ITALIAN PAINTING.
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND MEDIÆVAL PERIOD. 200-1250.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Bayet, _L'Art Byzantin_; Bennett,
_Christian Archæology_; Bosio, _La Roma Sotterranea_;
Burckhardt, _The Cicerone, an Art Guide to Painting in
Italy, ed. by Crowe_; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _New History
of Painting in Italy_; De Rossi, _La Roma Sotterranea
Cristiana_; De Rossi, _Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana_;
Didron, _Christian Iconography_; Eastlake (Kügler's),
_Handbook of Painting--The Italian Schools_; Garrucci,
_Storia dell' Arte Cristiana_; Gerspach, _La Mosaïque_;
Lafenestre, _La Peinture Italienne_; Lanzi, _History of
Painting in Italy_; Lecoy de la Marche, _Les Manuscrits et
la Miniature_; Lindsay, _Sketches of the History of
Christian Art_; Martigny, _Dictionnaire des Antiques
Chrétiennes_; Pératé, _L'Archeologie Chretienne_; Reber,
_History of Mediæval Art_; Rio, _Poetry of Christian Art_;
Lethaby, _Medieval Art_; Smith and Cheetham, _Dictionary of
Christian Antiquities_.
RISE OF CHRISTIANITY: Out of the decaying civilization of Rome sprang
into life that remarkable growth known as Christianity. It was not
welcomed by the Romans. It was scoffed at, scourged, persecuted, and,
at one time, nearly exterminated. But its vitality was stronger than
that of its persecutor, and when Rome declined, Christianity utilized
the things that were Roman, while striving to live for ideas that were
Christian.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--CHAMBER IN CATACOMBS, SHOWING WALL
DECORATION.]
There was no revolt, no sudden change. The Christian idea made haste
slowly, and at the start it was weighed down with many paganisms. The
Christians themselves in all save religious faith, were Romans, and
inherited Roman tastes, manners, and methods. But the Roman world,
with all its classicism and learning, was dying. The decline socially
and intellectually was with the Christians as well as the Romans.
There was good reason for it. The times were out of joint, and almost
everything was disorganized, worn out, decadent. The military life of
the Empire had begun to give way to the monastic and feudal life of
the Church. Quarrels and wars between the powers kept life at fever
heat. In the fifth century came the inpouring of the Goths and Huns,
and with them the sacking and plunder of the land. Misery and
squalor, with intellectual blackness, succeeded. Art, science,
literature, and learning degenerated to mere shadows of their former
selves, and a semi-barbarism reigned for five centuries. During all
this dark period Christian painting struggled on in a feeble way,
seeking to express itself. It started Roman in form, method, and even,
at times, in subject; it ended Christian, but not without a long
period of gradual transition, during which it was influenced from many
sources and underwent many changes.
ART MOTIVES: As in the ancient world, there were two principal motives
for painting in early Christian times--religion and decoration.
Religion was the chief motive, but Christianity was a very different
religion from that of the Greeks and Romans. The Hellenistic faith was
a worship of nature, a glorification of humanity, an exaltation of
physical and moral perfections. It dealt with the material and the
tangible, and Greek art appealed directly to the sensuous and earthly
nature of mankind. The Hebraic faith or Christianity was just the
opposite of this. It decried the human, the flesh, and the worldly. It
would have nothing to do with the beauty of this earth. Its hopes were
centred upon the life hereafter. The teaching of Christ was the
humility and the abasement of the human in favor of the spiritual and
the divine. Where Hellenism appealed to the senses, Hebraism appealed
to the spirit. In art the fine athletic figure, or, for that matter,
any figure, was an abomination. The early Church fathers opposed it.
It was forbidden by the Mosaic decalogue and savored of idolatry.
But what should take its place in art? How could the new Christian
ideas be expressed without form? Symbolism came in, but it was
insufficient. A party in the Church rose up in favor of more direct
representation. Art should be used as an engine of the Church to teach
the Bible to those who could not read. This argument held good, and
notwithstanding the opposition of the Iconoclastic party painting grew
in favor. It lent itself to teaching and came under ecclesiastical
domination. As it left the nature of the classic world and loosened
its grasp on things tangible it became feeble and decrepit in its
form. While it grew in sentiment and religious fervor it lost in
bodily vigor and technical ability.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--CATACOMB FRESCO. CRYPT OF S. CECILIA. THIRD
CENTURY.]
For many centuries the religious motive held strong, and art was the
servant of the Church. It taught the Bible truths, but it also
embellished and adorned the interiors of the churches. All the
frescos, mosaics, and altar-pieces had a decorative motive in their
coloring and setting. The church building was a house of refuge for
the oppressed, and it was made attractive not only in its lines and
proportions but in its ornamentation. Hence the two motives of the
early work--religious teaching and decoration.
