 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

and would have been like pictures to their hearers'
minds ; as riveting in interest to those who listened as
to those, who, pouring out their stores of incident, told
how He stood and wept before the grave of Lazarus,
how His face was scarred and all the beauty they would
have desired in Him was marred, as He sank beneath
the weight of the cross ; and with what smile of recog-
nition He welcomed them in the haze of morning upon
the shore of Tiberias, and invited them to " come and
dine." Such tales were pictures, and His was their
central figure. No words of His were repeated by
those who had heard His voice but that His image
was there before their mental sight, an indelible reality.
An old anecdote does but relate the event of many
such probable occasions ; how at the supper table in
the house of Pudeus the conversation turned to the
subject of our Lord's personal appearance, and St.
Peter, yielding to the urgency of Sa. Prassede, drew an
outline of his Master's head upon her napkin. The
intensity of that deep and quiet enthusiasm that per-
vaded the heart of earliest Christendom was concen-
trated on the person of its Lord. His divinity was too
awful for art to approach, but His presence was human.
If His words were related, their occasions would have
been told with the brightness of fresh memory ; and thus
the traditions of His appearance, which we still value,
had their source at the stream's fountain-head. If those
which art has embodied appear at first sight incon-
sistent, their uncertainty is easily dissipated if we
recollect that not those who saw but only those who
had heard about Him were the artists to whom we owe
the few and faded memorials of His person. The
stories of His lovely youth and of His wan maturity
filled the anecdotes of His career ; both equally true
and penetrating, whether their words were inspired by
the purity of His character or the pathos of His life.

vni ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 279

The early dread of that idolatry round which the
course of pagan life was plunged in vileness, may have
restrained the artist's hand and the worshipper's desire;
still, much that looks like mere symbolic reference may
have been true to the life ; and those figures of the
young Christ that surprise us, are but the images which
a consecrated tradition had left printed on their minds,
as faithful in ideal portraiture as those lineaments of
solemn beauty which mature Christendom has intui-
tively accepted as the truth. Those youthful heads
which the first Christian sculptors and painters assigned
to Christ wore the expressions of artistic poetry, based
indeed upon truth, but inspired by their individual con-
ceptions of a being whose life no age could affect ; and
whether as a child among the doctors in the Temple, or
seated on His Throne with the arch of heaven beneath
His feet, they portrayed him as the Lord of eternal
youth.

Art has preserved no certain portraits of His
maturer years ; but although St. Augustine's assertion
that no portrait of Him existed, may be true, and
though the literature of the early fathers of the Church
is troubled by the contending waves of controversy as
to the divinity which illumined or the humanity which
marred His countenance, still the golden thread of
unanimous conviction has been woven without break
through the tissue of contending thoughts ; and whether
as a head of solemn beauty such as once adorned the
vault of the cemetery of St. Callixtus, or even those of
late Byzantine feebleness, or such as Da Vinci painted
it, from first to last, through phases of art which the
events of centuries had modified and the varying tones
of religious sentiment had changed, the same ideal can
be traced throughout to an original of mingled gentle-
ness and power, expressed by features of grave propor-
tion, with the lips closed, the brow open, the cheek-

280 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

bones marked, the face long, and the parted hair undu-
lating behind the shoulders, of a man whose true
portraiture had been presented, never to the sight
but only to the heart of humanity, on lines that none
could draw but those inspired hands which pictured it
in the lineaments of the written Gospel.

Still artists will have to do with that divine head
of which Origen said that it had no certain aspect, but
varied according to circumstances and the persons
connected with them : and, indeed, experience since his
time has shown how each artist, each nation, and each
age has changed that aspect, although maintaining the
general idea and proportions of the ancient type. They
began by the attempt to glorify it according to classic
models ; in the troubles of a subsequent age they cast
their own gloom over it, and in the days of ascetic
discipline they marred it with the lines of agony and
grief; but by none has that noble loving face been
more degraded than by the degenerate schools of more
modern times, which, taking refuge in the meekness
and gentleness of Christ to screen the feebleness of
their own conceptions, ignoring the grander elements
of His character, His splendid independence, His bold-
ness in denunciation, and, when needed, His ruthless
severity, they picture him a mere creature of weak
sentimentality, effeminate, inane.

Many pretended portraits of Christ, both in painting
and sculpture, occasionally in statuettes of gold and
silver, existed in the earliest times, but principally, if
not altogether the work of, and possessed by the
Gnostics. The only two statues of any importance of
which early notices remain are the one erected by the
Emperor Alexander Severus among his portrait sculp-
ture of eminent persons, of which sufficient evidence as
to the fact is preserved, but not as to the authenticity
of the likeness. Of its fate there is no record, as there

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 281

is of the other, which was a bronze figure that the
woman, healed of the issue of blood, is related to have
raised as a memorial of devotion in her native city,
Caesarea Philippi, and to have been held sacred there
for the miracles of healing produced by it, but which
was destroyed through the animosity of Julian the
apostate, and replaced by a statue of himself.

Of picture portraits, to which such sanctity is still
attached as would be justifiable only on the certainty
of their truth, the histories are utterly mythic. They
are those associated with the stories of Agbarus, King
of Edessa, and of Sa. Veronica. Of the former the
story is preserved by Eusebius (A.D. 338), who, taking
his information from the fragmentary writings of Julius
African us of the third century, relates that King
Agbarus, having heard of the miracles of Christ, sent
a messenger to beg his cure. To this Christ sent a
letter in reply through an apostle, by which his cure
was conveyed. Eusebius makes no mention of a
portrait on that occasion, but states that picture por-
traits of our Lord existed in his time, of which he
affords no clue to their origin, but such had been long
known and used as objects of worship by the Gnostics.
The first notice, trustworthy as regards authorship, of
any portrait at Edessa is in the Ecclesiastical History
by Evagrius, who died at the close of the sixth century,
and the first asserted eye-witness of it was a certain Leo
of the Church of Constantinople, who stated before the
second council of Nicaea (which had been summoned
against the iconoclasts, A.D. 787) that he had seen at
Edessa the portrait which Christ had sent of Himself
to King Agbarus, and that it was venerated as an
object of the utmost sanctity. About two centuries
before that time the miraculous powers of this picture
had been assured to the devout inhabitants of Edessa
on the occasion of the siege of the city by the Persians

282 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

under Chosroes ; for a tower of attack, principally
composed of wood, had been raised outside to overtop
the walls, and had defied the attempts of the defenders
to burn it, till despair suggested their recourse to mira-
culous agency, and having placed the picture beneath the
woodwork, the fire immediately took effect : the tower
was burnt and the city saved. With equal fertility of
devout invention the stories, resulting perhaps rather
from pious imagination than from pious fraud, about
the production of this sacred picture began to multiply,
and at last became so confused with the story of Sa.
Veronica as to need as much ingenuity to unravel them
as they had needed credulity to originate. In the
eighth century we are for the first time informed of the
miraculous production of this picture, how that the
king was as anxious for a portrait of Christ as for his
cure, and had sent an artist to take it, but, baffled by
the marvel of the divine countenance, the artist was
consoled by the compassion of Christ, who pressed a
part of His own dress upon His face, and sent the
portrait thus produced to the king. Another story by
the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (A.D. 959)
relates that Christ consigned a portrait of Himself,
produced in the same manner, to St. Thomas, who sent
it after the Ascension to Edessa by the apostle Thad-
deus. Thus the stories roll up into a romance, and
the western development of that Eastern tale tells that
it was neither the artist nor St. Thomas, but an enthu-
siastic woman, to whom the musical name of Veronica
has been given, who obtained it from the u sacro volto "
as Christ was sinking beneath His cross on the road to
Calvary.

The subsequent history of these portraits is as great
a curiosity of confusion as their origin. Edessa fell
into the hands of the Mahomedans, and was retaken
by the Greeks in the tenth century, when the alleged

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 283

portrait was foun'd there, and being brought to Con-
stantinople in 944, was deposited in the basilica of
Sa. Sophia. The honour of having transported this
picture to Rome, rescued from desecration by the
Moslems, is claimed by the Venetians, and of their
having presented it to the church of St. Sylvester ; but
there is no historic authority for the story. It is with
more authority claimed by the Genoese, as having been
presented by the Emperor John Paleologus to Lionardo
Montaldi in 1384, and presented by him to the
Armenian church of St. Bartholomew at Genoa. This
was just 440 years since its transportation to Sa.
Sophia, and in the meantime Constantinople had been
sacked by the Turks, and all account of the picture
had been lost.

The portrait in St. Peter's at Rome, described as
that given by our Lord to Sa. Veronica, is without
doubt a picture of great antiquity. In what way it
reached Rome is not known. Among the strange
traditions about it, one is, that it was brought there by
Martha, the sister of Lazarus ; but any definite date to
which it can be traced, and that but vaguely, is not
earlier than the beginning of the eighth century. It
was preserved for a long time among the treasures of
the church of St. Mary of the Martyrs (the Pantheon),
and transferred thence by Pope Urban the Eighth
(1623-1644) to the chapel now well known as that of
Sa. Veronica under the dome of St. Peter's. The story
of Veronica is a variation of that of the artist sent by
Agbarus ; and the idea of a woman being associated
with the story at all, appears to have been developed
by degrees from the tradition of that portrait being
confused with the one attributed to the woman of
Caesarea Philippi, whose name, as perpetuated through
Gnostic tradition, was Prounice, known subsequently, in
the sixth century, as Berenice, by the change of the

284 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

allied initial, and thence by a similar change to V,
developed into the half-Latin, half-Greek appellation,
Vera-icon (true likeness), whence the well-known
Veronica has been accepted, not indeed as a woman,
but as the popular name for the likeness itself.

The vagueness of tradition, and the value of
authorities on such subjects, is well illustrated by
another portrait, of which there appears to be no
intimation before the year 826, 1 as having been painted
by the evangelist St. Luke, a story repeated by others
of that age, and even mentioned with respect by such
an one as St. Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1274). It was
then in the chapel of the Santa Scala of the Lateran,
and guaranteed by the authority of Pope Gregory IX.
in 1234 by an inscription placed by his order beneath
it : " Salvatoris nostri effigies a S. Luca depicta."

Such is the pious romance of the portraits of Christ,
of which the alleged copies are equally ideal. The
printed copies of that at Genoa are taken from a totally
unauthenticated copy of an original which no one is
allowed to examine. The printed copies of the Veronica
picture at Rome are described on the best authority to
be " pious souvenirs, but not an object of the least
iconographic value." 2 Still the tradition remains as a
haunting shadow which, through all the centuries, has
pictured our Lord in His mature life with a coun-

1 Michael, a Greek monk, in his biography of Theodoras Studites.

2 M. Barbier de Montault, a learned antiquary, who, as a member of
the Roman clergy, was admitted on a rare occasion to the exhibition of
the picture of the volto sacro of Sa. Veronica, writes thus: "The holy
face is enclosed in a silver gilt frame. A plate of metal covers the field
up to the outline of the face. One is led to conjecture flowing hair reach-
ing to the shoulders, a short beard bifurcated, and other features so vaguely
indicated and so completely effaced that it requires the liveliest imagination
in the world to perceive traces of eyes or nose. The place of the impres-
sion exhibited only a blackish surface, not giving evidence of human
features. . . . The so-called facsimiles of the head are sold in the sacristy,
but there is no guarantee that they resemble the original." Quoted in the
Quarterly Review, October 1867.

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 285

tenance of deep solemnity, power, and gentleness,
suffering, resignation, and love ; and for such combined
expressions we may take with confidence the ideals
which reverence may draw from those models which
neither history nor art, but only the mystery of an
inherited conviction, has authorised as the likeness of
our Lord.

We may therefore wander freely and without
offence among the thoughts and works of other
times, and linger or turn aside, as our own sympathies
may lean. We can fill up the sketchy art of the
Catacombs with our own imaginings ; we can interpret
the severity of the Byzantine and the rude spirit of the
Lombards by our knowledge of their genius and history.
We can appreciate the intense poetry of the Gothic,
and the matured art of the Renaissance, and satisfy
our own individual conceptions from those inexhaustible
fountains of religious idea. But had it been otherwise
had some veritable representation, or even some
reliable type of the portrait of Christ existed, recorded
in history and preserved to our time ; had our eyes
been trained to it from the first, and our affections
filled with it, there would now remain no rest for us
between the power of one artist, whose success would
risk idolatry, and the incompetence of another, whose
failure would offend our deepest sense with an insult
akin to sacrilege.

By much the same mode of research we learn that no
reminiscence has been preserved of the features of the
blessed Virgin. St. Augustine writes plainly to that effect,
"Neque novimus faciem Virginis M arise " but others
of his age, impelled by devotional imagination, wrote of
her that her beauty was only equalled by the loveliness
of her character. And thus with deepest reverence
have all artists painted her from the simple figures of
the Oranti in the Catacombs to the " Madonna di San

286 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Sisto," when the Divine afflatus fired the pencil of
Raphael. There are, however, two portraits on which
some reliance can be placed, viz. those of St. Peter and
St. Paul. With some allowance for varieties of style
and date, the characteristics of those apostles have been
preserved from very early times till now. We recognise
St. Peter's head at once by the general compactness of
the features, by the short and crisp hair and beard, and
other well-known traits, to all of which those of St.
Paul are in strong contrast, by the more flowing hair,
the longer head, and the expression of countenance,
indicating a higher origin and a finer mind. From
early times there have been traditional portraits of St.
Paul. Several early writers and Fathers of the Church
have mentioned them and of these, St. Ambrose and
St. Chrysostom, more particularly referred to a portrait
known by them, and accepted as authentic. There is
not such particular evidence about St. Peter. St. Basil
mentions portraits of apostles and martyrs generally as
being known and received from Apostolic times ; but
with regard to St. Peter, for whose portrait, with that
of St. Paul, any strong claim of authenticity is made,
we can but feel that the unchanging type of head and
features assigned to him from first to last suggests the
confidence with which his likeness was received from
earliest times, and allows a very fair presumption for
its traditionary truth. The heads of these two apostles
were constantly figured together. They are found so
in the middle of the third century in etchings on gold
of the ornamental glass cups and plates then very much
in vogue. Occasionally they are represented standing
opposite to each other, with a great cross between
them ; and sometimes only their busts are given. At
a later date they stand right and left of the figure of
Christ, and are found so in sculpture, painting, and
mosaic.

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 287

The reverence which withheld the hands of the early
Christians from the representation of their Master's
person and led to the indirect use of symbolic figures in
picturing the events of His life, prevailed with even
greater force and persistency in relation to His death.
The feeling of the artists even in the representation of
such subjects as made his presence necessary, induced
them to maintain the symbolic rather than the real
expression of His acts ; and for centuries after the
introduction of His bodily form had been commonly
accepted by all Christendom, still the symbols of the
Lamb, the Cross, the Altar, and the Book as " the
Word " of God were equally employed and approved
as the reverential expression of more forcible appeal to
each individual mind than what the weak tools of art
could effect through direct representation. Thus till
the sixth century realism and symbolism had continued
side by side on all subjects but that of their Master's
death. Upon that the vision only of devoted faith had
been fixed ; for no hand had dared to portray a sub-
ject surrounded with such awful mystery as the self-
sacrifice of Christ an event so stupendous as the
crucifixion of the Son of God.

Such, however, would inevitably be introduced into
the practice, as it had been shown symbolically in the
purpose of an art which was not only useful for its
witness to the faith, for its power of instruction, for the
soothing comfort of its effects upon the contemplative
spirit of religion, but, under many circumstances, for
its absolute necessity. The intention, the history, the
need of the world had been leading up to this great
event Suffering and death had been recognised
throughout the existence of humanity as the only
ultimate punishment for crime ; and from the depth of
time the conscience of mankind had accepted sacrifice as
the only means of that atonement of reconciliation which

288 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

could obliterate evil. Whatever sacrifice men could
make, the infirmity and inalienable corruption of their
nature would mar the offering of the very best of them ;
but here was the sacrifice of the only faultless man, the
central figure of the world's history. In its divine ideal
it was impossible of representation ; but imagination
may be too much constrained. Human sense must
be satisfied when its object may be gained without
offence. Humanity had its entire part in that its central
sacrifice ; and for its sight it craved that which had
been already pictured in its heart.

For above a thousand years among the numberless
subjects which have covered the walls of sacred places
the bare cross was still prominent. In the sacred
solitudes of the Catacombs the crucified figure was not
seen till for seven hundred years the cross alone had
sufficed to fill the minds of Christian worshippers. To
their accustomed eyes the cross personified their Master,
and was itself an epitome of gospel story. If in the
secret recesses of individual lives the craving for reality
had allowed what no other eyes were to rest upon, and
the figure of the Crucified was drawn, engraved, or set
as a treasure of jewelry, an amulet or a memorial,
such it was and no more. The unoccupied cross ex-
pressed the idea of Christendom as the symbol of
victory. Its form was drawn upon the ground as the
plan on which Constantine's great basilicas were built,
the church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople and
of St. Peter's within and St. Paul's without the walls of
Rome. Embossed with jewelry on solid gold, it was
the chief ornament of the ceiling in his Imperial palace
of the East. It filled the centre of the dome of the
mausoleum of the Empress Placidia. In the baptistery
of St. Pontianus at Rome it still stands above the pool
of water, painted of large dimensions, rich with jewels,
and richer still with its symbolism of sacrifice and life,

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 289

bearing on its cross-beam the two lighted candles with
the Alpha and Omega suspended beneath them, in
place of Him who in two natures was " the Light of
the world," " the first and the last." Here the jewelled
cross was itself the symbol of His precious death, and
the fresh branches of leaves and flowers, which grew 7
out all up its stem, as it rose from the water, were the
symbols of His life. In the apse of St. Pudentiana
the bare cross represents not suffering but victory over
death and evil, as it rises above His enthroned figure
with the emblems of the evangelists right and left.
It personates Him in the scene of the transfiguration
as it stands on the mount between Moses and Elias
with the three disciples symbolised as sheep beneath it,
over the altar of S. Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna.
As late as the thirteenth century it was set in mosaic, as
the great cross of baptism, in the apse of the Lateran
basilica, where the stream of blessing poured from
above issues from its base as a fountain of living water,
and then separates into the four rivers of Paradise.

