The Book of Art for Young People | Page 6

reading our favourite books over and over again, our forefathers of
1200 wanted to see on the walls of their churches representations of the
stories which they could not read. Their daily thoughts were more
occupied with the Infant Christ, the saints, and the angels, than ours
generally are. They thought of themselves as under the protection of
some saint, who would plead with God the Father for them if they
asked him, for God Himself seemed too high or remote to be appealed
to always directly. He was approached with awe; the saints, the Virgin,
and the Infant Christ, with love.
We must realise this difference before we can well understand a picture
painted in the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries, nor can we
look at one without feeling that the artist and the people for whom he
painted, so loved the holy personages. They thought about them always,
not only at stated times and on Sundays, and never tired of looking at
pictures of them and their doings. It is sometimes said that only
Catholics can understand medieval art, because they feel towards the
saints as the old painters did. But it is possible for any one to realize
how in those far-off days the people felt, and it is this that we must try
to do. The religious fervour of the Middle Ages was not a sign of great
virtue among all the people. Some were far more cruel, savage, and
unrestrained than we are to-day. Very wicked men even became
powerful dignitaries in the Church. But it was the Church that fostered
the impulses of pity and charity in a fierce age, and some of the saints
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as St. Francis of Assisi
and St. Catharine of Siena, are still held to be among the most beautiful
characters the world has ever known.
The churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Florence were
lined with marble, and a great picture frequently stood above the altar.

It is difficult to realize to-day that the processes which we call oil and
water-colour painting were not then invented, and that no shops existed
to sell canvases and paints ready for use. The artist painted upon a
wooden panel, which he had himself to make, plane flat, and cut to the
size he needed. In order to get a surface upon which he could paint, he
covered the panel with a thin coating of plaster which it was difficult to
lay on absolutely flat. Upon the plaster he drew the outline of the
figures he was going to paint, and filled in the background with a thin
layer of gold leaf, such as is to-day used for gilding frames. After the
background had been put in, it was impossible to correct the outline of
the figures, and the labour of preparing the wooden panel and of laying
the gold was so great that an artist would naturally not make risky
attempts towards something new, lest he should spoil his work. In the
Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey there is a thirteenth-century
altar-piece of this kind, and you can see the strips of vellum that were
used to cover the joins of the different pieces of wood forming the
panel, beneath the layer of plaster, which has now to a great extent
peeled off.
The people liked to see their Old Testament stories and the stories from
the Life of Christ painted over and over again. They had become fond
of the versions of the tales which they had known and seen painted
when they were young, and did not wish them changed, so that the
range of subjects was not large. The same were repeated, and because
of the painter's fear of making mistakes it was natural that the same
figures should be repeated too. Thus, whatever the subject pictured, a
tradition was formed in each locality for the grouping and general
arrangement of the figures, and the most authoritative tradition for such
typical groupings was preserved in Constantinople or Byzantium, from
which city the 'Byzantine' school of painting takes its name.
Before 1200, Byzantium had been a centre of residence and the
civilizing influence of trade for eighteen centuries. It had been the
capital of the Roman Empire, and less civilized peoples from the north
had never conquered the town, destroying the Greek and Roman
traditions, as happened elsewhere in Europe. You have read how the
Romans had to withdraw their armies from England to defend Rome

against the attacks of the Goths from the north, and then how Britain
was settled by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes, who destroyed most
of the Roman civilization. A similar though much less complete
destruction took place in Italy a little later, when Goths and Lombards,
who