SUBJECTS AND TECHNICAL METHODS: There was no distinct Judaic or
Christian type used in the very early art. The painters took their
models directly from the Roman frescos and marbles. It was the classic
figure and the classic costume, and those who produced the painting
of the early period were the degenerate painters of the classic world.
The figure was rather short and squat, coarse in the joints, hands,
and feet, and almost expressionless in the face. Christian life at
that time was passion-strung, but the faces in art do not show it, for
the reason that the Roman frescos were the painter's model, not the
people of the Christian community about him. There was nothing like a
realistic presentation at this time. The type alone was given.
In the drawing it was not so good as that shown in the Roman and
Pompeian frescos. There was a mechanism about its production, a
copying by unskilled hands, a negligence or an ignorance of form that
showed everywhere. The coloring, again, was a conventional scheme of
flat tints in reddish-browns and bluish-greens, with heavy outline
bands of brown. There was little perspective or background, and the
figures in panels were separated by vines, leaves, or other ornamental
division lines. Some relief was given to the figure by the brown
outlines. Light-and-shade was not well rendered, and composition was
formal. The great part of this early work was done in fresco after the
Roman formula, and was executed on the walls of the Catacombs. Other
forms of art showed in the gilded glasses, in manuscript illumination,
and, later, in the mosaics.
Technically the work begins to decline from the beginning in
proportion as painting was removed from the knowledge of the ancient
world. About the fifth century the figure grew heavy and stiff. A new
type began to show itself. The Roman toga was exchanged for the long
liturgical garment which hid the proportions of the body, the lines
grew hard and dark, a golden nimbus appeared about the head, and the
patriarchal in appearance came into art. The youthful Orphic face of
Christ changed to a solemn visage, with large, round eyes, saint-like
beard, and melancholy air. The classic qualities were fast
disappearing. Eastern types and elements were being introduced
through Byzantium. Oriental ornamentation, gold embossing, rich color
were doing away with form, perspective, light-and-shade, and
background.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--CHRIST AS GOOD SHEPHERD. MOSAIC, RAVENNA,
FIFTH CENTURY.]
The color was rich and the mechanical workmanship fair for the time,
but the figure had become paralytic. It shrouded itself in a sack-like
brocaded gown, had no feet at times, and instead of standing on the
ground hung in the air. Facial expression ran to contorted features,
holiness became moroseness, and sadness sulkiness. The flesh was
brown, the shadows green-tinted, giving an unhealthy look to the
faces. Add to this the gold ground (a Persian inheritance), the gilded
high lights, the absence of perspective, and the composing of groups
so that the figures looked piled one upon another instead of receding,
and we have the style of painting that prevailed in Byzantium and
Italy from about the ninth to the thirteenth century. Nothing of a
technical nature was in its favor except the rich coloring and the
mechanical adroitness of the fitting.
EARLY CHRISTIAN PAINTING: The earliest Christian painting appeared on
the walls of the Catacombs in Rome. These were decorated with panels
and within the panels were representations of trailing vines, leaves,
fruits, flowers, with birds and little genii or cupids. It was
painting similar to the Roman work, and had no Christian significance
though in a Christian place. Not long after, however, the desire to
express something of the faith began to show itself in a symbolic way.
The cups and the vases became marked with the fish, because the Greek
spelling of the word "icthus" gave the initials of the Christian
confession of faith. The paintings of the shepherd bearing a sheep
symbolized Christ and his flock; the anchor meant the Christian hope;
the phoenix immortality; the ship the Church; the cock watchfulness,
and so on. And at this time the decorations began to have a double
meaning. The vine came to represent the "I am the vine" and the birds
grew longer wings and became doves, symbolizing pure Christian souls.
It has been said this form of art came about through fear of
persecution, that the Christians hid their ideas in symbols because
open representation would be followed by violence and desecration.
Such was hardly the case. The emperors persecuted the living, but the
dead and their sepulchres were exempt from sacrilege by Roman law.
They probably used the symbol because they feared the Roman figure and
knew no other form to take its place. But symbolism did not supply the
popular need; it was impossible to originate an entirely new figure;
so the painters went back and borrowed the old Roman form. Christ
appeared as a beardless youth in Phrygian costume, the Virgin Mary was
a Roman matron, and the Apostles looked like Roman senators wearing
the toga.
Classic story was also borrowed to illustrate Bible truth. Hermes
carrying the sheep was the Good Shepherd, Psyche discovering Cupid was
the curiosity of Eve, Ulysses closing his ears to the Sirens was the
Christian resisting the tempter. The pagan Orpheus charming the
animals of the wood was finally adopted as a symbol, or perhaps an
ideal likeness of Christ. Then followed more direct representation in
classic form and manner, the Old Testament prefiguring and emphasizing
the New. Jonah appeared cast into the sea and cast by the whale on dry
land again as a symbol of the New Testament resurrection, and also as
a representation of the actual occurrence. Moses striking the rock
symbolized life eternal, and David slaying Goliath was Christ
victorious.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--CHRIST AND SAINTS. FRESCO. S. GENEROSA,
SEVENTH CENTURY (?).]