In less prominent forms but executed with the
utmost care the bare cross was multiplied during the
first five centuries, sometimes with a sacramental, some-
times with a personal reference, as it is seen taking the
place of Christ's majesty, placed on a throne sur-
rounded by the standing figures of the apostles, on the
cupola of the baptistery at Ravenna ; or, even in a
more remarkable manner, occupying the place of
honour on the wall above the apse of Santa Maria
Maggiore at Rome, where in the centre above the
subjects of the annunciation, the adoration of the Magi,
and others, a throne, much in the form of an altar, is
placed with the sacred roll of the Scriptures upon it,
and a small black cross, crowned and covered with a
veil standing upon it, representing the offering upon
the altar, while a large cross rises up above it, richly

290 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

jewelled, reaching to the roof, the symbol of the sacri-
fice. In sculpture the cross is equally various and
beautiful. On the front of the sarcophagus of Anicius
Probus, Praetorian Prefect of the province of Italy in
395, a tall and youthful figure of Christ stands under
the central arch supporting by His right hand an orna-
mented cross, of the same height as Himself, and with
the left holding the roll of the Gospel. One other
sculptured sarcophagus must not be passed without
notice, because of the emphasis given to the crucifixion
as the one subject omitted among the many relating to
it. It is in the Lateran Museum, and dates about A.D.
400. The cross occupies the central position, with
doves seated on the transverse beam, and its upper
limb supporting the monogram XP enclosed within a
wreath. Beneath it are seated two figures, and on the
right and left are sculptured the groups of Christ held
by a soldier -before the judgment-seat ; an attendant
bringing the basin and water to Pilate, who is seated,
with averted face, in doubt ; balanced on the opposite
side by the subjects of Christ bearing the cross and a
soldier crowning Him with thorns, in this case more
like a wreath of leaves, the central subject of the cruci-
fixion being expressed only by its symbols. As the
symbol of baptism, a tall cross is carved upon the font
of the church of S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, where
it stands supreme upon the globe (about A.D. 570).

As the prominent devotional ornament of a church,
Paulinus, the Bishop of Nola, about 403, describes
in one of his poetical epistles in honour of St. Felix,
the way in which he combined the cross with the figure
of the Lamb. He had covered the entrance through
the cloisters to the church with pictures to tempt the
people to come in, and other parts of the building with
subjects from the Old Testament ; but in the apse of
the basilica at Fondi, above the altar, he represented

vii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 291

the Lamb with a crimson cross above it, about which
he writes thus :

" The work and wage of saints hold well together,
Steep though their cross, their prize is high their crown
God's self to us Lord both of cross and crown,
Midst heavenly groves of glorious Paradise.
In the white Lamb beneath a blood red cross,
Christ stands the Lamb the sinless victim doom'd
To undeserved death." l

The desire to realise the scene of the crucifixion,
and yet the dread of exposing its suffering and shame,
was exhibited in the ingenious expedients of its indirect
representation, of which there is a beautiful illustration
in a small work which has so nearly attained the com-
plete subject of the crucifixion as to have represented
the two thieves crucified right and left, with a vacant
cross between them, the blessed Virgin being on one
side and St. Peter holding his keys on the other, and
below them the tomb with the two Maries approaching,
and the angel watching beside it. At the top of the
whole composition is the head of Christ glorified, with
a cruciform nimbus, and the sun and moon on either
side ; but the one figure, the key to the whole, is
omitted, and the cross, with two figures (Adam and
Eve ?) kneeling beside it, stands in the centre unoc-
cupied of living wood covered with its leaves.

This is the subject figured upon one of the metal
flasks containing holy oil from the graves of the martyrs
in the catacombs of Rome, which Gregory the Great
presented in A.D. 604 to the Lombard Queen Thodo-
linda. The traditional account of these flasks, and

1 Sanctorum labor et merces sibi rite cohserent,
Ardua crux pretiumque crucis sublime corona,
Ipse Deus, nobis princeps crucis atque corona,
Inter gloriferi cseleste nemus paradisi,
Sub cruce sanguinea niveo stat Christus in agno,
Agnus ut innocua injusto datus hostia leto.

EPISTLE xxxii.

292 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

corroborated by the character of their art, is that they
were brought to Rome from Jerusalem, where they had
served to hold the oil for lamps in the holy places.
They now belong to the treasury of the cathedral at
Monza. On another of these flasks the crucifixion is
represented by the figure of Christ in the attitude of
crucifixion, and fully draped, but with no cross be-
hind it.

But England is not wanting in works of this kind.
The work may be rude, but the poetry of its intention
is none the less for the roughness of its handling ; and,
indeed, if the place of England among early Christian
nations is remembered, the struggle of the faith and the
roughness of life, such works have an interest that so
attracts our feeling to the poor uninstructed artist as to
disarm all criticism of his handiwork, -and to engage
our sympathy toward the deep far-reaching idea in his
mind an idea loved and precious to him, vaguely con-
ceived and realised only by an artless art, but precious
to all time as an evidence of the pervading idea of
Christendom to its most distant shores.

Perhaps the earliest objects of Christian represen-
tative art in England are the rude figures on the
crosses, of which the ruins remain in some quiet church-
yards up and down the country, and of which the
models were evidently derived from those erected by
the saintly Columba in the island of lona. From
about A.D. 580 he and his companions had spread
Christianity in the north of England, and among the
most eminent of them, St. Aidan from lona, in 635
founded the monastery of Lindisfarne ; and another,
Diuma by name, who died in 659, was consecrated at
Repton the first bishop of the Mid- Angles. With these
men and those who came with them, the traditions of
Christian art were brought to the heart of England.
But art itself was non-existent there, and the earliest

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 293

attempts were the works of artless hands of men feeling
after the means to realise the ideas which fascinated
and occupied their imagination. We need not wander
far south from that immediate neighbourhood to find
illustrations of their works. At Wirkworth Church in
Derbyshire, in the year 1820, a stone measuring 5 feet
long by 2 feet 9 inches wide was turned up from the
covering of a grave in the chancel, 2 feet below the
floor, of which the side that had been reversed was
found covered with elaborate sculpture. It was of the
rudest kind. The design was divided into two series
of subjects, one over the other, somewhat confused in
arrangement, and leaving much, but plainly, to be inter-
preted. On the left at the top the subject is that of
Christ stooping to wash the Apostles' feet. Next to
them is a broad plain cross taking the whole height
of the division, and with all four arms equal. In the
centre of its flat unornamented surface is a small
medallion, precisely where the medallion of Christ's
portrait occurs in the great cross of the Transfiguration
at Ravenna, and that of His baptism upon the cross of
the Lateran at Rome ; but here the medallion is occu-
pied by the figure of a dead lamb. It is but poorly
executed, but the whole idea is there. The little
animal, with his head drooped in death and his legs
crumpled together, was in the poor artist's mind the
figure of the " Lamb as it had been slain." Thus the
poorest art often contains the deepest poetry, and is
often all the more effective from its pure and simple
suggestiveness, incapable of realism. It cannot be told
when this work was executed, but it must have been
in Saxon times. The Norman conquerors had ruined
all that they could reach that might remain to the
glory of the vanquished ; and this reversed and buried
monument, without a name and without a record, tells
the story of their reckless policy. To what purpose it

294 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

could have served can only be conjectured, for it might
equally well have formed the side of a sarcophagus, or
an altar frontal or a reredos.

Thus, and in countless other ways, the subject of
the crucifixion was approached in northern and
southern art as mingled fear and reverence sur-
rounded and restrained it. To represent its reality
was irksome and grievous, so the figure of the cross
alone became the accepted symbol of the sacrifice,
and the flowers and foliage springing from its stem
were the symbols of the life which that sacrifice had
won ; or, if that would not suffice, the Lamb was
drawn standing by the cross, or on Mount Calvary,
bleeding from five wounds, or laid upon the altar,
with the cross or monogram rising above it, or with
the seven golden candlesticks or the four archangels
grouped on either side. It was the favourite subject
carved by rudest hands no less than the honoured
subject chosen for works of the highest art that the
time could produce, as we find it selected for the
central medallion of the silver-gilt cross presented to
the basilica of St. Peter at Rome by the Emperor
Justin II. in the sixth century, where the figure of
the Lamb, that by its nimbus is shown to personify
Christ, is represented carrying the cross.

But sight craved for more : such art could not
satisfy ; the mere animal form of the Lamb could
afford no expansiveness of expression, nor among the
circumstances of the crucifixion could it take but an
insufficient part, and arouse but a limited sympathy.
Its effect was extremely various, for to some minds
the strain of thought which symbolism demanded
became wearisome, and the very symbol itself be-
came at last repugnant ; while to others the attri-
buted sanctity of its associations aroused a devotion
akin to idolatry. It was, therefore, at an age of

viii ADORNMENT OF ACRED BUILDINGS 295

matured Christianity, in no spirit of irreverence, nor
in want of adequate reason, that the Greek Council
at Constantinople in 692 broke through the antipathy
and dread that Christendom had hitherto felt to direct
representation, and ordered that in place of these
symbols, the figure of Christ should be represented.

There was good ground for the theory on which
the judgment of that Council was based, for realism is
the absolute opposite to that mysticism in which dis-
ordered imagination loses its way into the regions of
idolatry. Every approach to realism in art is a step
in the direction of that perfection which so absorbs all
interest in itself as to allow no space nor spring for
individual independence. The consummate art of
Greek sculpture or of Raphael's painting seems to
balk all further thought. Its interest or poetry of
idea is concentrated within itself. The subject, the
treatment, the expression are complete; they absorb
all thought and master all imagination. If feeling
is roused, it is within the limits of the subject itself;
if devotional sense is touched, it is in sympathy alone
with the artist's expression of it. But a vaguer art,
symbolic and ideal, whether simply so or made so by
consummate artifice, touches another chord in human
nature, sets the heart free, and opens wide the springs
of association an art, apparently unconscious of itself,
that all generations have loved for its pure and fresh
suggestiveness ; an art that had no power to satisfy,
but set the mind pondering, far off in time and place,
on the realities of the past and of the future, where the
affections might rest or the imagination wander free.

It had been only through the excess of this ideal
freedom that the pure purposes of early Christian art
had been perverted ; but now, in the fearlessness of
direct representation, the way of art's advance was
cleared, and though the figure of the symbolic " Lamb

296 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

as it had been slain" that antiquity had hallowed, and
martyrs, saints, and generations of the faithful had
looked upon and loved, had power still to appeal to
all hearts by the touch of poetry, and of nature too,
that it possessed, the more grave and great reality
of Christ's own figure, slowly, but surely, gained that
place which the enlarging sphere of art itself, and the
expanding intelligence of more cultured life, demanded.

Still reverence stayed the artist's hand. The author-
ity of the gospels that His garment and His vesture
were taken from Him, confirmed by the common
custom at Roman crucifixions, presented a reality
too painful for representation. Pain and degradation
might be thought of, but the higher ideal of dignity
prevailed ; and if the sacred body of the Son of God
that alone almost too awful for thought was to
be represented on the cross, it must be with reverence.
So the figure was draped from the shoulders to the
feet. The nude figure, clothed only with a short
skirt about the loins, sketched as a caricature on the
walls of the palace of the Caesars, has been offered
as a proof of the representation of this subject being
practised by Christians in the second century ; but
the whole tone of early symbolism, the avoidance of
the .subject in all places where early art is extant,
the marked omission of the figure even where the
absence of it spoils a composition, the negative evi-
dence of early literature in which the subject, in
relation to the arts, finds no place, are a sufficient
reply. The scene of a crucifixion was common at
Rome at that time, and furnished the caricaturist
with all he needed to throw scorn on those who were
the Christians of Caesar's household.

Archaeology has been searched in vain to ascer-
tain the earliest example of the crucifixion as a
subject of wall painting. If any surmise might be

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 297

fairly made from the illustrations of it in smaller
works, it must have had its earliest development in
the Eastern rather than the Western Church. The
approach to it appears to have been characterised by
the reverential avoidance of the nude figure ; but it
is remarkable that the illustration, which bears evi-
dence of being the earliest known extant specimen
of it in painting, exhibits the figure nude, with the
exception of a small loin cloth. The reason for this
peculiarity, exceptional in the early practice, is in-
teresting and explains the adoption of it in that par-
ticular instance and its prevalance in after ages.

The controversies relating to the person and nature
of Christ greatly disturbed the peace of the Church at
that time, from the fifth to the seventh centuries, and
among the various parties into which the contending
sects of Nestorians and Eutychians formed themselves
was one which, from the desertion of its leaders, who
joined the orthodox Church, called themselves " the
akephaloi," headless. Against these, who had adopted
the monophysite heresy, the monk Anastasius Sanaita,
about A.D. 600, composed a written refutation, and to
give force to his arguments, which, with their answers,
have been preserved among his writings, he states that
he drew a picture of the Crucified ; and such was the
successful employment of this illustration in the con-
troversy, that he left at his death a request that who-
ever copied his MS. should also copy his picture.
This was done, and led to the adoption of that par-
ticular form of the composition for its doctrinal value,
and thus to the perpetuation of it to the present day,
with such slight variation of detail only as style,
country, or date may have suggested. The picture
presents the crucifix alone, with the body rather
standing than hanging from the cross, uncovered, ex-
cept by a short skirt from the hips to above the knee-

298 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

caps. The head, with a rayed nimbus, declines to the
right, its long hair falling down behind the shoulders ;
each foot being nailed to the support, and blood flow-
ing from the five wounds. 1

It has been already mentioned that although the
Council at Constantinople in 692 had ordered the
picturing of Christ's body on the cross, it had not
actually originated that practice, for natural representa-
tions of the crucifixion were known previous to that
time in miniature painting and in objects of private
use. For instance, there is a small cross among the
treasures of the cathedral at Monza which dates from
a period above half a century before that Council ; and
by the account of it, which there is reason to accept as
true, this precious object of devotion h'ad belonged to
Gregory the Great, who had sent to the Queen Theo-
dolinda the flask of holy oil, and who subsequently
sent this pectoral cross to her on the birth of her son
Adulowald. The figure of Christ is here designed as
standing on a suppedaneum, and nailed to an inlaid
piece of the true cross, His body being draped from
the neck to the feet, the arms and feet being left bare.
The piece of the true cross is inlaid upon a small
golden cross, ornamented with a beaded outline and
with minute enamelled figures of the Virgin and St.
John at the extremities of the cross bar, a rich nimbus
round the head, and the sun and moon above the
superscription.

But another illustration, half a century previous to
the last, viz. in 586, is the earliest picture I am able to
find of the entire subject of the crucifixion, with the
associated persons and incidents complete. It is on
the first page of a manuscript of the Gospels in the
Laurentian library at Florence, which purports to be

1 Kimstgeschichte des Kreuzes. Von Dr. J. Stockbauer, Schaffhausen,
1870, pages 163-4.

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 299

written at that date by one Rabula, a monk of Zaba
in Messopotamia. Here also the figure of Christ is
entirely draped, hanging upon a cross somewhat higher
than those on each side, where hang the two thieves,
their bodies being nude, with the exception of a very
small loin cloth. The composition forms a complete
picture, and in spite of infirmities of drawing it is
full of expression, both in attitude and countenance.
A small amount of sky only appearing at the top, with
the disks of the sun and moon above the central cross,
the groups of figures are relieved against a background
of rugged mountain. To the right (dexter] of the cross
Longinus, whose name is written above him in Greek,
pierces Christ's side with a spear, and on the opposite
side a figure draped in a long tunic, holding the " vessel
full of vinegar" in his left hand, raises with the other
the sponge upon a stalk of hyssop. Beneath this group
three soldiers are gambling for the vesture, and groups
of women standing on the extreme right and left com-
plete the composition. Of these, only one has a nimbus,
which at once designates her as the blessed Virgin, close
to whom a figure (more probably that of the Magdalene
than St. John) stands with her hand raised to her face
in an attitude of grief; and on the opposite side the
three women who had " followed Him from Galilee, and
ministered to Him of their substance," balance the com-
position. Thus these two first forms of representing
the figure crucified, as described above, and this picture
of the scene of the crucifixion in a manuscript gospel
of the year 586, seem to have been so completely con-
ceived as to have formed the types from which these
subjects have been repeated with but little variation till
now just 1300 years. They are both Greek.

The reverence, which such illustrations of the sub-
ject exhibit, was carried still farther by representing
the figure of Christ as the Lord of Life, standing before

300 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

the cross crowned. The famous crucifix at Lucca is
perhaps the earliest extant example of this treatment.
The figure is of cedar wood, and by its style it is
evidently of oriental origin. It is clothed in a rich
garment of gold damask, reaching to the feet. The
legs were also clothed and the feet covered with silver
shoes, and beneath them is placed the sacramental
chalice. Though the age of this work cannot be
definitely fixed, the date of the sixth century, which
has been assigned to it, may be true. It was brought
to Lucca in 782. 1 The expression of similar reverence

1 As a result of accident, credulity, and imposture, many works of art
have been attributed to St. Luke, but totally without historical authority.
It is hardly necessary to refer to the extreme improbability of St. Luke
being an artist as well as physician, from the antipathy to all artistic re-
presentation in which as a Jew he had been brought up, an antipathy
inherited by all the early Christians. The earliest date at which he is
represented as a painter is at the close of the tenth century in the illumin-
ations of the Menologion of Basil II., where he is drawn at his easel
engaged upon a portrait of the blessed Virgin. Bologna possesses one
such portrait attributed to him, of which Masius in Bologna perlus-
trata, gives an account, that it was brought to Bologna in the latter half
of the twelfth century, having been found at Jerusalem by Eudosia, wife
of Theodosius the Younger (408-450), and sent by her to her sister Pul-
cheria at Constantinople, where after its miraculous preservation from fire,
it was kept in Sa. Sophia ; but there is no historical reference to St. Luke
at that time ; indeed I find no notice of him as a painter before the sixth
century. In the Diet, of Christ. Antiq., page 878, is a reference to a
writer about A.D. 518, which I have not the opportunity to verify, who
mentions this same picture. It appears to be the earliest reference to him
as an artist. The author was Theodoras the Lector of Constantinople,
whose original work is lost, and only known by its relics or excerpts quoted
in Nicephorus's Ecclesiastical History. These extracts treat of church
history, and particularly of works of art at Constantinople ; and by events
to which he refers the earliest date to which his writings can be assigned is
to the reign of Justin I. (518-527), or for good reasons more probably above
200 years later. The tale about Eudosia's picture by St. Luke was but
an anecdote for which he offers no authority. Nicephorus, through whom
we have the quotation, died about A.D. 1470. So there was ample time
for any development. The first person who mentions this Theodoras Lector
is St. John Damascene, who died about A.D. 758, whose predilections on
such subjects are well known. The portrait of Christ by St. Luke, set up in
the Vatican by Pope Gregory IX. in 1234, illustrates the confidence with
which St. Luke's artistic productions were received in the early middle
ages. The jealousy of cities and religious establishments led to the
miraculous multiplication of these portraits, as was subsequently the case

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 301

is found in painting in a manuscript of the Gospels
belonging to the nunnery of Niedermunster, at Regens-
burg, of the earliest years of the eleventh century,

with that of Sa. Veronica ; and any mysterious-looking Byzantine picture
at Rome or elsewhere, of which no one knew the origin, was conveniently
attributed to St. Luke.

