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PAINTERS OF THE FIRST ERA. 49
and Madonnas were almost the only styles of art in vogue, although miniature
painting was already being practised in the convents. Indeed, in these dark ages
. it was solely in the seclusion of monasteries that art lived at all, and the world's °
debt to the early religious orders for their safe preservation of both the traditions
of art and of the priceless old classic MSS. is very great. There must have still
lingered some spirit in the paintings of these monks, for we read of Bogori, the
King of the Bulgarians, having been converted to Christianity in the ninth century
by a painting in which the monk Metodio had depicted a last judgment of so
fearful and terrible a nature, that no one could look on it unmoved. .
It is said the love of miniature was spread in the south of Italy by Bertaire,
a French abbot of Monte Cassino, the great monastery near Naples.? In Flo- :
rence the art was not entirely confined to monks, although in this epoch they were
its chief exponents. Cimabue and Giotto both illuminated MSS. when young,
and Dante speaks of Franco Bolognese and Oderisi da Gubbio as the
“ Onor di quell’ arte
Ch’ alluminare chiamasi in Parisi,”
peer de
and he makes them expiate in purgatory their pride in their artistic fame.
Simone di Martino illuminated the Vergil of Petrarch, which is now in
the Ambrosian Library at Milan. It was even a knightly accomplishment, for
René d’Anjou, Count of Provence, while contending for his kingdom with the Dos
Aragonese, learned miniature painting in Florence from Bartolommeo della f ib
Gatta. Oy
But after all, the mosaics and altar-pieces are the chief remains of art of the
twelfth and preceding century. The Byzantine mosaics of San Marco, the early
Christian basilicas in Rome, and of the churches of Ravenna are too well known | o
to need description here, and may be taken as a good type of conventional art.
Hard as the unyielding material in which they are worked, constrained as the
dogmatic religion which produced them, yet rich and gorgeous as the emperors
. who commissioned them, these imperishable works remain while art has gone on
to greater development—as the chrysalis still lies, stiff and lifeless, on the ground,
while the butterfly to which it gave birth disports in free air above it.
Nearly every Italian church contains one or more of the Byzantine Madonnas
with smooth oval face, almond eyes, and stiff limbs. There are also several black
Madonnas called “ Acheiropoiete,” and said to be miraculous—such as those at the
SS. Annunziata in Florence, the Impruneta, Monte Nero, near Leghorn, and
others. Thetrue story of these Madonnas is that they were brought as memorials I
of conquest from the Crusades, in which the Greek generals carried them at the
(1) Padre Marchese, ‘¢ Memorie,” &c., vol. i., p- 7. (2) Viardot, ‘* Les Merveilles de la Peinture.””
(3) Padre Marchese, ‘‘ Memorie,” &c., vol. i., cap. 12, p. 202.
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