The chronology of the Catacombs painting is very much mixed, but it is
quite certain there was degeneracy from the start. The cause was
neglect of form, neglect of art as art, mechanical copying instead of
nature study, and finally, the predominance of the religious idea over
the forms of nature. With Constantine Christianity was recognized as
the national religion. Christian art came out of the Catacombs and
began to show itself in illuminations, mosaics, and church
decorations. Notwithstanding it was now free from restraint it did not
improve. Church traditions prevailed, sentiment bordered upon
sentimentality, and the technic of painting passed from bad to worse.
The decline continued during the sixth and seventh centuries, owing
somewhat perhaps to the influence of Byzantium and the introduction
into Italy of Eastern types and elements. In the eighth century the
Iconoclastic controversy broke out again in fury with the edict of Leo
the Isaurian. This controversy was a renewal of the old quarrel in the
Church about the use of pictures and images. Some wished them for
instruction in the Word; others decried them as leading to idolatry.
It was a long quarrel of over a hundred years' duration, and a deadly
one for art. When it ended, the artists were ordered to follow the
traditions, not to make any new creations, and not to model any figure
in the round. The nature element in art was quite dead at that time,
and the order resulted only in diverting the course of painting toward
the unrestricted miniatures and manuscripts. The native Italian art
was crushed for a time by this new ecclesiastical burden. It did not
entirely disappear, but it gave way to the stronger, though equally
restricted art that had been encroaching upon it for a long time--the
art of Byzantium.
BYZANTINE PAINTING: Constantinople was rebuilt and rechristened by
Constantine, a Christian emperor, in the year 328 A.D. It became a
stronghold of Christian traditions, manners, customs, art. But it was
not quite the same civilization as that of Rome and the West. It was
bordered on the south and east by oriental influences, and much of
Eastern thought, method, and glamour found its way into the Christian
community. The artists fought this influence, stickling a long time
for the severer classicism of ancient Greece. For when Rome fell the
traditions of the Old World centred around Constantinople. But classic
form was ever being encroached upon by oriental richness of material
and color. The struggle was a long but hopeless one. As in Italy,
form failed century by century. When, in the eighth century, the
Iconoclastic controversy cut away the little Greek existing in it, the
oriental ornament was about all that remained.
There was no chance for painting to rise under the prevailing
conditions. Free artistic creation was denied the artist. An advocate
of painting at the Second Nicene Council declared that: "It is not the
invention of the painter that creates the picture, but an inviolable
law of the Catholic Church. It is not the painter but the holy fathers
who have to invent and dictate. To them manifestly belongs the
composition, to the painter only the execution." Painting was in a
strait-jacket. It had to follow precedent and copy what had gone
before in old Byzantine patterns. Both in Italy and in Byzantium the
creative artist had passed away in favor of the skilled artisan--the
repeater of time-honored forms or colors. The workmanship was good for
the time, and the coloring and ornamental borders made a rich setting,
but the real life of art had gone. A long period of heavy, morose,
almost formless art, eloquent of mediæval darkness and ignorance,
followed.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--EZEKIEL BEFORE THE LORD. MS. ILLUMINATION.
PARIS, NINTH CENTURY.]
It is strange that such an art should be adopted by foreign nations,
and yet it was. Its bloody crucifixions and morbid madonnas were well
fitted to the dark view of life held during the Middle Ages, and its
influence was wide-spread and of long duration. It affected French and
German art, it ruled at the North, and in the East it lives even to
this day. That it strongly affected Italy is a very apparent fact.
Just when it first began to show its influence there is matter of
dispute. It probably gained a foothold at Ravenna in the sixth
century, when that province became a part of the empire of Justinian.
Later it permeated Rome, Sicily, and Naples at the south, and Venice
at the north. With the decline of the early Christian art of Italy
this richer, and in many ways more acceptable, Byzantine art came in,
and, with Italian modifications, usurped the field. It did not
literally crush out the native Italian art, but practically it
superseded it, or held it in check, from the ninth to the twelfth
century. After that the corrupted Italian art once more came to the
front.
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE REMAINS: The best examples of
Early Christian painting are still to be seen in the
Catacombs at Rome. Mosaics in the early churches of Rome,
Ravenna, Naples, Venice, Constantinople. Sculptures,
ivories, and glasses in the Lateran, Ravenna, and Vatican
museums. Illuminations in Vatican and Paris libraries.
Almost all the museums of Europe, those of the Vatican and
Naples particularly, have some examples of Byzantine work.
The older altar-pieces of the early Italian churches date
back to the mediæval period and show Byzantine influence.
The altar-pieces of the Greek and Russian churches show the
same influence even in modern work.