_Emmanuel_ (Byzantine: about 1660).
This picture is the earliest in the Gallery (with the exception of
the Greek portraits, see 1260)--not in order of time, but in order of
artistic development. It is a genuine Byzantine picture, an example,
therefore, of the art which prevailed in Italy from the sixth century
down to about 1250, and the influence of which survived even when the
Italian painters had developed an art of their own. The Byzantine style
of painting is distinguished by its conventionality and its constancy.
It was the recognised thing that such and such a subject should be
treated in such and such a way and no other. There is a Byzantine
Manual of Painting in a manuscript of the eleventh century in which
instructions are given not only as to the subjects to be represented,
but as to the costume, age, and lineaments of the characters. An art
of this kind was naturally unchanging. This picture is probably only
200 years old, but if it had been painted 800 years ago, or if it had
been ordered only the other day from the monks of Mount Athos, little
difference of style would be perceptible. It is signed in Greek "The
hand of Emmanouel, the priest, son of John," a painter living in Venice
about the year 1660.
The picture is conventional in its choice of subject--the saints Cosmas
and Damian being one of the subjects recognised in Byzantine art.
They were martyrs of the fourth century--patron saints of medicine,
which they practised without fees--hence their title, the "holy
money-despisers." They are here receiving the Divine blessing. The
picture is conventional also in its treatment. Thus the attitude of
the hand is the recognised symbol whereby to express that a figure is
speaking. So, too, the background is formed by a golden plain, which
is meant to represent the air or the sky. The dark blue semicircle
surrounding the bust of our Saviour, above the two heads of the saints,
has more or less the form of the horizon, and is meant to represent the
heaven in which Christ dwells (Richter's _Italian Art_, etc., pp. 5-7).