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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



THE HISTORY OF ART. 



VII. THE EAKLY ITALIAN EEVIVAL. 



ROMAN art declined slowly but steadily from the palmy days of 

 the Empire onward. The Roman system was too artificial to 

 last : it was based upon slavery and conquest ; it was kept up 

 by the tribute and the degradation of the subject nations ; it con- 

 centrated all the wealth of the civilised world upon Rome alone ; 

 and it thus fostered a cruel and selfish luxury in the capital, 

 while leaving the provinces crushed and impoverished by the 

 absolute centralisation upon which it insisted before everything 

 else. Accordingly, the Empire began to decay from within even 

 before it began to be attacked from without ; and Art, as always, 



grander in their own esteem. They were surrounded by 

 numerous officials ; they had endless chamberlains and stewards 

 and secretaries ; they were preceded by lictors with emblema- 

 tical rods and axes ; they lived in a perpetual ceremony of 

 trumpets and uniforms and titles and genuflexions. Their 

 palaces were adorned with Eastern and despotic gorgeousness ; 

 their churches were decorated with gilt mosaics and Moorish 

 wealth of barbaric colouring. To suit such a court and such 

 a style of life as this, there naturally grew up a peculiar 

 school of artists, who remind one in many particulars of 

 the old Egyptian school, though, of course, their inheritance 

 of the higher Greek methods necessarily placed them on a very 

 different level from the primitive painters of Thebes and 



TRIPTYCH OF THE EAELY ITALIAN PERIOD. 



reflected this decay in its handicraft. Already under the em- 

 perors of the second century it had lost much of its original 

 vigour and life ; it had degenerated into fixed and somewhat 

 conventional forms, into a hardness and rigidity very different 

 from the old Greek freedom and naturalness. By the time of 

 Constantino the change had become very marked. His trium- 

 phal arch may be regarded as the last dying effort of the real 

 Antique Roman art. There is nothing spontaneous in it, 

 nothing fresh, nothing original ; it is a mere struggling attempt 

 on the part of second-rate workmen to copy and imitate the 

 great and vigorous triumphal arches of the earlier age. 



When Constantino removed the seat of government from 

 Rome to his new capital of Constantinople on the Bosphorus, 

 the whole tone of art became utterly different. Constantinople 

 was the administrative centre of a great crystallised and solidi- 

 fied empire. All its habits and customs were those of the most 

 extravagant court ceremonial and etiquette. As the Empire 

 grew narrower aad narrower, the emperors grew grander and 



Memphis. Nevertheless, there was much similarity in their 

 position, and this induced a' certain resemblance in their style 

 as well. At Constantinople, as in Egypt, art was directly and 

 immediately dependent upon the court. There was no wealthy 

 and instructed class outside the official body and the emperor's 

 household ; all artistic handicraft was produced solely for the 

 imperial family or its dependents. Palaces and churches were 

 adorned with painting and mosaic ; rich manuscripts were 

 illuminated ; beautiful miniatures were produced, and exquisite 

 carvings performed for the court ceremonial. But there was 

 no class of independent artists or independent art-patrons. 

 Hence Byzantine work (as the art of Constantinople is usually 

 called) was very wooden and artificial, a mere stiff representa- 

 tion of conventional emperors and patriarchs, in gorgeous robes 

 and splendid colouring, performing various ceremonies of a 

 properly stiff and dignified character. It has a certain grand 

 and semi-barbaric impressiveness of its own, in its peculiar 

 ceremonial fashion, something like our own pomp of heraldry 



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