156 Qirsory Strictures on Modern Art. 



although Italian artists were employed in ornamenting our 

 churches and tombs, yet in the old liistories, records, and 

 contracts of public buildings, there are abundant names ot" 

 Enghsh painters and sculptors, who appear to have been 

 considered able masters in their time, perhaps not inferior 

 to their Italian fellow-workmen. But after Henry the 

 Eighth's separation from the church of Rome, Elizabeth, 

 proceeding in the reformation, destroyed the pictures and 

 images in the churches ; strictly forbidding any thing of the 

 kind to be admitted in future, under the severest penalties, 

 as being catholic and idolatrous. This entirely prevented 

 the exercise of historical painting, or sculpture, in this 

 country; at the very time that Raffaclle and Michel Angelo 

 had brought those arts into the highest estimation on the 

 continent. — The rebellion, in 1()4S, completed what the 

 reformation had begun ; the fanatics defaced whatever they 

 could, that the former inquisition had spared ; they broke 

 painted windows and tombs, carried away the monumental 

 brass, and church-plate, crying, " Cursed he be, that doth 

 the work of the Lord deceitfully !" — Thus the artist, terrified 

 by the threats of the sovereign, the denunciation of death or. 

 perpetual imprisonment from the laws, and scared by fana- 

 tical anathemas, found that his only hope of safety rested 

 upon quitting for ever a profession, which enclosed him on 

 all sides with the prospect of misery and destruction. From 

 this time, and from these causes, we scarcely hear of any 

 attempt at historical art by an Englishman, until it was 

 again called forth by the benign influence of the present 

 reign. 



When the liberal spirit of Charles the First desired to 

 adorn the architecture of Whitehall with the graces of paint- 

 ing, he was obliged to stfek tliR artist in a ioreign landj he 

 had no subject eq'ial to the task : Rubens and Vandvck weie 

 employed : and when the king's bust was to be done, Vandyck 

 painted three views of his face, a front, a' side, and a three- 

 quarter, which were sent to Bernini in Rome, by whom it 

 was executed in marble. IF our kings and nobility had con- 

 tinued to inhabit castles, as in the feudal times, painting 

 and sculpture would have been but Utile wanted ; for, if the 



walls 



