PAINTER. 311 



In the practice of the arts of design, as in the few refined pursuits 

 which were cultivated or allowed during the darker ages, the monks 

 were long independent of secular assistance. Not only the pictures, 

 but the stained glass, the gold and silver chalices, the reliquaries, all 

 that belonged to the decoration and service of the church, were de 

 signed, and sometimes entirely executed by them ; and it was not till 

 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the knowledge of the 

 monastery began to be shared by the world at large, that painting in 

 some degree emerged from this fostering though rigid tuition.&quot; 



Along with the practice of painting went knowledge of 

 the ancillary art, the preparation of colours. In a later 

 passage Eastlake says: 



&quot;Cennini, speaking of the mode of preparing a certain colour, says 

 that the receipt could easily be obtained, especially from the friars. &quot; 



In another passage there is implied an early step in secu 

 larization. 



1 1 Colours and other materials, when not furnished by monks who 

 retained the ancient habits of the cloister, were provided by the 

 apothecary. &quot; 



And further steps in the divergence of lay painters from 

 clerical painters are implied by the statement of Laborde, 

 quoted by Levasseur, to the effect that the illuminators of 

 the thirteenth century had for the most part been monks, 

 but that in the fourteenth and fifteenth laymen competed 

 with them. Various painters in miniature and oil are men 

 tioned. Painters continued to be illuminators as well ; they 

 also painted portraits and treated some sacred subjects. 



Throughout early Christian art, devoted exclusively to 

 sacred subjects, there was rigid adherence to authorized 

 modes of representation, as in ancient pagan art Egyptian 

 or Greek. Over ecclesiastical paintings this control con 

 tinued into the last century ; as in Spain, where, under the 

 title of Pictor Christianus, there was promulgated a sacro- 

 pictorial law prescribing the composition of pictures in de 

 tail. Nay, such regulation continues still. M. Didron, who 

 visited the churches and monasteries of Greece in 1839 

 says : 



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