The figure at Lucca, which came to be known as the "Volto Santo
di Lucca," was brought there in 782, at that time not assigned to St. Luke
but to Nicodemus. The confusion between the name of the place and
that of the evangelist is the only assignable reason for its fame as the
work of St. Luke. A simple transposition of a letter might equally account
for its attribution to Nicodemus : for the figure is one of Eastern origin,
and may have very possibly been brought from the East soon after its rescue
from the emissaries of Leo the Iconoclast, about A.D. 730, and have been
introduced, at its last resting-place, Lucca, as the " Sacro Volto di Nico-
demia " (for Nicomedia, one of the most important and wealthy Christian
cities of the East), and as the geographical knowledge of the inhabitants of
Lucca was nil, the word would have been at once associated with the only
name that every one did know, viz. Nicodemus. This figure had also been
confounded with a wonder-working image at Baryta, afterwards brought to
Constantinople, but at that time associated neither with Nicodemus nor St.
Luke. It was subsequent to the fame attained by this "Volto Santo" at
Lucca that St. Luke became generally regarded as an artist. It was to
the interest of the supporters of the Second Council of Nicea, A.D. 787,
that he should be so. But nothing can be too wonderful for tradition on
such subjects. Manni, in his Lezione del vero Litca Santo, illustrates their
absurdity by quoting an author who describes a picture of the Virgin, painted
on wood by St. Luke, that was brought to Rome by St. Peter and presented
by him to St. Romolo. Another solemnly asserts that it was Martha the
sister of Lazarus who brought to Rome a portrait of Christ. He further
illustrates the confusion of names and authorities in the middle ages, by
referring to a work published at Florence in 1441, dedicated to " St. John,
Baptist, Apostle, and Evangelist," and to the same effect he quotes the
Capitoli of the Academy of St. Luke the Evangelist, in which the saint is
called "Apostolo."

After the fame of the Lucca crucifix, confused with the name of St.
Luke, had originated the fashion of attributing many works to that saint,
the monk Niceforus Calistus, writing in the fourteenth century an account
of the church of the company of Nostra Donna dell' Impruneta at Florence,
states that that (then famous) picture was painted by St. Luke " Christi
matris imaginem Apostolus Lucas suis ipse manibus depinxit," etc. This
was an evident confusion of names derived from that of a certain Luca, a
man of such saintly life in Florence in the eleventh century as to have been
styled Luca Santo. He was an artist, and had been employed by the
founders of a Romitorio (an establishment of recluses) in 1097. The
church of the "Impruneta" existed at that time, and its famous picture is
attributable to this Luca Santo. But so completely had the name of the
evangelist taken his place that the Government authorities of Florence in
1385, writing to Pope Urban VI., vindicated the authority of this picture

302 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

which represents Christ standing before the cross,
crowned^ draped, and with a crossed nimbus about his
head. He looks downward to a female figure standing
beside the cross, with her hands raised as in adoration,
wearing a crown with a small cross above it, who, by
the word VITA written beside her, is evidently in-
tended to impersonate redeemed life. On the opposite
side is the male figure of MORS, death, in the attitude
of falling, and holding a broken spear which wounds
his head. There is a beautiful illustration of this
tribute of honour to the crucified Saviour in a wall-
painting of the middle of the thirteenth century, in the
church of St. Sylvestro at Rome, which presents a very
complete picture, with the two thieves crucified, and
Longinus with his spear on one side and Stephaton
with the sponge of vinegar on the other ; but the
specially original feature of the scene is the figure of
an angel hovering above the cross, placing with the
right hand a royal crown on the Saviour's head, and
with the left carrying away the crown of thorns.

Among the number of invaluable works of early
and mediaeval art, of which all vestiges have been lost
by the destruction of the original basilica of St. Peter
at Rome, were two important pictures of this subject
in mosaic. They were executed by direction of Pope
John VII. in the year 706, and had they existed till
now they would have been unique among Christian
mosaics as specimens of the earliest pictures of the
crucifixion publicly exhibited at Rome, important in
the dimensions and the completeness of their design.
They ornamented the space above the entrance, and

as one by " St. Luca, Apostolo." Vide also Manni "del errore che per-
siste di attribuirsi le pitture al Santo Evangelista. " He quotes Padre
Landucci on the subject of many pictures of the blessed Virgin painted by
St. Luke, on the authority that "in the year 359 the dead body of St.
Luke was discovered, and that at the head of the grave was found a
portrait of the Virgin," but the author wisely abstains from stating where
this occurred !

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 303

on one of the interior walls of a chapel dedicated by
him to the blessed Virgin. The exterior mosaic was
the more complete, exhibiting the crucified figure
clothed in a long tunic to the feet, and, though pierced
by the spear, alive, with open eyes and without trace
of suffering in quiet dignity, as though triumphant
over death even upon the cross. The figures of the
sponge -bearer, His mother, and the faithful disciple
stood beside Him. The other picture, within the
chapel, presented a similar figure of the living Christ,
also clothed to the feet, with angels on each side in
attitudes of adoration, the sun and moon being shown
above, and the figures of His mother and St. John
standing below. 1

These few examples are enough at least to illustrate
the tone of feeling with which such subjects were then
approached. It was an age perhaps justly charged
with ignorance and superstition, its misfortune rather
than its fault, but holding firmly to a genuine faith in
the realities of those great truths which art was thus
employed to teach ; and worthy at least of our reverence
and regard for that spiritual ideal which it possessed,
but which our own age wants, an ideal as precious as it
is rare.

To refill the void, which accident and the frailty of
materials have caused, the sole resource open to us is
to recreate in imagination the great works with which
the walls of sacred buildings were once covered, by
picturing them as in character and composition similar
to those smaller works which to our day have been pre-
served in sculpture or among the pages of illumination,
or treasured in the forms of enamel or jewelry. The
painting of the crucifixion upon a wall, which claims
the earliest date, is the one mentioned in the writings
of St. Gregory of Tours, about A.D. 600, in the cathe-

1 Vide Ciampini, De Sacris sEdificiis. Tav. xxiii.

304 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

dral of Narbonne. It has long since perished. In that
picture the figure of Christ was nude ; and by the same
authority the story is preserved that the exposure of
the sacred body so distressed the good bishop of that
See, that by his direction a curtain was kept drawn
before it. Another early wall painting of the cruci-
fixion is that in the Julian catacomb at Rome, in all
probability of the eighth or ninth century, in which our
Lord stands before the cross upon a suppedaneum, with
both hands nailed, and clothed from the neck to the
feet in a long white robe. It is composed, as very
many have been since, with the cross measuring the
main height and breadth of the picture, and with none
but the figures of the blessed Virgin and St. John
beside it. Our Lord is alive, and in perfect repose.
He bows His head and looks down upon His mother
as though addressing to her the words, " Woman, behold
thy son."

Thus, in all the works of whatever kind representing
this subject, it is worthy of remark, that till the close
of the first 1000 years of the era, with rarest exception,
the figure of Christ is represented alive, and not till the
eleventh century were developed the types of suffering
and death.

It is a common remark that the character of an
age is illustrated by its arts ; and it would be strange
if it were not so, for art is no more nor less than a
mode of expressing human feeling ; it is as a tool in a
man's hand, and as the heart is that guides that hand,
so will the art be. Those centuries were saddened by
violence and barbarism, and art only repeated the sense
of oppression which characterised them. Refuge and
relief were sought in monastic seclusion, but the disci-
pline of the cloister only too often consummated the
sadness which prevailed in the world outside. When
life awoke in the following age, the inherited asceticism

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 305

still swayed the minds of the church's most devoted
sons, and turned the course of their spiritual life into
an enthusiasm of suffering. Thus art was still veiled
in sadness, and the central figure of all its interest was
exhibited scored with pain, wearied, wan and dead.
And the spirit of sadness has pervaded the arts of
religious expression ever since ; but as the day of
trouble cleared, art cleared too, still often sad, as remi-
niscence might well make it, but turning sadness into
poetry, making suffering heroic and pathos sublime.

But such result was not attained at once, nor indeed
has it at any time been attained but by few. In that
age the ideal of suffering had mastered the mind of
art. Self-imposed suffering had become the accepted
sign of sanctity; for the Master was the great example;
and from this an ideal was formed of human life asso-
ciated with Deity, against which art had for centuries
struggled by recourse to symbol and emblem ; but,
having once succumbed, it was held spell-bound ; and
Christ no more the spotless Lamb with the rivers of
Paradise breaking forth from beneath His feet, no more
as the Lord of life in triumph over the Cross before
which He stood habited as King, and crowned as
Supreme, His precious death was pictured not as rest
but agony.

To attain the higher ideal it needed conditions
which that age had neither the sensibility to feel nor
the power to express. Art had fallen everywhere. In
the north, what little remained from the influence of
such feeble art as Roman conquerors had introduced
had been lost in the succeeding barbarism. The
dignity that had first been acquired from classic models,
and in the days of its decline had imparted a charm of
reserve and repose to Byzantine art, had now degene-
rated into stiffness ; and the dramatic action of Italian
art had fallen into imbecility. Beauty was impossible

306 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

to either. The crucifix was the symbol of a grievous
penance ; the attitude of the Crucified was of one bent
in pain and debased in helplessness. The great artists
of the first renaissance, such as Giunta of Pisa, Margari-
tone of Arezzo, Guido of Siena, Cimabue of Florence,
set painful examples. Through all the phases of Gothic
painting and sculpture in Europe at that age, the
Saviour was known only as the Man of Sorrows,
wounded, dead. It needed the devotional sense of the
Umbrian school to mitigate the exhibition of pain, and
the piety of Giovanni da Fiesole to present the Lord
in quietude upon the cross.

The artists who had treated the subject till the
eleventh century had represented it with dignified
reverence, and had done their best to relieve it of all
pain but such as was inevitable to it. They pictured
the Crucified alive, calm and painless ; and maintained
the tradition of the sacred words that "His mother
was standing by His cross," as they painted her some-
times, motionless, in silent grief, sometimes with arms
stretched out, or hands and head raised towards Him,
as though listening to His last words. St. John too
was standing there with equal calmness contemplating
his dying Master.

But art became confused and depressed, and
another ideal was adopted, which spread far and wide.
With the Italians it had declined altogether, and north
of the Alps it hardly existed. The Greeks who had
been invited in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to
Venice and Florence, the native painters who had risen
in Pisa, Lucca, Siena, and Arezzo, had spread their
influence in the south ; and the pilgrims from afar
had carried home tales of wonder, and spread their
reminiscences among the artists of the north. The
pictures of these Greeks and their Italian pupils were
composed sometimes with the isolated figure alone,

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 307

sometimes with small panels filling up the intervals
afforded by the arms of the cross, and painted with
incidents from our Lord's life. The figure itself was
often colossal, and always painful, emaciated and dis-
torted in form, livid and unnatural in colour. It could
only repel the sight and harass the thought, in the
attempt to show what load of suffering, for what mass
of sin, as that of the whole world, was needed for its
redemption. It was the result of a morbid state of
religious life. Whether from the roughness of the
times, or the false ideal of terror as the only element of
power to affect the rudeness of the public mind, the
true idea of the crucifixion was missed or ignored. A
finer sense could alone conceive and portray the
beauty of self-devotion, in a sacrifice self-imposed, a
death accepted as the only mode of sacrifice, irrespec-
tive of its terror or its pain ; the fulfilment of the
mystery of reconciliation, by the wrong done by death
to a perfectly just Man, to balance the wrong done by
sin to a perfectly just God ; and thus in the person of
Christ, as between God and man, to redress the equi-
poise of perfect justice. Such a conception of love as
of one who had "laid down His life for His friends,"
who accepted the conditions with a perfect obedience
less perfectly illustrated in the sufferings of His death
than in the dignity of His resignation, was an ideal,
if not beyond the apprehension, at least beyond the
expression of the artists of those days.

There was but little joy and less consolation to be
got from such art as theirs. Their feeling was sincere,
but their art was constrained ; for their age was in the
throes of troublous uncertainty, hardness, and contest,
and they spoke its sentiment. But the eyes of wor-
shippers grew weary and longed for other things ; their
faith had hope in it, and they looked for that to meet
their eyes that would reflect the hope they felt. It is

308 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

therefore easy to conceive how welcome was the change
from those lifeless, severe, forbidding forms, which pre-
sented to them only their Redeemer's agony, to bleed
the heart in scathing penance rather than tell how their
" sorrow and sighing should flee away," how welcome
was the relief in that full flow of life and warmth of
human sympathy, which glowed in the works of the
youthful Giotto. He brought to them a pure and
nature-loving genius, fresh as the air of his native
Apennines, and rich in variety as the flowery vale he
had adopted as his home. As with those who had
gone before him, the subject for which all eyes looked
was Christ upon the cross ; and it was to his higher
sense of the dignity and pathos of that scene that are
due those elements of natural emotion, of dramatic
interest and devotional expression that he realised in
his works, which opened the way to all succeeding
artists to delineate, in such variety of suffering or resig-
nation, sorrow or rest, as might most deeply touch the
heart of each one of them, the awful scene of that
central tragedy of the world. Giotto was still young
when he painted it on the sacred walls of Assisi. The
figure of the Crucified as he there painted it is dead,
but no more in the attitude of distorting agony.
Suffering and sorrow have indeed left their marks upon
it, but rather by that self-imposed sacrifice to engage
the adoration of His love than to strike with awe by
the exhibition of His pain. His mother had stood
beside His cross, and had heard His last words to her ;
but " a sword had pierced through her heart also," and
she has fallen fainting in the arms of her friends. The
other Maries, and those whom the gospel story had
described, are there ; and, as if prefiguring those who
were to take up the cross and follow Him, St. Francis
and the brothers of his order stand there, also His faithful
witnesses, and angels hover above in attitudes of grief.

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 309

Young Giotto's art was still imperfect ; the tradi-
tions of the school in which he had been trained were
not to be dispelled at once, but his great soul had found
the true means of its expression ; his genius had
restored life to art and had set it free.

If at this period we look for the great exemplars in
the countries of the south and east, it is inevitable, for
north European art was then but just settling from its
first enthusiasm into definite systems of native and
independent growth, and had but just laid the first lines
on which the beauty of its maturity was to be drawn.
In the east there still lived the tradition of great days,
but in low estate. Its technical knowledge was invalu-
able, and had been eagerly sought and studied as the
foundation on which art in many parts of Europe had
received the first elements of its education. But a
more living art now bloomed in Italy, and it is there
that we must look in this age for its finest models.

From that great fresco in the lower church at
Assisi, every variety in the treatment of its subject has
been developed, as the feeling of each artist conceived
it, between the extremes of conventionality and realism.
There are two great wall paintings which may suffice
to illustrate this, the one devotional by Beato da
Fiesole, the other dramatic by Tintoretto.

On the wall of the chapter room of St. Mark's at
Florence, Angelico has presented the subject as one of
ideal devotion in a painting of large dimension with
figures life-size. The three crucified figures are there
high above the company of kneeling and adoring saints,
a scene wholly conventional, and without regard to
time or place. Christ hangs in peace upon the cross ;
His head, wearing the crown of thorns, bends slightly
down, asleep in death. All pain has ceased. He has
" given his life for the world," and " It is finished."

The only historic incident introduced is the group

310 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

of his fainting mother, supported on one side, as she
falls, by her sister Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and on
the other by St. John. The Magdalene kneels in front
of her and clasps her in her arms. Beside them the
Baptist stands with the usual cross of reeds in his hand,
and St. Mark kneels in front of him supporting the
open volume of his Gospel on his knee. All the other
figures are those of the doctors and saints of the early
and mediaeval Church. In the place of honour, kneel-
ing close below the cross, is St. Dominic, the founder of
the order, with head thrown back, directing his eyes
upward, and holding out both arms in an attitude of
rapt adoration ; St. Ambrose stands behind him point-
ing to the cross, and, slightly turned, looks down
toward St. Jerome, who kneels with hands clasped in
prayer: With equally expressed devotion and in great
variety of attitude a crowd of other saintly men, some
stand, some kneel, among whom the more prominent
are St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Benedict and
St. Francis of Assisi bending forward as he kneels in
the intensity of his devotion, engrossed in the contem-
plation of the cross, his refined face in profile express-
ing that combination of enthusiasm and humility which
characterised his life. On the opposite side St.
Laurence and two others complete the saintly com-
pany. It is a scene of exquisite tranquillity, with its
many figures in action and yet at rest, independent yet
united in the one absorbing idea of the adoration of the
Redeemer.

It might be easily conceived how different would be
the conceptions of two such minds as those of Beato
Angelico, trained to the purest spiritual aspirations in
the quiet contemplative life of the cloister, and of Tin-
toretto, the brilliant genius brought up and mingling
daily in the busy turmoil of Venetian society, in an
age and in a place where civilisation had lost its moral

vin AD ORNMENT OF SA CRED B UILDINGS 3 1 1

and religion its spirituality. And indeed no contrast
could be greater than their ideals of this great subject.
Tintoretto has produced a stupendous work, a scene
of awful agony. With fine dramatic effect he has
hidden the countenance of Christ in shadow, as the
head crowned with thorns droops forward in death. The
figure is grandly quiet upon the only upright cross ;
and the halo of pallid light, which envelops it above,
gleams weirdly in that scene of gloom. It is a vast
picture, with numerous figures scattered over it, some
interested, but the most part indifferent; the soldiers at
the entrance of a small cavern in the foreground are
casting dice for the sacred vesture ; and implements of
agony, the axe, the hammer, the saw and the pegs
with which the crosses are fixed in the ground, lie
about in painful reality. There is no sympathy round
the cross. St. John and St. Joseph have left it, and
the holy women are grouped upon the ground fainting
in despair. On each side the executioners are crucify-
ing the thieves, as they lie stretched and struggling on
their crosses upon the ground, a scene of stupendous
horror.

