PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 701* 



This relatively slow development of painting was due to its origi- 

 nal subordination to sculpture. Independent development of 

 it had scope only when by such steps as those above indicated it 

 became separate; and, employed at first in temple-decoration, 

 it gained this scope as sculpture did, in the ancillary and less 

 sacred parts. 



Partly because the Greek nature, and the relatively incoherent 

 structure of the Greek nation, prevented the growth of an ecclesi- 

 astical hierarchy, with the normal developments arising from it, 

 and partly perhaps chiefly because Greek civilization was in so 

 large a measure influenced by the earlier civilizations adjacent to 

 it, the further course of evolution in the art and practice of paint- 

 ing is broken. We can only say that the secularization became 

 marked in the later stages of Grecian life. Though before the 

 time of Zeuxis various painters had occupied themselves with 

 such semi- secular subjects as battles and with other subjects com- 

 pletely secular, yet, generally executed as these were for the 

 ancillary parts of temples, and being tinctured by that sentiment 

 implied in the representation of great deeds achieved by ances- 

 tors, they still preserved traces of religious origin. This is, in- 

 deed, implied by the remark which Mr. Poynter quotes from 

 Lucian, that Zeuxis cared not " to repeat the representations of 

 gods, heroes, and battles, which were already hackneyed and 

 familiar." 



The first stages in the history of painting, and of those who 

 practiced it, after the rise of Christianity, are confused by the in- 

 fluences of the pagan art at that time existing. It was only after 

 this earliest Italian art, religious like other early art in nearly all 

 its subjects, had been practically extinguished by barbarian in- 

 vaders, that characteristic Christian art was initiated by intro- 

 duction of the methods and usages which had been preserved and 

 developed in Constantinople ; and the art thus recommended, en- 

 tirely devoted to sacred purposes, was entirely priestly in its ex- 

 ecutants. " From the monasteries of Constantinople, Thessalonica, 

 and Mount Athos," says Mr. Poynter, " Greek artists and teachers 

 passed into all the provinces of Southern Europe ; " and there- 

 after, for a long period, the formal Byzantine style prevailed 

 everywhere. 



Of the scanty facts illustrating the subsequent relations be- 

 tween priest and painter in early Christian Europe, one is fur- 

 nished by the ninth century. 



Bogoris, the first Christian king of the Bulgarians, solicited the emperor 

 Michael " for the services of a painter competent to decorate his palace," 

 and the "emperor dispatched [the monk] Methodius to the Bulgarian 

 Court." 



