§86. 



IlISE OF PAINTING IN ITALY. 315 



Venetians and the French, in 1 203, tended to keep up the 

 intercourse long before established with the Greeks. Nor 

 was it until the Tuscans, by employing Greeks settled at 

 Venice to decorate their churches, had learnt the art, that 

 mosaic work began to be once more practised with success by 

 native Italians. At the beginning of the 1300 the Tuscans 

 founded, for the first time, a mosaic school of their own, which 

 speedily improved on the too conventional style of their in- 

 structors, and changed it from what was scarcely more than a 

 manufacture* to the condition of an art. And thus, what 

 had once passed from G-reece to Italy, then back from Italy 

 to Byzantium, and thence once more to Italy, reached its 

 highest excellence in this last country, and has now left behind 

 it nothing in the East but the decoration of walls, such as are 

 seen in the brilliant vaulted rooms of Damascus and Aleppo. 



There is abundant evidence of Byzantine art in Italy. The 

 mosaics of the triumphal arch of Santa Maria Maggiore at 

 Eome, of a.d. 432, are Byzantine; as are those atEavenna of 

 the same and two following centuries ; and those of the Tri- 

 clinium of Leo at Rome, on gold ground, of 797 ; and of Santa 

 Pudenziana and Prassede at Rome, about 780 and 820 ; of 

 S. Ambrosio at Milan, of 836 ; and of St. Mark's, at Venice, 

 of the end of the 900 and following century; with some 

 others, are Byzantine ; and even in those at S. Clemente 

 (Rome)t, of a.d. 1112, the word agios is written over the 

 saints in Roman characters. 



The Italians, who had hitherto been contented to imitate 

 the works of the Byzantine mosaicists, began at length to act 



* M. Didron found at Mount Athos a work " containing fixed rules for their 

 paintings, supposed to be of the eleventh century," and used to this day. 

 (Labartc, p. 18.) 



•f The figures of St. Peter, " agius Petrus," and of St. Clement have a very 

 classical appearance, remarkable at this period. {See § 84, p. 310, on occa- 

 sional classical figures.) 