It is with infinite relief one turns to contemplate
another and very different phase of the subject, and one
of exceeding beauty.

Since that age of sadness in the tenth and eleventh
centuries the figure of Christ alive upon the cross is
seen but rarely. Throughout northern art in every
form in which the crucifixion was multiplied, on walls,
in sculpture or in glass painting, the ideal was ever that
of the precious death. In southern art the same senti-
ment prevailed, but with some beautiful exceptions.
The creative genius of the first renaissance of the arts
in Italy, Nicholas of Pisa, in the thirteenth century, in
carving a panel for the pulpit in the baptistery of his
city, represented the Crucified by such a figure as till

312 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

then had not been seen. Reverently did the artist's
hand strike from the marble the ideal of his Redeemer.
Calm and dignified in attitude, without sign of pain,
Christ looks down with half-closed eyes upon His
followers who crowd toward Him. His mother has
fallen backwards into the arms of her friends, and St.
John, in front of her, stands close to the cross, looking
upward, as though silently listening to the message
which committed her to his care. On the opposite
side, the sinister side, all are Jews ; and of these, a
scowling Pharisee and a priest pointing upward in con-
tempt stand forward from the rest, while the multitude
behind them express the mingled sentiments of those
who had raised the cry to crucify Him, and of those
who now awe-struck looked upon Him and would smite
their breasts and return.

In later art it would be hard to find a grander
example suggestive of accompanying events or of
greater intensity of feeling, all- concentrated in the re-
presentation of a single figure, than in that of the cruci-
fixion by Guido at Modena. The solitary figure is
alive, but just about to die ; in pain, indeed, but beauti-
ful, looking upward in utter resignation, as if the last
words had just died upon His lips, " Father, into Thy
hand I commend my spirit," as the darkness settles
around Him, and the storm of wind, indicative of the
earthquake, agitates his drapery.

The last I will mention is a work of Michael
Angelo. There is no known picture or sculpture of
the complete subject of the crucifixion by him ; but
among his drawings in the British Museum there is one
that was evidently a design for a great altar-piece in
basso relievo. It was never executed, but had it been
so, it would have been, if not one of the most powerful,
certainly among the most beautiful of his works. It is
in red chalk, sketchy and incomplete, only the three

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 313

crucified figures being finished, the rest but slightly
indicated, but the whole composition is suggested and
the whole story told. If ever with so few lines the
intensest feeling of this awful scene of solemn grief and
troublous confusion was expressed it is here. The
crosses rise very high above the figures around them.
Men are still engaged, one on the top, another upon a
ladder at the foot of the central cross. The figure of
our Lord is beautiful ; stretched with its arms raised
upward on a Y-shaped cross, painless, motionless, ex-
quisitely patient. The head is slightly drooped in
shadow, as though its mingled love and grief were too
intense to be gazed into ; and so turned toward the left
that only the profile is seen, but still looking upward as
he appeals to heaven, " Father, forgive them, they know
not what they do." There are many figures stretched
below, some in grief holding up their arms to Him,
some grouped round His mother, who has sunk faint-
ing to the ground. It is the picture of a tragedy
indeed, for what else could it be ? but composed with
such reverence, and expressed with such intensity of
mingled tenderness and power, as to engage the deepest
sympathy, and arouse ideas that will not be forgotten.

Sacred imagery is precious to those who can re-
spond to it ; an aid to the weak, a delight to the
strong, a store unfailing for art to use, to adorn not
walls alone but minds, with thoughts of what is highest,
noblest, loveliest that the blessed God had spread along
the path of life, to lead them upward to Himself.

ESSAY VIII Continued

THE ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS

PART II EMBLEMATIC FIGURES STYLE MOTIVE

THAT passing sketch of the greatest motives on which
Christian art has been engaged, may be enough
at least to show how it is the spirit that impels an
artist in his work, that is the source of all its worth. I
am not writing a history of the art, but pretending only
to indicate, in relation to the adornment of sacred
places, the spirit in which an artist should approach
them. His work is not by ornament to pander to the
luxury of sense or satisfy the refinements of cultivated
taste, but to aid architecture by supplementing its
highest purposes, to lift poor mortality above its low
estate, and to add force and interest to the spiritual
influences around it.

Those great buildings which in still dignity tower
above the busy cities around them, witness by their very
forms to motives other than those which actuate com-
mon life ; and within them all that the arts have com-
bined to do, is to tell what those motives are, and, like
incense in the air, to fill the atmosphere with the balm
of rest and hope and heaven-directed thought. Thus
can art minister to spiritual life, and thereby to life's
greatest happiness. Its motto is " sursum corda," but
as we look back on its history and note how various

ESSAY viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 315

are the forms and phases of character to which men's
minds and the spirit of each passing age have moulded
its pliant nature, how sacred art was felt to be, with
what reverence its first essays were inspired, with what
reserve its powers were invoked ; and as the cravings of
a fainting faith in days of trouble cried for its help, or
weak intelligence hailed with gratitude the beautiful
language of its instructive imagery, we see how art
betook to bolder steps, and, impelled by new motives
to satisfy the world's desires, drew from the dramatic
scenery of history, and the vivid truths of life, the
language of her appeals, losing hold on the heart as she
gained on the understanding, and filling with the
limited realities of facts and things, the space that in
a former age had been occupied by the free spirit and
expanding thoughts of allegory.

The development of realism had its losses as well as
its gains. It had progressed steadily from the fourteenth
to the sixteenth century, when the classical furor, carry-
ing all before it, forced art into a new direction, turning
Christian subjects into academic studies, and gradually
materialising its heart. What classicism left, the con-
temporary advance of philosophy and science destroyed,
fascinating the intelligence of the age with theories
which opened a new heaven to the flights of imagina-
tion. Art became artificial ; the source of all its
spiritual interest was sapped, and the springs of its
spontaneous poetry were dried up.

In discordant contrast with all that early art had
conceived, with all that Christian art throughout all its
ages had consecrated, with all that early English
poetry, " with its strong Teutonic sense," had told and
taught, a stilted allegory became the new ideal of the
art, and as the sacred associations of its earlier years
had lost all their charm, its novel symbols owed their
creation to the inspirations of contemporary scholarship

316 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

and secularity. So figures of Saturn, or of Death, in
the interesting condition of a skeleton, presided over the
tombs, brandishing a scythe or shaking an hour-glass
in the face of the world by way of religious consolation.
Neptune wielding his trident marked the sarcophagus
of a Christian admiral, 1 and Fame, that would have
gladly emulated the flight of the winged Nike of
Paeonius, trumpeted to heaven the worldly glories of a
Christian hero. If the cause of morality and religion
happened to need advocacy, the figures of " Patience on
a monument smiling at Grief" were suggested to the
poet's mind, and the elegantly grouped trio of Faith,
Hope, and Charity did duty for its Graces. But when
the poetry of symbolism was invoked to aid religion's
highest flights, then the obelisks of Egyptian supersti-
tion, the broken column of classic Greece, the weeping
willow from the waters of Babylon, or the cinerary urn
of pagan cremation, marked the Christian graves, and
Death's head and cross-bones suggested the aspirations
of immortality !

Such were the edifying symbols and emblematic
figures by which art was engaged to interpret that kind
of spiritual life which the age had drawn from mate-
rialism and philosophy. At another time it had been
otherwise. A different inspiration had produced the
natural poetry of such symbols as the palm, the dove
with its olive branch, the heart with the cross upon it,
the lamb, the anchor, and the crown. Even paganism
had surpassed that Christian age of spiritual independ-
ence in the beauty of its emblematic art, by that deep
and far-reaching poetry, which only simple sincerity and
the true nature of unaffected religion, quite irrespective
of its character or form, can inspire.

1 The late Dean Mansel, describing one such monument in St. Paul's,
suggested that the sceptre of the god might have been intended for the
symbol of Tridentine theology.

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 317

The emblematic figure which for the longest time
continued to be represented in Christian art was that
of Ecclesia, the Church. It had begun in the early cata-
combs and continued into the heart of the middle ages,
when it was supplanted by the figure of the blessed Virgin.
As the Orante of the catacombs it impersonated the mili-
tant church in prayer on earth ; as the Betrothed it
stood nearer to the cross than the virgin Mother ; as
the Bride it had been seated on the heavenly throne.
The female Oranti have been variously assigned to the
portraits of the faithful, on whose tombs they were
painted, or to the blessed Virgin, or to the Church as the
woman regenerated, or the soul united to Christ, as
individual peculiarities indicated them to be. The
most respected authority of early Christian art writes
thus about them, " Souvent 1'orante represente, soit une
martyre, soit une fidele morte, et que plus d'une fois
encore elle personnifie 1'Eglise." 1

Of the figures of " Jesus et Ecclesia " in MS. illumi-
nation, and of representations of Ecclesia in mosaic, I
have written in a former essay, 2 where examples were
given from works of the tenth and thirteenth centuries.
But it is not only found in such monumental works as
those, but in every other form and material of art At
the back of the Siegmaringen crucifix, 3 within a circle
occupying the space of the intersection of the four
arms, is engraved a female figure seated upon a throne,
not crowned, but with apparently a polygonal nimbus,
richly draped, holding in her right hand a standard and
in her left a chalice, with the inscription, *J Sancta
Ecclesia (holy church), engraved round the frame of
the medallion. This crucifix is of about the same date

1 II Cavaliere T. B. de Rossi. Images de la Vierge choisies dans les
Catacombs de Rome. 1863.

2 Christian Mosaic, supra, page 160.

3 An engraving of this is given in the History of ozir Lord in Art, by
Lady Eastlake, vol. ii. p. 332.

318 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

as the great mosaic of the triumph of the Church, in
the character of Christ's Bride upon His throne, in the
church of Sa. Maria in Trastevere at Rome.

Of about this period, or probably somewhat earlier,
there is a remarkable illustration of Ecclesia in an
illuminated MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford,
where the figures of Ecclesia and Christ are side by
side, in the same attitude as in the famous Roman
mosaic, Christ's arm being thrown over her neck, with
the hand appearing on the opposite shoulder. The
Bride is crowned ; her drapery is of gold colour and
emerald green, the napkin beneath the crown being
blue. Both figures have a golden nimbus, and by one
is written the monogram XPC, by the other " ecclla."
Like the Roman mosaic, in which all the scriptural
quotations are taken from the Song of Songs, this
picture also illustrates that bridal poetry, being the
illumination of an initial letter of one of St. Thomas
Aquinas's sermons on that book. 1

The emblematic accessories of the chalice and the
flag mark this figure in almost all the examples where
she stands beside the cross. As the accepted Bride she is
frequently contrasted with the faithless bride of the Jewish
Church, who is also usually distinguished from other
figures by carrying a standard. In mediaeval designs
the figure of the Church abounds in painted glass, as in
that of Chartres, Mans, Bourges, and St. Denis, some-
times carrying a cross, sometimes a model of a little
church, usually with a nimbus about its head and
crowned ; while the figure of the Jewish Church is treated
with indignity, being thrust away with hand or spear,
or, as in the painted glass at Chartres, she has her
eyes bandaged and blinded by a demon ; or, as in that
of Mans, she faints despairingly into the arms of Aaron,
while St. Peter crowns the accepted Ecclesia ; or in

1 Lib. Bod., Laud MS. 127, old number, beneath it [Laud 150].

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 319

that at St. Denis, where she is repudiated by Christ,
who turns with favour to His accepted Bride. As such
it is also found in MS. miniatures, on carved ivories,
and in sculpture. Of the former there is a curious
illustration in a miniature belonging to the church of
St. Cross at Ratisbon, in which, to avoid all mistake,
the Church has her title as the Bride plainly written
"Sponsa." She stands next to the cross and herself
pierces the side of the Crucified, while another figure,
named Fides, issuing from a cloud, holds out the chalice
to catch the blood. Other figures taking part in the
scene are similarly named Pity, Wisdom, and Obedience,
who with gentle care fasten the nails of the cross. On
the opposite side to the Sponsa, is the contrasted group
of an angel reaching from a cloud and urging away
from the cross the figure of the Synagogue, who flies,
with her mantle wrapped closely round her, and carry-
ing in her hand the broken staff of her standard. In
another German painting 1 which forms part of a
thirteenth century altar-piece a similar group is found,
where the angel with rougher hand urges the unfaithful
Synagogue away at the point of a spear. The sacra-
mentary of Metz, now in the National Library at Paris,
is believed to have been written and illuminated for
Bishop Dogon, the son of Charlemagne, about A.D. 850,
and in one of the miniatures of this MS. the Church is
represented standing close to the cross and reaching up
with her chalice to receive the blood from Christ's
wounded side, while the Virgin and St. John stand at a
distance to the right and left.

In sculptured ivory there is a plaque on the bind-
ing of an evangeliary of the ninth century in the
Treasury of Tongres, in the diocese of Liege, on which
four figures stand beside the cross. Those of the
Virgin and St. John are placed outside ; and nearer

1 Forster's Monuments de la Peinture en Alleniagne.

320 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

to the cross, on the dexter side, is a graceful figure of
a young woman holding in her right hand three flowers,
and, in her left, the pole of a banner, against which the
profile of her head is beautifully relieved. This is Ec-
clesia, and the three flowers in her hand are the triple
symbol of the revelation of the Divine Nature, com-
mitted to her custody for the benefit of the world. She
is herself the emblem of the world's new birth through
that revelation. The blessed Virgin has been also
regarded in the same light, and has been therefore
called the second Eve ; but Ecclesia, the spouse of
Christ, is pre-eminently so, 1 for the Church of Christ is
the " Electa," the embodiment of all its members, and is
not figuratively only but really one body 2 with Himself,
and thereby has been otherwise named His Bride.
Contrasted with her on the other side of this com-
position is another young woman symbolising the Jewish
Church, and carrying in her hand the palm branch, the
emblem of her country Palestine, who, turning from the
cross, looks back at it over her shoulder in scorn. In
the sky above, two flying angels hold a crown above
the head of Christ. On the great ivory plaque which
forms part of the binding of an evangeliary, that the
Emperor St. Henry (A.D. 1002-1024) gave to the
cathedral at Bamberg, and now preserved in the library
at Munich, the subject of the crucifixion is elaborately
carved, and supported by others below it, of which
the Maries visiting the tomb is the principal, with em-
blematic figures of the Sea and the Earth beneath them.
In this composition Ecclesia is a most expressive figure.
She stands close to the cross, and, with her head thrown

1 On this subject St. Augustin writes in one of his sermons thus :
' ' Quid enim profluxit de latere nisi sacramentum quod accipiunt fideles,
Spiritus sanguis et aqua ? . . . De ipso sanguine et aqua significatur nata
Ecclesia. Et quando exivit sanguis et aqua de latere? Quum clum
dormiret Christus in cruce ; quia Adam in Paradiso somnum accepit, et
sic illi de latere Eva producta est."

2 i Corinthians xii. 13 ; Ephesians i. 22, 23 ; Colossians i. 1 8, 24.

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 321

back, looks up straight into the face of the dying
Saviour ; Longinus stands below her, and with a long
lance inflicts the wound from which, with the chalice
in her hand, she receives the blood. The standard
rises from behind her with its flag flying above her
head. The whole subject of this ivory is beautifully
thought out by the sculptor. He has placed the
crucified figure lying calmly against the cross, made
of the wood of a rough tree, with angels flying above
it, and above them the hand of God in the act of
benediction. The Virgin and the other Maries stand
together behind Ecclesia ; and on the other side, the
sponge -bearer is close to the cross, with St. John
behind him ; and beyond them is another figure of
Ecclesia with her standard in her left hand, and with
her right stretched out upon the edge of a shield,
which a majestic figure of the Synagogue holds upon
her knees as she sits upon a canopied throne with a
civic crown upon her head.

A remarkable figure of Ecclesia, altogether different
from those described, is sculptured on an ivory slab in
the National Library at Paris. On the space, which
in the Bamberg ivory is occupied by a huge serpent
coiling round the base of the cross, here sits upon a
throne a finely-draped figure of Ecclesia, with her head
turned to look upward to the Crucified, holding in her
right hand the banner, and with her left hand support-
ing a globe, the symbol of the world, and of her com-
mission to it. 1 The groups round the crucifixion are
also arranged in an unusual manner. On the dexter
side the Virgin and St. John stand with their arms ex-
tended toward the cross, and on the left side is another
figure of Ecclesia, in an attitude of energetic address,
with her right hand pointed at a queenly figure seated
on a throne before her, impersonating Jerusalem as the

1 St. Mark xvi. 15 ; St. Matthew xxviii. 19.
Y

322 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

emblem of the Jewish Church, draped richly, holding
in her left hand, as it rests upon her knee, the axe-
shaped knife of the executioner, with the right hand
grasping the pole of a large banner, and having a
unique nimbus formed of a circular wall and five
towers, which stand out with their pointed roofs like
rays round her head.

There are other illustrations as careful and beautiful
as these, but I need trouble the reader with no more
than one, which belongs to an important work in
marble of the thirteenth century. It is the panel by
Niccola Pisano in the baptistery pulpit at Pisa, repre-
senting the crucifixion already described. Here Niccola
has introduced the Christian and the Jewish Churches
in contrast, behind the crowded groups on each side of
the cross. On the right, above the Christian multitude,
the young and graceful figure of Ecclesia, attended by
an angel, leans forward and holds a vase to catch the
blood falling from Christ's right hand ; and in contrast
to this group, and above the crowd of Jews, an older
woman personifies the unfaithful Synagogue, holding
out her standard as she hurries from the scene, and
turns her head back reproachfully toward the angel
who follows and urges her away.

