7 02* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The continuance of this connection is shown by the following 

 passage from Eastlake's History : 



"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 designed, 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." 



Along with the practice of painting went knowledge of the 

 ancillary art, the preparation of colors. In a later passage East- 

 lake says : 



u Cennini, speaking of the mode of preparing a certain color, says that 

 the receipt could easily be obtained, 'especially from the friars.'" 

 In another passage there is implied an early step in seculari- 

 zation. 



"Colors and other materials, when not furnished by monks who re- 

 tained the ancient habits of the cloister, were provided by the apothecary." 

 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 four- 

 teenth and fifteenth laymen competed with them. Various paint- 

 ers in miniature and oil are mentioned. 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 repre- 

 sentation, as in ancient pagan art Egyptian or Greek. Over 

 ecclesiastical paintings this control continued into the last cen- 

 tury ; as in Spain, where, under the title of Pictor Christianus, 

 there was promulgated a sacro-pictorial law prescribing the com- 

 position of pictures in detail. Nay, such regulation continues 

 still. M. Didron, who visited the churches and monasteries of 

 Greece in 1839, says : 



" Ni le temps ni le lieu ne font rien a Tart grec ; au XVIII* siecle, le 

 peintre moreote continue et caique le peintre venitien du X e , le peintre 

 athonite du V e ou VP. Le costume des personnages est partout et en tout 

 temps le meme, non-seulement pour la forme, mais pour la couleur, mais 

 pour le dessin, mais jusque pour le nombre et 1'epaisseur des plis. On ne 

 saurait pousser plus loin 1'exactitude tradition nelle, 1'esclavage du passe." 

 And Sir Emerson Tennent, ct propos of the parallelism between 

 the rigid code conformed to by the monkish artists of the East 

 and the code, equally rigid, conformed to by the Buddhists of 

 Ceylon, quotes an illustrative incident concerning these priest- 