The refinement of taste and labour expended on
such works as these, which were but among the minor
accessories which furnished and adorned the sacred
places of the early and middle ages, shows how deeply
penetrated Christendom was with the beauty of idea
which pervaded the history and doctrines of the faith ;
and if in such lesser works we find such thought and
care, still more do the grander features of its arts,
whether constructive or decorative, give expression to
the same spirit of strong faith and sincere devotion.

The enthusiasm of artistic life which characterised
the great building age of the twelfth and thirteenth

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 323

centuries, producing works of architecture and the
accessory arts with a power rather of creative genius
than of growth, can only be likened to that sudden
morning of joy and beauty to which the world awakes
when, in April, Nature breaks the bonds of winter with
the rush of her irrestrainable life. The reality of a
genuine love sweetened all its labour, and allowed no
hindering thought of difficulty or fatigue to stay its
rapid course. Inspired with truth, and strengthened
with sincerity, it won the whole heart of its age, and
with the brightness of its vigorous life it awakens the
dormant sympathies of our own.

That harmony of result was produced in days long
gone by, when the arts were not dissevered. Those were
days of much interest for us to look back upon, when all
that we now see and do was in its first vigorous germ
of growth. There was a stir and struggle everywhere.
Life was rough. Society was chaotic. The turmoil of
the world outside had driven into communities men
who cared for other things than the amateur romance
of knight-errantry, or the alternations of dulness and
uproar of the feudal castle. Those communities were
held together by ties of sympathy and rules of religion.
There is a sunny brightness in the picture which one's
imagination conceives of their inner life ; and, whether
one's dreams of them be true or false, one can picture,
without exaggeration, the happy flow of their golden
hours, when all worked together with singleness of
heart, inspired by one spirit and working to one end
the trades with their handicraft, the arts with their
poetry, raising those beautiful retreats for learning and
shrines for devotion, which, even in their ruins, form
the models of our taste.

The early styles of sculpture and painting in those
days were born of architecture, and moved onward
with it. Artists were creating their arts as they went

324 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

on side by side. The masters had little to teach. The
sources of instruction were few and difficult to reach.
The painter was ignorant of pictorial effects. He knew
little or nothing of the principles of design. He had
but little science in the use of colours, and less of
chiaroscuro. His drawing was indifferent. His know-
ledge of anatomy was but small. There was but little
to be seen of other works of art, and less to be gained
by the sight of them. Such was the case of the Chris-
tian painter on the revival of art in the early middle
ages and it sounds but a sorry one. But the case of
the early classic artist had been to a certain degree the
same. Yet they both worked on with the happiest
results. They worked in entire sympathy with the
ideal of their architect and, however imperfect their
art may have been in science or technicality, they
found their just reward in a grand and reposeful unity
of effect, which, after all, is the greatest charm that even
the most consummate art in any form can produce.

Religion had been the great motive of them both.
Pagan and Christian, far apart in time and place, had
thus both worked upon their temple walls. Their
pictures were not pictures in our sense. The resources
of their art were limited. They had little care for fore-
grounds and backgrounds. The grouped figures told
their story with but little artifice ; their composition
was broad and simple. They worked for earnestness
of expression rather than for power of effect. Their
accessories, chosen to aid the composition or to explain
the subject, were few, and those commonly rather
symbolical than real. Simple as all this was, it satis-
fied all need. It was the representation rather of the
artist's thought than the attempt to realise a scene.
The design sufficed to illustrate the story. It was
hampered by no detail. Its motive and sentiment
were impressed upon it and then the imaginations of

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 325

the multitude were left to wander about it unimpeded
and undisturbed. Such was the work of those times.
It was in one sense merely the bud of art ; but
certainly in another it was the full-blown flower of
poetry.

When this art had grown to its full and purest
practice, it is remarkable how similar were the prin-
ciples on which it was worked at periods far remote
from each other. During the fourth and fifth centuries
B.C., and from the earliest days of Christian art to the
end of the fourteenth century, wall paintings, whether
of figures or ornamental design, were conceived in the
same spirit. Painting was at both those periods under-
stood architecturally it was practised so, and not as
an independent art working for its own glory. It
worked under rule, and was subject to the laws and
style of construction. Of all the arts subsidiary to
architectural completeness, it was the most important ;
and when all the rest had done their work, it was the
painter who brought their labours into harmony and
gave them that last touch of bloom which made their
effect complete. 1

It is an interesting question in the study of all
decorative arts applied to sacred buildings how far we
should resort to old styles. The argument that any
such resort or revival would be only retrogressive must
in consistency forbid recurrence to the ancient styles of
architecture itself, whether classic or Christian, no less
than to the styles of their decoration. But the ques-
tion itself is not easily answered ; it involves so much
more of individual inclination and feeling than of aught
else, that the answer can be but ill fitted into words.
Those styles represent intelligent principles, and they

1 The subject of the distinctive principles between wall painting and
picture painting would follow here, but as they have been stated in the
former essay on Colour in Sculpture and Architecture, I must not repeat it
here, but refer the reader to Essay V., Part II.

326 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

possess the deeper interest of their associations with the
habits and opinions of their times. Those styles grew
naturally in the atmosphere of national life. They
were results of the forces of opinion and civilisation.
Their constructive forms were developed, as all archi-
tecture was, under the needs imposed by climate, but
their beauty was the embodiment of the national
soul ; and the detail of all other arts expended on it
expressed the varying tides of popular sentiment or
aspiration.

In old times art was definite ; it was not distracted
by the multiplicity of opinion and the internecine
interests of modern times. They are called the arts of
peace ; but it would belie their origin to confound the
peace in which fine arts flourish with the worthless
leisure of national stagnation. Peace they required,
but the peace of independent genius that could stand
like a pillar in a storm. Genius has shone the brightest
in the agitation of national life ; an agitation, not that
of destructive political strife and revolution, but the stir
of national intelligence, and in that vigorous action
both of public and private life of which that movement
is the spring. National arts were the creation of the
individual reply to the demands of public spirit. They
developed, indeed, in quiet places and in quiet souls
amid surrounding agitation. Those haunts of rest and
quietness, by the sheer contrast of their peace, fostered
habits of thought that were but ill at ease among the
contentions of public life ; and such men as sought
their gentler shade, gave expression to the spirit that
was moving in them, in the forms and language of
their national poetry and arts, which were the solace to
the hearts and the stay of the souls of the working and
weary world.

An artist would revolt, and rightly too, against any
retrogression degrading to his art ; but he may not

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 327

always be right as to what really is retrogression. The
characteristics of classical painting he would probably
allow, considering them mainly much the same as his
own ; but he might object to the styles of so-called
Gothic arts in sculpture and painting as imperfect ;
and here, but only as regards their technicalities,he would
be right again. To regard them solely with contempt and
antipathy would be but an exhibition of blind prejudice,
at once both short-sighted and small-hearted. Those
styles and characters of arts mark the stages of national
culture, and are the turns and idioms of its phraseology.
As such they are worth learning ; and excluding those
that savour of mere barbarism and ignorance, there are
in them all, for those who will take the pains to look,
elements that may be separated from the rest, and are
such as the fundamental language of all art includes.
It may be that some one with special insight into the
underlying spirit of archaic art may have repeated its
peculiarities so as to have aroused antipathy. He knew,
perhaps, better than his critics, its faults no less than
its excellencies ; but its imperfections were immaterial
to him, for its specialities were to him distinctly repre-
sentative ideas, interesting from their associations,
and so full of intention and reference, that his mind
was engrossed by them, and all its superficial imperfec-
tions and technical faults were passed over unheeded.
If he failed in practice, it was only through forgetfulness
that no artist works for himself alone.

There are, indeed, styles of old work in drawing
and design that are not fine art at all. Art they may
be, as hieroglyphics are, or the demoniacal ornamenta-
tion of Mexican painting or the fetiches of savages ;
but when art comes to make itself felt as fine art by
touching the fine feelings of our nature, its elements
are evident at once, and, with the intuitive discretion of
a true artist, may be used, turned, and interpreted to

328 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

good effect, no matter what the specialities of the style
may be. Beauty may be worked out wherever an
element of real fine art can be found. Granted that a
marked conventionality is forced upon the artist who,
for harmony of architectural effect, is obliged to adopt
the characteristics and specialities of a style ; but his
apology is in his acknowledged acceptance of peculiar
conditions. There is a congeniality between all those
arts that have grown up together, that can be felt but
not described. He felt this, and adapted his own art
to conditions for which he was not responsible, but he
followed them for consistency and harmony's sake.

Styles of some sort there must be, and buildings
must follow them in the principles of their construction ;
but the subject here is the adornment of that con-
struction, not only in merely decorative ornament but
in illustrative representations ; and in both of these,
consistency offers an ideal of practice which seems to
override all else ; for all ornament in art, if nature is to
be any guide, must take its rule from natural principles,
and of them the first of all is the rule of growth ; so
that as in nature individuality is complete in every
object by the consistent growth of all its parts, and is
the first and greatest element in its beauty, so in every
style of art that character in design and form of orna-
ment is best which follows the construction out of
which it grew.

Conventionality of some sort is inevitable. The
whole art of painting is a convention : by its transfer-
ence of all the relief, distance, and gradations of natural
effects to a level surface it transmutes the act of vision,
and calls in the aid of the imagination as interpreter;
its many styles and methods are but so many conven-
tionalities, some right some wrong, but all included in
that broad discretion, with which every independent
artist must be allowed to work. It is a mistake to

viii ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 329

confound conventionality with the blemishes of an
undeveloped art. Modern art has rested too exclu-
sively on the study of naturalistic combination. Its
ancient style or principle was not so, but was as com-
plete as it was simple. It may be called, as it has been,
the "Monumental," the "Sculpturesque," the "Heroic."
I care not what its name be, but I am confident
that its genius must be awakened if ever the great art
of painting is to rise again to its level of full honour,
to extend its field of poetry and instruction, and to be
again what it once was, what all time has demanded of
it and now demands again a power of abstract and
ideal expression, in harmony with that greatest creation
of man's genius architecture.

This is the best reply that I can make in so few
words to the doubts and questions about convention-
ality, and these are the simplest reasons I can offer for
our regard and reverence due to ancient styles of art.
If an artist has the genius to appreciate them and the
heart to love them, let him follow them ; elsewise not
at all. Styles and their conventionalities are the idioms
of artistic expression ; and if an artist cannot feel them
he cannot interpret them, and then had better to leave
them alone.

The extent to which colouring and figure painting
was employed on the walls of sacred buildings in ages
when art seemed dead and all culture that could have
enjoyed it seemed nil, would surprise many whose eyes
and ideas have been trained to the Puritan negative of
whitewash and bare stone. The times and work were
rough but real. Stucco and plaster, which coated the
interiors of such buildings as at all aspired to complete-
ness, were the simple and honest preparation for the
artist But they were perishable materials. Literature,
more durable than gesso, has, however, preserved the
story of art's services to religion, and so mingled with

330 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

references to the lives and work, the ideas and motives
of those who produced them, as to have spread out a
web of interwoven incident and anecdote of inexhaust-
ible interest that tells to us, more plainly than they
were themselves aware, the source and secret of their
inspiration.

The sacred memorials of earliest Christian life, the
storied pictures, the poetic allegory that covered the
walls and monuments of the catacombs, were the
endeared models that for centuries formed the subjects
of the artist's work. Even in the darkest and wildest
days of that " distress of nations with perplexity " that
overwhelmed Europe from the ninth to the eleventh
century, we hear everywhere of cathedrals and churches
completely illuminated with sacred subjects. Many of
the failing pictures of the catacombs were repainted in
the ninth century. The mosaics that adorned the
basilicas of Rome, Milan, Pavia, Ravenna, and Torcello
in the south ; of Greece, Constantinople, and Palestine
in the east, were but the exemplars for less costly
work elsewhere. In northern Europe the first cathedrals
of Germany and France followed in their course. In
the tenth century at Treves, Avignon, Rheims, Auxerre,
Hildesheim, and others, the walls were covered with
paintings and enriched with embroidered draperies, metal
work, and marble ; and still earlier, the gold mosaic
of the church at Toulouse, won for it the title of St.
Marie la Daurade. In Germany, Charlemagne promul-
gated laws for the covering the walls of churches with
paintings, authorising them by the publication of his
enlightened opinion in these words, "Whereas we
despise nothing that relates to images except their
worship, we sanction the use of the figures of the saints
in our basilicas, not for their adoration, but as memo-
rials of their works and for the adornment of the walls."
In another place he prescribes the use of pictures in

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 331

churches to draw the rude Saxon from his less splendid
temples, and to teach him his new faith. 1

In the early British Church whatever art may have
prevailed, we know but little of it beyond what St.
Columba's devoted followers brought from lona, and of
what Bede tells of Biscop's purchases of pictures at
Rome, with which he adorned his church at Wear-
mouth. But, once awakened, the spirit of the arts
broke out like sunshine from a storm, and spread its
gladness far and wide with the rapidity of light.

The first important impulse to art in England was
due to the Lombard archbishop Lanfranc, when, after
building his cathedral at Canterbury, he so adorned it
that " by the splendour of colours and the loveliness of
beauty his noble art delighted all hearts." 2 His suc-
cessors continued to foster the taste he had initiated by
colouring the flat, wooden ceiling, 3 characteristic of
Norman buildings, and painting the walls. The in-
fluence of the art thus introduced is too well known
by the industry of archaeology to need illustrations
here ; but, as the sad case is with us now, that if we
seek the specimens of our early arts we must be
contented with their ruins, the scraps that time and
trouble have left must suffice us to suggest what no
exaggerating fancy is needed to complete, and to show
how the national spirit became interested in the work

1 " Ut honorem habeant majorem et excellentiorem quam fana
idolorum." Capitul. De part. Sax. anno 789.

" . . . Ut missi nostri per singulos pagos prasvidere studeant, primum
de ecclesiis ... in tectis, in maceriis, sive in parietibus, sive in pavi-
mentis, nee non in pictura, etiam et in luminariis," etc. Capitul. anno
807.

" Dirutce ecclesise pleniter restaurentur atque ornentur." " Si vero
essent ecclesise ad jus regium proprie pertinentes, laquearibus vel muralibus
ordinandae picturis, id a vicinis Episcopis aut abbatibus curabatur."
Capitul. Car. Mag.

2 William of Malmesbury, " splendore fucorum. et pulchritudinis gratia,
ars spectabilis rapiebat animos."

3 " Ibi cselum ligneum egregia pictura decoratum." Gervasius, in loco.

332 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

of artistic expression, and how genuine was the national
feeling that characterised its works.

We learn by the many records of local history,
which continental nations have more happily pre-
served than ourselves, how the practice prevailed, at
the very outset of Christian art in Europe, not merely
of ornamenting parts of consecrated buildings, but of
covering them entirely with sacred subjects. There
are many relics of old work in English churches which
authorise the idea of such having been also the case
here. The interiors of Norman buildings were usually
not left rough, but coated with a thin layer of stucco,
but so thin as to have too often perished, and to have
carried away the old paintings with it. There are,
therefore, few, if any, relics of that early time of a
building entirely covered with its old pictures more
complete than that of the little chancel of the church
of Kempley, in Gloucestershire, where the whole church
was originally covered with sacred subjects. In the
nave only a few scraps and indications remain, but
the chancel is in a fair condition, and is painted
throughout. Its wagon roof, which is but a continua-
tion of the walls, without any interrupting cornice, is
covered with figures, and, with the side walls, appears
to form one large general subject of the glorification
of Christ. His figure, within an aureole, occupies the
centre of the arched ceiling, and above and below it
are somewhat rudely arranged those of the Virgin and
St. Peter, St. Michael weighing a soul, the seven
golden candlesticks, and the four evangelistic symbols ;
and below them, on each side, six of the apostles are
seated under canopies that indicate their twelve thrones,
expressing by gest of head or hand the adoration
of their Master enthroned above. This is evidently a
genuine English work of the date about 1 1 6O. 1

i The arch of the wagon-roof has given way, and caused a deep crack

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 333

The traditional subjects of old Christian art had
at once fascinated our people, and were already com-
mon within a short time after the days of Lanfranc.
As might be expected, their relics are but rude, but
none the less curiously interesting from the original
character of their design. For example (and one
such may be enough to illustrate many), upon a stone
(five feet long by three broad) that had been removed
and formed the step of the north door of the Norman
church at Balsover, is sculptured, in high relief, the
scene of the adoration of the Magi. The Virgin
Mother is sitting up at the end of a long bed, with
the child Jesus standing in front of her. On the
farther side stands one of the Magi, and another at
the foot of the bed holding out his gift, which is in
the form of a censer, and he is in the attitude of
swinging it in front. The third of his company stands
a little way behind him, and above them is a long-
shaped projecting block with the heads of two animals
protruding over it, evidently, but most rudely, intended
to represent the manger, with the ox and ass.

The conditions of British life had not been
favourable to the development of the arts, but with
the impulse given to them before the Conquest by
Edward the Confessor, and subsequently by Lanfranc,
their first faltering steps soon changed to that grand
march which carried them triumphantly through the
middle ages. Beautiful in the whole course and order
of their being they had come forth, the creatures of
imagination realised by genius, in answer to the needs
and to express the hearts of men feeling their way
upward, from the impeding mist and conscious evil of
the present, to a higher life, of which not the mere

along its greater part, much injuring the figures. The walls are in good
condition. There is in the British Museum MS. Department an English
psalter in precisely the style of this painting numbered in the catalogue
"Nero C 4."

334 THE MINIS 'TR Y OF FINE ART ESSAY

thought and hope, but the sure and certain convic-
tion, possessed their souls. But at length a new ideal
and standard of life was propounded and prevailed,
encroaching upon their reign, and a scholarship,
foreign to them, introduced antagonism to all they
had held sacred. And now those arts have been
long since at rest. Their creative energy was aroused
by no new appeals ; the thought and fancy of the
inconstant world took other flights elsewhere. Their
journey was over, their work was done, but their monu-
ments remain the splendid memorials of their life, and
still among the sad scenes of desolation, where passion
and neglect have wrought an equal ruin, their spirits
haunt the shadows of their wasted shrines, and the
echoes of their poetry still linger upon the air.

But why all these arts, and to what good can they
have served ? Their action and their progress were
involuntary. They sprang from unknown depths ; their
purpose was uncalculated and indefmed. They grew
up, as it were, involuntarily in the atmosphere of
Christian faith ; but that faith was a thing of spirit,
and theirs was but of base material. Could, then,
such work as theirs supplement the deficiencies of
Christian souls or compensate for the poverty of
worship ? Could their poor perishable forms have
any worth in the sight of Him " who sees not as
man sees " ? Could the altars devoted to His ser-
vice, or great halls, consecrated by the assembly of
His worshippers, be the better in His regard for all
that gold and "goodly stones," already His own,
could supply, or for what the cunning of men's hands
could do in them ? In the privacy of communion
between the spirit of the man and the spirit of his
Maker, No ; but as " a tribute of reasonable service
from humanity to God," Yes.

Art is the chorus of universal praise. If the pure

vni ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 335

fountain whence fine art sprang were reached, and
its stream cleared from the defilements of folly and
corruption that in the sad course of human life have
polluted it, the source of universal joy and adoration
would be laid bare, whence, through the ages, the
great hymn of all humanity has ascended from earth
to heaven.

It is only in the quietude of a contemplative
spirit that a work of really religious art can be con-
ceived. The subject does not make the art. Many
a work of so-called religious art has been produced
from which not one spark of religious light could
ever gleam. For such a work, therefore, as the re-
storation and adornment of the fabrics of the Chris-
tian Church we need such men as can rise to the
high level of its faith, with pure motive and confidence
in it. Such alone have been, and such will ever be,
the men whose works have power to influence the
world by the sacredness of the life which beams
through all they put their hands to.

If the exterior of the Christian temple may typify
the rude contest of the Christian in the outer world,
the interior may well express the peace and beauty
of his inner life. Let, therefore, the exteriors be as
rough as men may care to build them let them be
fortified against storms and enemies of all sorts but
let us have peace and sacred quietude within, where
the dignity of beauty is not marred, nor the fine
religious sense insulted. Thus only can that tran-
quillity be secured that must be art's first and final
purpose in such a place. She has to provide there
not for quiet spirits only, but for troubled ones, who
come there to find rest. It should be a place of
pleasantness and peace, where sight meets no dis-
traction and thought no disturbance, but where both
sense and heart may find repose in its sacred shade.

336 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

The seclusion of nature's calm retreats, the still
solitudes of the forest, the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land, may afford desired spots for thought
and devotion ; but in the more common course of
life in the crowded cities or unquiet homes, it is to
those sacred fanes that architecture has raised among
them, that men owe the precious opportunities of
spiritual rest. Fine art has done her best in them
to foster the associations of comfort and strength.
It is in the great art of architecture, as in a jewel,
that all other arts are set, and all that each one has
perfected for the benefit and happiness of mankind
here finds its resting-place. A nation's temples have
ever been the centre of the nation's arts. The history,
the poetry, the religion of the world, have been written
in them. The power and devotion of human genius
have been lavished upon them, the most pure and
favourite handmaids of a nation's faith.

It may have been that in this high purpose their
power has been some time misused. If so, the error
lay in those who perverted them. It was their power
which dictated the destruction of their monuments.
But art is immortal. Men's souls need an alphabet
of expression above and beyond the alphabet of com-
mon life. They have arts at their command for it.
It has been by them that generations and genera-
tions have learnt to read each other's thoughts and
live in each other's hearts. The arts have been the
records of the devotion, the sufferings, and the aspira-
tions of mankind. They have come and they have
passed away. It is now our day. The unceasing
stream flows by us now, and for our short life we
direct its current. The arts are in our hands to use or
to misuse them. Our honour in them will depend upon
our motive ; and whatever our works may be, we shall
live in them to all time for contempt or for gratitude.

vin ADORNMENT OF SACRED BUILDINGS 337

But here, in this place, rises before our eyes one
of England's grandest monuments, worn by age and
battered by revolution, but who will dare to touch
those sacred walls? 1 Time has often proved the best
of artists, and there has spread upon those stained
and mottled stones such records of the past, and upon
those chipped monuments and broken architecture, that
tell of wild days of violence and change, has traced
such lines of story as no words can tell. The soften-
ing breath of centuries has toned and tinted them into
such a mystery of loveliness as no hand can paint.
Beneath the shadow of those arcades storied antiquity
rests there in silence. The sun rays streaming through
those shattered panes, like the harmony of many voices
carried upon the wind, still spread their vague and tender
flood of colours on those walls, and, like the inaudible
music of thought, the echoes of the past still ebb and
flow upon them. Once swept away no thought can
restore the poetry of the past, nor can the hand re-
place it.

1 Lincoln Cathedral in 1868, when the short paper that forms the
basis of this essay was read before the Lincoln Diocesan Architectural
Society. At that time considerable work was contemplated there.

ESSAY IX

THE BUILDERS AND BUILDINGS OF THE ABBEY
OF ST. PETER AT GLOUCESTER, NOW THE CATHEDRAL

THE estimate of anything from an artist's point of
view is apt to be as various as the minds that
make it ; and commonly to share the same fate in its
reception, by the light and shade cast upon it from
every variety of individual taste or capacity. A
naturally good taste, helped by a congenial spirit and
occupations, is a pleasant possession ; but it is a better
guide to begin with than to end with, for fine art is a
deep well to draw from ; it covers a wide space, it
penetrates far below the surfaces of things, and it appeals
to a wide range of sympathies, embracing subjects near
akin to science and poetry, philosophy and religion.

It is this last that has most to do with the arts
which have combined to produce these sacred buildings,
where architecture, consecrated to its highest purpose,
has appropriated from every art beside all such elements
of religious expression as could contribute to its own
completeness. Thus was this great abbey of St. Peter
once complete, as it stood in the fulness of its beauty,
its pride of beauty ; but troublous times have inter-
vened and left a wreck.

Those who have read the history of such establish-
ments as this have sickened at the repetition of wreck
and ruin which has been their fate ; devastations by

ESSAY ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 339

fire and sword, by the irruption of hostile and pagan
tribes, reducing the monasteries and churches to ashes,
Christianity itself being all but extinguished ; and what
is yet more painful, the fitful wantonness of our own
people, whose passions, once aroused, have been like
the bursting of a pent-up storm which seems to revel
in ruin. Such was the impulse which now above three
hundred years ago swept down, in succeeding tides of
desolation, those monuments which, during past cen-
turies, the highest culture, poetry, and religion of the
nation had produced. Those who raised the storm had
their reasons ; some high-minded and pure, some base
and contemptible ; but not so the undiscriminating
multitude ; for a mob is not actuated by the refine-
ments of religious opinion. It was no nice perception
of varieties of faith that aroused their ignorant fanati-
cism. They had no thought nor wish to change an
item of their creed ; but it was the resentment of a
discontented multitude, discontented not with their
religion, but with their oppressed condition, utilised by
the partisans of politics and religion, goaded on by its
own sense of injury, injustice, and suffering, and fanned
into a flame of destruction by any pretext that could
serve the purpose of its unreasoning vengeance. The
Church had lorded it overmuch ; its exactions and its
presumption had often pressed hard upon the people.
So the day of retribution came ; and, as usual, where
blind ignorance took part, reform was ruin, and the loss
irreparable ; and here in this that once was among
the richest and most beautiful of national monuments
bare walls alone remained, and all that had clothed
them with life was no more.

It had been under happier auspices, and in days of
simple faith, now just twelve hundred years ago, that
the first abbey of St. Peter at Gloucester had its
beginning. It was founded and endowed by kings,

340 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

and royal dames were its first abbesses. Its buildings
stood near those around us. On the north side of the
choir of the present cathedral, and next to the high
altar, is a monument known as that of the Viceroy
Osric, the noble-born friend of Ethelred, the second
Christian King of Mercia, by whose authority he
founded this abbey. This monument is the tribute of
the last abbot to the man who, eight hundred years
before, had laid the first stone of the first abbey of St.
Peter. The recumbent figure holds the model of a
church, which is interesting as a piece of archaeological
reverence on the part of a sixteenth-century abbot ;
for the character of its fagade, roof, and tower is of the
earliest type of Norman work, or even before it. The
figure, unworthy of the royal name it bears, is such
that the puritan iconoclast, dealing ruin right and left,
passed it by with a smile, that the very ugliness of such
a " graven image " saved him the trouble of breaking it
At the time of the foundation of this abbey (A.D.
68 1) society was so broken, and private life so harassed
by the disturbance of lawlessness and war, that as
Christianity was fast spreading and arousing in men's
minds aspirations for a better mode of life, for which
no peace was found in their precarious homes, establish-
ments were founded as refuges from the noise and
storm around them, and as centres of religious life.
Such were those of St. Hilda in the north, or St. Ethel-
burga in the east, and of Osric in our south-western
Gloucester. But within a century the troubles pre-
vailed, and war with all its vice and tumult occupied
the ground, and the years of the first abbey of St. Peter
were numbered. Never were the first fair blossoms of
the early year more mercilessly withered by the biting
winds of spring than were those first fair homes of
peaceful life and charity ruined by the violence that
marks their chequered history.

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 341

So ends the first age of our abbey. Its inhabit-
ants were terrified, scattered, lost ; and of their place
and buildings not even the tradition of a memory
remains. We may yet, however, form a fair idea of
them, for it must be remembered that no art is isolated ;
it comes of that which was before, and hands on its
lamp of life to those which follow it. The character of
all building in all countries has of course depended
first on climate, and then on the nature of materials at
hand, and the ability of the people. All round Glou-
cester in those early days were vast forests, on one
side covering the great part of what is now Worcester-
shire, on the other side the wide range of our Forest
of Dean ; and yet nearer, the picturesque outline of
what we still know as the Hill of Robin's Wood ; and
just over Severn, but close at hand, where the aged
oak of Lassington, and the Highnam chestnut-tree link
our degenerate woodlands with the heroes of primeval
forest. Such then was the wealth of building material,
as easily got as the stubborn oak would yield to the
axe, and as cheaply as the Severn boats and rafts
would bring it ; and the builder of the first abbey of
St. Peter fetched it home, as Chaucer describes one in
the "Miller's Tale":

... " I trow that he is sent
For timbre, that our Abbot hath him sent."

There is still, in that once forest land of Cheshire,
a fine example of the timber building of early times in
the church at Warburton, where the piers and arches
of the nave are formed of large oak-trees cut in half
lengthways, based on stone blocks, and joining their
curved forms above produce the arcades on which the
whole superstructure is borne. A timber arch still
marks the place of the north-west doorway, and the
chancel is of similar construction.

342 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Time and trouble have left us few examples ; but
there are so many valid grounds on which to formulate
our ideas that it needs but little stretch of imagination
to rebuild the first abbey of St. Peter. Like the first
great church on the wild island of Lindisfarne, it may
have been built with wood and thatched with reeds. Its
aisles may have been arched with oak like those at
Warburton ; and its tower like that near at hand at
Upleadon, where the long upright oaken timbers, with
white panels between them, are like those which Holin-
shed admired in the buildings of old England which
" are commonlie so strong and well timbered that there
are not aboue foure or six or nine inches between stud
and stud." Thus may we easily imagine that group of
monastic buildings, bright with the contrast of dark
oak and white panelling, with its long cloistral enclos-
ure, and all the apartments for refectory, dormitory,
and guest-house, with its church and its tower rising
above them, on a site chosen for its quietude, on the
farther side of what was then the sparkling stream of
the Twiver, whose banks, covered with willows and
alder -trees, separated it from the town ; an ancient
town, whose British and old Roman buildings pictur-
esquely mixed together, with the Severn rolling beneath
them, with smiling meadows all around it, and the
background of the beechy Cotteswolds, had won for it
the title of " The Fair City " (Caer Glowe).

Such might have been, and probably was, the
pleasant scene that presented itself, when just twelve
hundred years ago King Ethelred came to visit his
brother Wolfere's widow, or the sister of his friend
Osric Kymberga, the first abbess, whose name
modernised into Kymbrose is still familiar to the poor
of Gloucester by their most ancient hospital.

There is yet, however, another picture that we
could draw, with at least some ground of truth, to

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 343

illustrate the state of the arts in England at that time,
and particularly of such as might have been found at
Gloucester, it may be as well to take it.

If the age had been dark, it certainly had been of
all things darkest in relation to the arts ; but before
the foundation of this abbey the day of their revival
had risen. From lona to Canterbury Christianity was
the dominant religion. It spread as an element of
light and peace, and the undercurrent of its influence
prevailed. Men woke to the horror of the crime
around them. An ideal altogether new was introduced
into their life. The reality instead of the mere super-
stition of spiritual existence was forced upon them.
The conviction weighed heavily on many minds. Men
craved for quietude, and yearned to escape from a life
they had learned to hate. A new light had dawned
upon them, and with it a sense of the beauty of that
light. It awoke their dormant faculties of mind, heart,
and imagination, and opened a fresh vista to the pur-
pose and direction of their lives.

Monastic life afforded the only refuge : monasteries
were the homes not only of religion but of learning, and
then the arts came in to minister to them both ; and thus
their spark was kindled. Some years before that time
two men came upon the scene whose enthusiasm fanned
that spark into a flame. St. Wilfrid and his friend
Benedict Biscop had learnt what art was among the grand
relics of the south, and had returned from years spent in
Italy and Gaul, not only to introduce the customs of
the Roman Church among his old British fellow-Chris-
tians of the north, but to build them churches, till then
unthought of, with finished masonry, with lead for roof-
ing, and glass for windows. Their story has been too
often told for me to repeat it here, or do more than to
remind you how they had brought with them from
France and Italy artists and workmen to revive the

344 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

art of building, and to teach the English the mysteries
of painting and making glass ; and how they founded
monasteries and built churches, adorned with pictures
and relics, service books, sacred vessels, and em-
broidery.

The earliest Christian churches of the south appear
to have been constructed with the three clearly-marked
divisions of the sanctuary, nave (with or without aisles),
and narthex, for the ministry, the congregation, and the
catechumens. Among the most interesting relics that
time and revolution have spared is the underground
church built by St. Wilfrid at Hexham. It was built
about ten years before the foundation of the abbey at
Gloucester, and is a complete model of the early Chris-
tian churches, with a chancel, a nave with aisles, and a
narthex opening to the staircase which leads down to
it, denuded of course of all that may have once em-
bellished it, of small dimensions, but in perfect preser-
vation, constructed of materials which seem to tell the
tale of their origin in the great wall of Hadrian which
is near at hand. But before the building of this crypt,
and about twelve years before Osric began his work at
Gloucester, St. Wilfrid had built a church at Ripon,
about which Leland quotes this glowing description
from Eddius, that it was " a basilica constructed of
wrought stones from the foundation, and divers pillars
and porticoes formed part of its arrangement." This
church was dedicated to St. Peter, in the presence of
Kings Egfrid and ALlwm. An underground chapel
still remains of Wilfrid's work at Ripon.

To return to Gloucester. If we are to accept the
document given by Dugdale, Wolfere the king, and not
his brother and successor Ethelred, was the real founder
of this abbey. Gloucester had but lately been added
to his kingdom of Mercia, and he is there stated to have
enlarged and beautified the town of Gloucester and laid

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 345

the foundation of the abbey. Laying the foundation
may simply mean the assignment of lands for the
establishment of the abbey. Then his brother and
successor took up the work, and hence his charter of
foundation to Osric. But Wolfere had been at Ripon,
and must have seen Wilfrid's great church there. The
bias of Ethelred's character was to peace, to the arts of
peace, and to a religious life, as shown by the end he
chose for it, for after thirty years spent in the weary
work of ruling, he retired to the monastery of Bardley,
among the fens of Lincoln, and there died. St. Wilfrid
had been his intimate friend, and his guest at Bardley,
and it is a fair inference that the works as well as the
character of such a man must have exercised strong
influence on a mind so entirely sympathetic as that of
King Ethelred. It is also fair to infer that Gloucester
must have occupied a prominent place in the mind of
the whole royal family from the facts just mentioned
about its foundation, from Wolfere's widow being its
second abbess, and further, that the succeeding king
and his friend Offa, King of the East Saxons, were
among the number of its benefactors.

All this points but one way. I have no wish to
exaggerate the supposition which can only be based on
inference ; but Gloucester evidently held no common
place among the noblest and wealthiest of the land,
who had thus centred their interest and influence upon
it. Once more, and I leave it in your hands. Builders
have been always reckless pilferers, and at these times
no such idea as the sacredness of antiquity had entered
their heads. Gloucester had been a Roman city, a
wealthy one, with every building required for its com-
mercial, military, and religious establishments. But
these were then in ruins, and we may rightly fancy
their massive sides and angles, like the great buttressed
walls and nooks of many a mediaeval cathedral, covered

346 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

and filled in with hives of houses piled up against
them for support and shelter. But those mines of
building stone were used for other purposes, as badly or
as well as the world may think it ; and just as the
first subterraneous church at Hexham was built of
the pilfered ruins of Hadrian's wall, so might the first
church of St. Peter at Gloucester have owed its build-
ing materials to the wrecks of the walls, the Pretorium,
the Forum, and the Temples, of which we now trace
the foundation, the mosaics, and the bases of their
ruined architecture.

However that might have been, little occurred to
affect the architecture of those buildings till the be-
ginning of the eleventh century. I am not concerned
here upon the history of the abbey, interesting as it is
in all respects, except as regards the story of the arts
which have been associated with its building ; otherwise
there would be much to say here, and subsequently also
much that for consistency's sake I must omit. The
really important change in the circumstances of the
place in those early days occurred when, under Bishop
Wolstan of Worcester in A.D. 1022, it was changed
from an establishment for secular clergy to a monastery
under the rule of St. Benedict. The bishop found the
church richly endowed, two of the Mercian kings
having been, a few centuries before, its benefactors.
The place was so important, and the opportunity so
great, that he took the bold course of reconstructing
the whole establishment, and of consecrating it afresh
under the new title of St. Peter and St. Paul.

I am well aware how often in ancient Chronicles
larger establishments than this at Gloucester are de-
scribed as having a " lignea basilica;" and smaller
ones as being, in plain English, built of wattle and dab,
and roofed with straw. But at the time I am speaking
of, stone was used in building quite small churches, such

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 347

as the one still nearly perfect at Bradford-on-Avon j 1
and stone was then also used where in some places it
would have to be brought from a distance, as at Deer-
hurst Here at Gloucester all sorts of stone were easily
obtained. The herring-bone masonry at Ashleworth
and the reticulated work on the chancel at Dymock
may be possibly of that period. On such an occasion
as I was describing, some change in this building almost
of necessity occurred ; and we might then have seen
rising above Bishop Wolfstan's church a tower of that
peculiar style that was then in vogue, marked by its
masonry of long and short stones alternately, and even
more marked still by the long narrow strips of stone,
slightly relieved from the rubble surface of the walls,
and dividing them into long upright panels. 2 The
divisions of the stories of the towers being also marked
by horizontal strips of the same sort, and the angle-
headed window openings formed also of two short
pieces leaning against each other.

It is easy to trace many features of the marble
architecture of Greece and the Lycian monuments to
the wooden construction out of which they had grown ;
and here in Anglo-Saxon times we find, when stone was
used for walls, the principal features both of construc-
tion and ornament were derived from the wooded frame-
work with its white-wattled panels between, which had
been the primitive style of the country ; and farther on
still we may perhaps be allowed to trace, from those
long flat strips of stone, the tall, thin, and pilaster-like
projections which constantly divide in a similar manner
the facades of Romanesque and Norman buildings, all

1 Vide illustration of this building, E. A. Freeman, English Towns and
Districts, p. 136.

2 For illustrations of work of this Saxon period to which those build-
ings at Gloucester belonged, vide Fergusson's Handbook of Architecture,
vol. ii. page 845 (Earl's Barton Tower), and E. A. Freeman's English
Towns and Districts, pages 244-5, Towers at Oxford and Cambridge.

348 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

having their distant origin in the oak frame-work of
former days.

Such, in the year 1022, may have been the tower
of the newly-constituted abbey on the banks of the
Twyver.

But the great change was yet to come. A subse-
quent bishop, a man of great ability and ambition,
formed the scheme of a still more important establish-
ment His name was Ealdred, to whose lot it fell to
crown both Harold and William of Normandy. He
was not a man to do small things. His vigour may
be inferred from the remonstrance he addressed to
William the Conqueror, which brought the Conqueror
on his knees before him in presence of his Court on
the floor of Westminster Abbey. He held for some
years the sees of Hereford and Worcester, including
the present diocese of Gloucester ; and he subsequently
became Archbishop of York. If he and Wolsey could
have interchanged their dates of birth, he might have
played the part of Wolsey. This man, recognising the
importance of the opportunity, acted on his resolve,
and laid out a great scheme for the future Abbey
nearer to the city. The sites almost invariably chosen
for monasteries had been solitudes of sea-coast, forest,
or fen ; and in course of time the cottages of their
dependants so accumulated as to change their solitude
to a city. But here at Gloucester the city existed
close at hand. The original monastery of St. Kym-
burga had chosen its site in a quiet place beyond the
Roman wall, among the groves of alder-trees which
stretched upwards from that island of the Severn which
from them still holds its ancient name of Al-ney. But
now the opportunity occurred for the foundation of an
important establishment, capable of service both for its
own inmates and for the city. He chose the new site,
and there he built it.

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 349

According to Abbot Frocester's History this re-
markable man was consecrated Bishop of Worcester in
1058, i.e. eight years before the Norman Conquest;
and it records that he constructed the abbey church de
novo from its foundation, and re-dedicated it according
to its original title of St. Peter's. The next we hear
of any building is in the time of the first Norman
Abbot Serlo ; and of that work we only learn that the
first stone of the " Glevornensis ecclesia " (the Gloucester
church) was laid in 1089, twelve years after the Con-
quest, and was consecrated with great pomp in 1 1 oo.
Thus the great Abbey, of which the bulk now stands,
was completed. It had been a gigantic undertaking ;
and we can easily imagine the workmen sitting down
within the western wall to contemplate their finished
work. They saw before them the vista of a grand
arcade on massive piers, and in the distance, closed by
an apse behind the high altar, and covered in from
end to end by a flat ceiling of wood, panelled and
painted as the fashion was. Right and left along the
nave and choir, and all round the apse, vaulted aisles
added to the grandeur of effect : beyond the choir were
three chapels, with groined roofs and apses round their
altars ; and at the opening of the choir, north and
south, were transepts, with chapels projected from them
eastwards. In the centre, where the four great arms
of the building met, rose a tower which might have
been of wood, otherwise it probably was like that on
Osric's tomb, with an interior arcade, and open like a
lantern to the church below, as that of Tewkesbury was
in Norman times. All round above the aisles of the
choir was a spacious groined triforium, with chapel for
chapel and altar for altar as below ; and beneath them
all a lower church (now miscalled the crypt), with
chapels, aisles, and groins, and altars repeating all that
was above. Nor was this nearly all, for that was but

350 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

the huge shell which enclosed the finer things of sculp-
ture and glass, embroidery and metal work. But time
would fail to tell of all outside the transept towers,
deep doorways richly carved, the great chapter-room,
and the gloomy passage of the slype, with its long
arcade leading out to the burial-ground and all this
vast and varied work of one style throughout, complete
and beautiful in its unbroken unity. Those workmen
may well have looked with awe on this gigantic product
of their hands. The foundation for it would alone
have been a thing for giants. But was all this work
really theirs ? Had the short term of eleven years
sufficed to devise, to organise, to finish such a work as
that to collect its mountain of materials, with all the
painful strain of transport to overcome, and all the
rudeness of their machinery ? As they sat there weary
beneath its shade, had they, in that short space of
fleeting years, shaped and finished such a work as this?
If I had been one of those who had to answer, I should
have answered " No."

If we remember the circumstances under which
mediaeval records were compiled, we shall not look for
that accuracy of statement or description which we
expect to find in the chronicles of our own days. The
studious monks, happy in their heedlessness of time, at
work in those quiet little carols which flank the whole
length of the southern cloister, inditing or illuminating
their parchment pages, were free from those distracting
elements which mark the self-consciousness of modern
literature ; but less happily free and unaided by those
facilities which modern life affords for its richness and
truth. Their narratives were simple and unadorned ;
or if adorned at all, they were so by traditional illustra-
tions, and influenced rather by the sacredness of wonder
than the severity of fact. Thus it is that in reading
Abbot Frocester's valuable chronicle, we are inevitably

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 351

struck by the broad and general terms which he applies
to what in fact were important events, such as the
frequent destruction of the abbey by fire, and the re-
building of it ; or where he describes the refounding of
the vast establishment, with all the costly and compli-
cated work that it entailed, without a word of reference
to what remained of previous buildings, or of how their
materials were used, their remaining parts incorporated,
or who and whence their artists were.

In offering to you an outline of what appears to me
the probable account of the building of this great abbey
church, and taking all the recorded facts of its history
as my guide, I venture to put it into a narrative form ;
and for that purpose I present to you a scene that might
have very possibly occurred.

In that group of workmen there sat one who was a
master among them, a man of some age and evident
intelligence. A young monk of the Priory of Tewkes-
bury, but lately come to Gloucester, joined them, and
asked many questions about the building ; so the old
mason told him this story. He said : " I am a native
of Deerhurst. My father was a builder there, and he
sent me to the monks' school at the Priory. I saw a
great deal of building work under my father, for he did
all the work for the Priory, and when the rich Earl
Odda built a Royal Hall close by the old church of the
Priory, my father built it for him. There was a very
busy Bishop at Worcester then ; his name was Ealdred ;
he was a great friend of the Earl's, and came and blessed
his new buildings for him. But the biggest place the
Bishop had to do with was here at Gloucester : and
King Edward (God bless him !) was often here ; for
the place is a strong one, with that old wall and the
castle down by the Severn and the marshes out beyond ;
and there's a sight of business done by the boats that
come up from the sea. So King Edward liked the

352 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

place ; and the Bishop, who was always wide awake to
business (so he's got made Archbishop of York now),
used often to come here ; for the King liked all Church
work, and buildings, and so forth, and had a number of
Frenchmen about him ; and as the Bishop was a great
traveller, they got on very well together. The first time
the Bishop came to Gloucester he brought me with him
from Deerhurst, for he knew the Abbey here was in a
bad state, and that I had a good knowledge of building
and all that from my father. We found the place in a
poor way ; and the Bishop thought to please the King,
and to get the King to help him, if he tried to build a
large Church like what the King was building then
near London. 1 So the Bishop and I talked it over ;
and the new Abbot here, Wilstan, he too thought to
please the King, so we worked together and laid out a
place for it close to where the old Roman wall was, so
as to make it the Chief Church of the city ; with the
Abbey buildings snug and quiet on the other side. The
Bishop had been in France and had seen all that was
doing there ; but he said it would be no use putting
our English men to work like that, but to build in their
own way strong and simple work like what our folk
could do best. So we struck out the plan on the
ground, and I was frightened when I saw how big the
Bishop meant to build it, and I told him he'd never do
it. So he set me over the work, and I got a lot of
men and things together, and we began at the east end,
and there the undercroft was built, with low vaults
and large blocks of masonry to carry those above, and
against them we built small columns to carry the groins.
There were some small columns in the old ruined place
close by ; so we put them in the middle, under where
the high altar was to be : they were like some I re-
member among the old Priory buildings at Deerhurst.

1 Which we now know as Westminster Abbey.

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 353

So we got on and put up the piers of the choir those
big rounded ones that you see out there round the
altar, such as our men could do, for they didn't like
the sort the Bishop wanted, which was the French way
of work, large square ones with lots of angles and
notches and little shafts in them, which our folk weren't
accustomed to. So we worked in our own way, and
after some years we got the choir all done and ceiled
it over flat with boards. Outside the church we built
the slype leading out to the burial-ground, and we
ceiled it plain like the undercroft ; and we built a long
wall where the cloisters were to be, which is now the
Prior's garden. There was an arch in that wall which
opened into the slype, and two others 1 into the Chapter
House, which was a very large room built of wood,
where good King Edward used to meet his Witan
most years in winter time. And there was a long
dormitory over the slype, which was built of wood too,
but all those wooden buildings were burnt down. We
were at work at the transepts at the same time : for
the King was building his big church near London on
a plan like a cross, which was quite new to us ; and
the Bishop here, thinking to make a fine thing and to
please the King, was set on making his new church
like the King's. We got on with the transepts, and
finished their east walls and the chapels in them ; but
we never got any further ; for the Bishop was always
about the Court, and liked to have all the nobles about
him, and he spent his money too fast with them. As
soon as we got the choir ceiled he got the King's friends
about him, and the Abbots of Malvern and Pershore,
and the Priors of Tewkesbury and Deerhurst, and many

1 These arches may still be seen, now embedded level with the wall
both outside and within the chapter-house, and their stones bear evidence
of fire, being burnt red, like those of the lower parts of the piers of the
nave which were burnt by the blazing timbers of Abbot Serlo's original
ceiling.

2 A

354 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

more, and there was a great feast, and he blessed the
new church in the name of St. Peter. But he left us
then, for the King was so pleased with him that he
had him made Archbishop of York ; and he stopped
all the work here by seizing three or four parishes about
here to repay himself for what he had spent ; so there
was no money to pay the men. And then the good
King died, and the men went away to fight under King
Harold, for they didn't want the French Duke William.
So the place was left not half done, and so it remained
for many years. But what grieved me most was that by
that Bishop's way of living, and the cost of that great
building, and his taking away the worth of those fine
parishes from the Abbot here, the place was ruined ;
and the poor monks went away, for they had no means
of living here any more ; and Abbot Wilstan, with his
heart nearly broken, left us and went to Jerusalem and
died. So all our work was left to go to chance.

"After that, things were changed a good deal in
England, and our old Bishop went from York and
crowned the Frenchman King of England in good
King Edward's own Church down by the Thames at
Thorney. After brave King Harold's death some of
our masons went to work for the French at Dover
Castle, but I stayed here and did work at St. Oswald's
Priory close by and St. Kyneburg's up in the town.
Some six years after that, we had a Frenchman made
Abbot here, one Serlo, who had been an Abbot before
in France ; and when he came here he found the place
very poor, for Bishop Aldred had ruined it ; and there
were only two old monks and a few boys left in the
place. Our good Abbot had been here just sixteen
years (1088), when a great fire destroyed the roof and
all the timber-work of the choir and made the place
like a ruin, but our building was strong and the stones
were not hurt. So the Abbot, who was well pleased

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 355

with all the work we had done in the choir, sent for
me, as I knew all about it, and I went over it all
with him. It was all sound but the groining of the
undercroft, which had cracked, for we had had bad
lime for mortar, and for many years there was no one
here to care about it. But he was pleased at Bishop
Aldred's plan, and as the choir part for the monks
was done, he took to the nave, as Bishop Aldred had
laid it out, and he ordered me to see to the build-
ing of it as a great church 1 for the town people, and
he got the Bishop of Hereford here to lay the first
stone of this work. But there was an earthquake that
year, which made our old work in the undercroft all
the worse ; so some while afterwards he made us under-
build it with stronger piers and arches, as you can see
if you go down there. Many of our men soon came
back ; and the French Abbot wanted them to build as
they do in France ; but our men didn't take to it ; so
we went on the same plan with those big piers as in
Bishop Aldred's choir, only taller. But the Frenchman
was not satisfied with our plain work ; so we got stone
carvers here, and all the arches were carved as you see,
and the mouldings above too, and the groinings of the
new aisles are carved, and all the work we did for him
looks richer than any we did before ; but the masonry
looks the same, for the same men did the best part of
it. And the French Abbot was so fond of rich work
that when we put in the strong groins down in the

1 In Abbot Frocester's History this building is described as the Gle-
vornensis Ecclesia, and rightly so described "thec hurch of the city of
Gloucester," for the nave, which was all that the Abbot Serlo had to
build, beside the repairs after the fire in choir and transepts, was that part
of the conventual church frequently known as the " ecclesia parochialis,"
with its altars in it, on the west side of the main screen, for the people's
services, as at St. Albans, the choir being properly the "chorus fratrum,"
reserved entirely for the monks of the Abbey. The " church of the city "
was not necessarily the parish church, which in this case was that of St.
Mary de Lode.

356 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

undercroft, he had them carved too ; and there is a
chapel down there on the right near the east end that
he had made very rich with little shafts and arches ;
we could only put them up there by standing them
out against the old work, and these were carved too.
You'll always know the work we did for him, for he
was never pleased without some rich work somewhere
about ; and we finished the transepts and the tower,
and finished it above with a wooden steeple, and we
built the new chapter-house just where the old one was
burnt, and put little arches, all richly cut and carved,
along the sides of it ; but you'll never find one scrap of
our old work with anything like that upon it, or any-
thing else but strong and plain. The last thing we
did was the flat ceiling all along, and some Frenchmen
came and painted it in squares and patterns, black and
white. And now we've done it all, and to-morrow we
shall have four bishops here to open the church to the
people and bless it. Your old Priory at Tewkesbury is
in a poor plight, and if ever your Prior there wants
men, he'd better give us the work, and we'll put it up
strong for him like this ; that is what our men can do,
for it's the English way of work." 1 So ended the old
mason's story, and all the group dispersed.

We may easily imagine how imposing was the scene
when that grand church was opened to the people.
Good Abbot Serlo had won his way by the great-
ness of his character and his piety. " Ecclesiae murus,
virtutis gladius, buccina justiciae," are the words written
to his memory by William of Malmesbury. The wealth
and work of that good man attracted other good men
to him ; and among them was one Peter his prior, who

1 The completed work at Gloucester was dedicated in the year noo.
The rebuilding of the Priory of Tewkesbury was immediately begun, and
in 1 1 02 it was used for service and raised to the dignity of an Abbey.
The style is very peculiar, and precisely similar to that at Gloucester r
whence the idea that the same workmen built it.

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 357

succeeded him as abbot, a man of literary and artistic
pursuits, who first began a library here, and collected
rich mass books, and embroidery, and filled the treasury
with valuable things, among which was the famous
Gloucester Candlestick, now in the safe custody of the
South Kensington Museum, which, with all its grotesque-
ness of design and ornament, is no mere relic of antique
curiosity, but a work ot such excellence as, even in
these fastidious days, to command our surprise and
admiration. It must have been a heart-breaking scene
for the good abbot and his art-loving prior to witness,
only two years after their dedication festival, their
glorious Abbey Church devastated by fire. The great
roof and painted ceiling lay smouldering upon the floor.
But, as, thank God, in so many human affairs, good
comes out of evil, the terror and ruin of those recurrent
flames, which sear the history of all such buildings,
brought about the use of stone vaulting, which, both for
its skill and beauty, became the consummating glory
of mediaeval genius. After four destructive fires, the
first work of Gothic vaulting here, which the monks of
the abbey devised and worked at with their own hands,
was, however, not an artistic success. They cut and
maimed the features of the fine old Norman cleres-
tory, and placed their thin weak work too low, destroy-
ing all the original grandeur of effect. If it were just
at all to stigmatise the arts of Romanesque or Norman
times as grotesque or rude, there was yet about them
that breadth and vigour of purpose which are the best
elements of grandeur. But here in this first pointed
vaulting was a grievous and irreparable injury, destroy-
ing all sense of proportion throughout the whole
building.

If our subject could be extended to embrace the
stirring events of contemporary history, such scenes
as these old walls have witnessed, when the last

358 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

Saxon Edward trod these aisles, or met his Witan
on this very spot ; or when the Conqueror William
came to Gloucester at Christmas time to hunt the
neighbouring forest, or met his Parliament within
these very walls ; or when the child King Henry the
Third was crowned upon those very altar steps ; or
when in solemn stateliness the murdered Edward was
laid beneath those stones such events as these would
afford the opportunities of most picturesque descrip-
tion ; for by ancient Chronicles, by illuminated manu-
scripts, and by inference from similar events well known
elsewhere, we could paint those pictures to the life.
But our attention here is limited to those arts of ancient
days that we see illustrated around us. If then we
cast the eyes of our imagination backwards to those
wondrous times, marked as they are by the contrasts
of intense refinement with intense barbarity, we shall
find in the broken record of their arts, such as the great
religious houses present either to our memory by their
records, or by their relics to our eyes, such works of sur-
passing beauty, such evidences of exquisite piety, as
are enough to cool our pride and engage our deepest
sympathies. If we remember how those arts of the
middle ages grew in beauty and strength, not by imi-
tation or by rote, but from the womb of creative genius;
if we reflect how deep are the sentiments, the sympathy,
the aspiration they express, we can trace through their
means that unity of motive and action which is the
beating of the great heart of humanity from generation to
generation ; forward to ourselves, whose sense responds
to every syllable of their poetry, or backwards, to
very ancient days when one who was a poet, a pro-
phet, and a king poured out his heart in such words
as these : " I have set my affection on the house of
my God, I have prepared onyx stones, and stones to
be set, glistening stones, and of divers colours, and all

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 359

manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abund-
ance ; and gold for the things of gold, and silver for
things of silver " or to one who followed in such
work, and added to it " blue and purple and crimson and
fair linen " or to the ancient seer whose inspired sense
of the future glory of Christ's Church broke out in such
rhapsody as this : " Oh thou afflicted, I will lay thy
stones with fair colours, and thy foundations with
sapphires ; I will make thy windows of agates, and thy
gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant
stones."

Among the relics of this once great Abbey of St.
Peter there are the evidences of such enterprise in
art, such record of the devotion of men's lives, their
thoughts, their piety, their skill, as are better felt than
told. They are their own interpreters. But we might
tell of such things as these, how that some forms of
art seem to have sprung up first here, at Gloucester,
such as the fan vaulting of the cloisters ; and the web
of screens, and tracery of a style before its time, 1 that
enrich St. Andrew's aisle ; or of that master genius of
architecture, whose name is among the great unknown,
fired by the success and beauty of that work of Abbot
Wygmore, and impelled by an enthusiasm, approaching
recklessness, that broke through the eastern apse, chang-
ing its gloom into a flood of light ; and paring down
the venerable walls, covered them with a film of tracery,
and then threw up a vault of network stone so playful,
so light, as seemed to need nothing but the air to carry
it. We might still further tell of the qualities of ancient
glass, so refractive as to turn it all to jewelry ; or of

1 This so-called aisle is the south transept, which was in great part re-
built by Abbot Wygmore (1329-1337), and although of the early years of
the fourteenth century, it is characterised by the distinctive features of the
Perpendicular style, which was evidently initiated by the masons of Glou-
cester. The same may be said of the earliest fan tracery known, which
is in the cloisters, begun by Abbot Horton 1351-1377, vide Prof. Willis,
Gent. Mag., 1860.

360 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY

that masterpiece of refined colouring, still traceable
among the shreds of ruin, on the reredos of the Lady
Chapel ; or again, we might praise the successful
audacity which poised the great tower in mid-air, and
crowned it with embroidery in stone. But all these
things are rather for the study of years than for this
passing hour. Take, rather, one broad glance at this
mighty fabric. Place yourself where you can command
the view, or wander in the aisles and see that great
work in the completion of its beauty, as it was on the
morning of that day, all but three centuries and a half
ago, when the Prior met the King's Commissioner and
surrendered the Abbey for its dissolution.

How different from what we see it now, denuded
of its colour, poor in sculpture, robbed of those import-
ant features which made its architectural effect har-
monious and complete, and others added which are an
injury and a hideous disgrace. Of what it was we
know enough by history and by inference to build it
up again ; but words will not build, and description
would fail to bring adequately before you the full effect
of what the art and the devotion of centuries had
accumulated within its walls. In front of you would
rise the great central rood on its loft, approached by
stairs in the aisle upon your left ; and beneath them
the two altars for the people's church, placed right and
left against the stone screen which parted it from the
choir, each altar with its background of sculptured
niches and coloured statuary.

If there is a feature more remarkable than others,
even now, it is the multitude of stone screen work
about the choir and its aisles and transepts ; but in
those days we know of at least two more, which must
have had imposing effect, at the end of each aisle of
the nave ; but these and others have been swept away.
Raised upon the steps within that choir, who can doubt

ix GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL 361

what the high altar and its retable must have been, that
were the work of that unsurpassed genius who changed
the grim old Saxon apse into a wonder of graceful-
ness and light ? Nor less beautiful was its background
of aisles and chapels, now alas empty and disused, but
then with their apses filled with sculpture and their
walls covered with storied painting ; and last, not least
indeed, that incomparable Lady Chapel, now desolate,
but then a wonder of coloured walls and windows, and
such a reredos as neither our fancy nor our skill could
replace, now a blackened wreck ; but then a work of
highest art, and of exquisite workmanship in sculpture
and in colours, before which we can only stand admir-
ing, grieved, and silent.

Turn then from these materials to the moral of
their tale. The Church in those days had its enemies,
some just and learned, some ignorant and unjust.
Rightly or wrongly (it is not our business here to
discuss the faith of Christianity as it then presented
itself, whether in the plain guise of its primitive truths
or modified in the passage of centuries by all that
ignorance, superstition, or the poetry of romance had
done to darken or adorn it), the people were content,
and they received the recompense of their simple faith.
It was to them the light and the solace of their lives
in an age of hardship and rough company. How
natural, then, their reverence and regard for all that
these sacred walls contained, that brought to their
faithful eyes the assurance of consolation and support.
The altars were their sanctuaries of refuge. The quiet
aisles, whose peace was only deepened by the echoes
from the world without, were their resting-places.
Architecture had embellished them, sculpture had
enriched them, and painting, which was then the
poor man's literature, had covered them with stories,
suggesting thoughts of devotion and peace.

362 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART ESSAY ix

But what are all these arts ? Does any estimate
of them that we can take exhaust their nature ?
Whence come they ? For what do they exist, if it
be not for their power of appeal from man to man ?
Of what good that lofty choir, if it be but to enclose
a vague and useless space ; of what good to raise
above it that great tower, if it be but to pile up sense-
less stones ; for what good the bulk and body of the
great minster itself, if it be but a mass of meaningless
masonry ? No ; but as the spark is that lights the
.candle, so has the touch of fine art illumined those
stones. The hands of their builders are dead, but
their art lives ; and their heart, their mind, their de-
votion, their very lives, still animate those monuments.

So ends my story ; and the moral of it all is this :
The foundation of all fine art lies in that relationship
which exists between the things of material and the
things of spirit ; and the degree of its perception and
the power of its use is the gauge of all art's genius.
By force of that relationship Fine Art testifies to that
Divine life which underlies the whole sphere of man's
mortal state. She testifies to the utter inadequacy of
all material things to measure the range, or to satisfy
the aspirations, of that which is itself illimitable the
human soul. She is herself that soul's interpreter.
Her greatest works are but symbols. She is conscious
of her own feebleness, and of those impenetrable clouds
which dim her mortal sight. But she is conscious also
of that light which shines beyond those clouds ; and by
an impulse of desire and faith she stretches out her
arms to the heavens, and, silent, she binds around her
lovely brow this motto : " What is not seen is eternal."

APPENDIX

THE METHOD OF SPIRIT FRESCO PAINTING

Reprinted from a letter addressed, by request, to the Secretary,
Science and Art Department, South Kensington, March 1880.

SPIRIT Fresco Painting is not the mere addition of one more
medium to the many already known, but a system, complete
from the first preparation of a wall to the last touch of the
artist.

The advantages which it ventures to offer are (i) dura-
bility (the principal materials being all but imperishable) ; (2)
power to resist external damp and changes of temperature ;
(3) luminous effect ; (4) a dead surface ; (5) freedom from all
chemical action on colours.

It is designed mainly for purposes of great works on walls,
and to afford to monumental art in this country the advantages
peculiar to the various systems of Buon Fresco, tempera, oil,
the true encaustic, and water glass, with freedom from those
objections to them which are due to the dampness and dark-
ness of our climate.

I am the more glad of the opportunity of sending you a
full explanation of the system, because its manifest advantages
in rapid drying and dead surface have led to the production of
works of considerable importance, which, though professedly
in Spirit Fresco, have been executed with too much considera-
tion of time and cost, by the adoption of the Medium, but by
neglect of the System, on which the whole excellence of the
matter depends. Such works, having merely a superficial
existence, that is to say, no incorporation with the wall on
which they are painted, are liable to perish from want of con-
sistency, and might bring the system into disrepute.

364 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART

The Wall Surface.

The wall must be dry. No painting materials can be
durable on a damp foundation ; it is enough to contend with
external damp and the atmosphere of crowded places. The
surface to be painted must also be perfectly dry and porous,
not merely absorbent, but porous. The best is good common
stucco, precisely the same as that always used for Buon Fresco,
of which the proportions of lime and perfectly washed gritty
sand vary according to the nature of the lime and the time
given to slake it. For important works the lime was formerly
run and kept closed from the atmosphere for above a year, in
which case the proportions would be one of lime to two of
perfectly clean grit. Lime imperfectly slaked will blister and
blow off. For a great work this must be purposely prepared ;
but for ordinary work the common plaster (stucco), viz. one of
lime to three of clean grit, in the interior of buildings care-
fully executed, may be trusted. The one primary necessity is
that it should be left with its natural surface, its porous quality
being absolutely essential. All smoothing process or "float-
ing " with plaster of Paris destroys this quality. All cements
must be avoided, some of them having too hard and smooth
a surface, and consequently being devoid of all key or means
of attachment for colours, and others being liable to efflor-
escence and chemical action. The next best surface, after that
of stucco on a wall of good dry brick, is that of coarse and
porous Bath stone, or any other free stone with that essential
quality ; all sand-papering or other process being objectionable
from its filling the pores of the stone with powder.

The Medium and Preparation of Colours.

Take, in any multiple of these proportions, according to
the quantity required for a work :

Elemi resin (Gum elemi} . 2 oz. )
Pure white wax . . 4 oz. J

Oil of spike lavender . . 8 oz. |
Finest preparation of artist's > mesure

copal . . . 20 oz.)

(If a stronger kind of copal is used 18 ounces are sufficient)

With these materials, incorporated by heat, all colours, in

dry powder, must be mixed, and the most convenient system

APPENDIX 365

is to do so precisely as oil colours are mixed on a slab, and
put into tubes. The colours keep in this way for many years.
I have many in tubes above twenty years old, as fresh as
when put there.

The proper method of compounding this medium is this.
Take 2 oz. of Elemi resin, and melt them in 2 ounces of
rectified turpentine in a small pot or saucepan over the char-
coal, and strain when quite liquid through muslin (to clear
it of pieces of leaves and bark) into the larger pot. Into
this put 4 oz. of white wax in small pieces, and melt with the
Elemi. When melted, add 20 oz. of copal, and boil all
together to a white foam, stirring well with a spoon reaching
to the bottom, remove from the fire and boil again. Immedi-
ately upon the last removal from the fire add 8 oz. of spike
oil, stirring all well together. This volatile ingredient would
be wasted if added sooner and boiled.

N.B. It is necessary to be extremely careful lest any
spark from the charcoal (no flame being allowed) should ignite
the liquid, every ingredient being inflammable. It should be
done out of doors.

Decant through a funnel into strong clear glass bottles,
that the condition of the medium may be clearly visible before
use, the quart size being the most convenient j and leave un-
corked to cool. When used, the bottles may require shaking,
not that the materials will ever again disintegrate, but from the
weight of the wax they will tend to thicken at the bottom.

Preparation of the Wall Surface.

Choose a time of dry and warm weather.

Dilute the amount of medium required in once and a half
its bulk of good turpentine. The mixture is more effective if
compounded by heat, which is very easily done in a large
iron cauldron over charcoal free from flame ; and the " Wall
Wash " thus made can be kept for any time in large bottles.
(If kept in tins for any length of time its condition for use
would be hidden.) With this wash let the surface of the wall
be well saturated, the liquid being dashed against it rather
than merely washed over it. After two days' interval this must
be repeated. After a few days left for evaporation, mix equal
quantities of pure white lead (in powder) and of gilder's
whitening (common whitening being often full of large grits

366 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART

and too strong of lime) in the medium slightly diluted with
about a third of turpentine, and paint the surface thickly,
and when sufficiently evaporated to bear a second coat, add
it as thickly as a brush can lay it. This, when dry, for
which two or three weeks may be required, produces a per-
fect surface so white that colours upon it have all the inter-
nal light of Buon Fresco and the transparency of pure water
colours, and it is so absorbent that their attachment is complete.

Method of Painting.

Paint boldly and simply as in Buon Fresco ; as much
as possible alia prima, and with much body ; and use pure
oil of spike in your dipper freely. Decision is very necessary,
because by much harassing the surface, the materials are
liable to be disintegrated, the resins rise to the surface and
perfect deadness is lost. If the surface has been left for so
long as to have become quite hard, wash over the part for the
morning's work with pure spike oil, to melt the surface (hence
the name Spirit Fresco) and prepare it to incorporate the
colours painted into it. If any part requires second painting
the next day, do not wash again with the spike oil, it is liable
to bring the resins to the surface, but use plenty of spike oil,
which renders the surface moist (Fresco) to be painted into.
Paint rather solidly than transparently. Transparent glazing
is less likely to dry dead than colours used with white lead.

The Rationale of the painting is therefore this, that the
colours in powder being incorporated with material identical
with that which has already sunk deep into the pores of the
wall surface, and has hardened there by the evaporation of
the spirit vehicle, may be regarded as belonging to the mass-
of the wall itself, and not as mere superficial applications.
This result is produced by the spike oil being the one com-
mon solvent of all the materials, which turpentine is not ;
the moment the painter's brush touches the surface it opens
to receive the colours, and on the rapid evaporation of the
spike oil it closes them in, and thus the work is done.

Important Cautions.

Take care that the spike oil or turpentine does not run
down, or by any carelessness be sprinkled on any finished
work. It produces a shine by bringing up the resins, and is
indelible, except by solid over-painting.

APPENDIX 367

Very clean habits are necessary, for every ingredient is so
sticky that unless the brushes, palette, etc. etc., are thoroughly
cleaned with turpentine at the close of every day's work the
result is great discomfort.

Let all preparation of the surface and rubbing up of the
colours for tubes be overlooked by the artist, as in old days when
the technical work was done in the artist's own " bottega."
A thoroughly respectable colourman interested in serving the
artist may be trusted, but the colourman's man (somewhere
else) most certainly is not. The colours dry so rapidly while
he is rubbing them up on the slab, that he is tempted to
dilute them with turpentine, and thus destroy their power and
consistency, which the use of pure medium alone ensures.

Result.

All this sounds very complicated and troublesome in
description, but in practice, when once " en train" it is
perfectly simple and easy. I do not pretend that it is a
cheap method, or free from all trouble, but that trouble is as
nothing in comparison with. Buon Fresco Painting and several
other methods.

If this system is really what, after more than twenty years'
work in it, I have confidence that it is, it is worth that little
trouble (only felt when first beginning) by an artist who de-
sires to ensure the durability of his work. It is for this that
the adoption of entire system is absolutely essential.

With all the many and manifest faults of amateur work,
my own paintings executed over the chancel arch of Highnam
Church in 1 860-61, the procession in the aisle of that church
begun in 1868, and the work in St. Andrew's Chapel in
Gloucester Cathedral, finished in 1867, simply regarded as
tests, afford for all practical purposes of wall painting every
quality that a fresco painter, under the exigencies of English
climate and darkness, can require. I only quote my own
works because I know that in them every condition has been
followed. Their surfaces are hard and smooth. The rapidity
of drying prevents any stickiness, and the surface becomes
immediately compact, but it requires a year or two at least
for its perfect induration by the complete evaporation of the
volatile oils.

368 THE MINISTRY OF FINE ART

Another Method for Wood or Canvas.

As a system of painting for large works of high class other
than upon walls, where dead surface and durability are de-
siderata, I venture to add that for large wooden panels or
extensive areas of wooden ceilings I have found, after many
experiments, the following most pleasant in use and perfectly
successful in result :

Take one part, in bulk, pale drying oil,

ditto, ditto, strong copal varnish,
two ditto, japanner's gold size,

two ditto, turpentine,

have them thoroughly shaken together, and always strongly
shaken before use. In this (which, by way of specifying it,
I have called the Ely medium) have all dry powder colours
rubbed up and put into tubes, or, if quantity is wanted, into
pots kept covered against dust and evaporation. Paint ac-
cording to habit or circumstance, transparently as in water-
colour or massively as in oil. Use as vehicle in the dipper a
compound of three parts turpentine and one part medium.
It dries with such rapidity that outline under-painting and
final effect may follow immediately on each other. It is very
pleasant and easy of use. It dries perfectly dead and hard
as iron. Ordinary decorators often use japanner's gold size
alone, because of its dead surface, but it is useless alone,
having no consistency nor any binding power to preserve
colours. This Ely medium is exceedingly dark in colour,
but it produces no appreciable effect on the powder colours
that are rubbed up in it, not even white. If any effect at all,
it is that of a slight mellowness. With this the whole of the
eastern half of the nave roof, the whole lantern and octagon,
and the baptistery transept ceiling at Ely Cathedral were
painted, the former as long ago as 1863-64.

THE END

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.

ALBEMARLE STREET
July, 1886.

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THE

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Third Edition. Svo. I2J.

Principles of Greek Etymology.

By Professor G. CURTIUS.

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TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH, WITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION.
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WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
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Medium 8z'0. 7 . 6d.
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Air. Miirrays List of New Publications. 5

A Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial
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AND OF KINDRED TERMS,

ETYMOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL, GEOGRAPHICAL,
AND DISCURSIVE.

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The Country Banker:

HIS CLIENTS, CARES, AND WORK.

FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF FORTY YEARS.

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By the Hon. WM. NAPIER BRUCE.

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THE

Endowments and Establishment of
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Eeelesiastieal History.

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By JAMES NASMYTH, C.E., and JAMES CARPENTER, F.R.A.S.

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A SURVEY OF THE MONUMENTS LEFT BY ANCIENT
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By the MARQUIS DE NADAILLAC.
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The Eton Latin Grammar.

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FOR USE IN THE LOWER FORMS.

COMPILED WITH THE SANCTION OF THE HEADMASTER,

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OP THE LATE

Rt. Hon. John Wilson Croker, LLD.,

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History of Greek Sculp- Greece.

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14 Mr. Murray's List of New Publications.

Plato,

AND THE OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOCRATES,
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in English Literature.
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Life and Correspondence

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Handbook-Dictionary of

the English, French, and German
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Including all Phrases and Col-
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HandbookofTravelTalk.

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The Wild Tribes of the

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