ANIMAL LIFE IN ITALIAN PAINTING 



outline of a horse on a piece of bone. The walls of 

 the great palaces of Babylon and Assyria were covered 

 with animal forms often admirable in observation and 

 modelling ; the Egyptians, if usually in a more con- 

 ventional way, still left few creatures known to them 

 unrecorded. The Greeks on their painted vases and 

 in the figures of Tanagra show us many evidences of 

 their interest in animal life. There are representations 

 at Knossos and Mycenae which are extraordinarily life- 

 like. Roman and early mediseval mosaics tell the same 

 tale, and the naturalist is rife in the miniatures of the 

 Breviary, the Psalter, or the Book of the Hours. 



The animals of the Days of Creation on the west 



front of Orvieto Cathedral, by followers of the Pisani, 



illustrate a great advance in sculpture at this time.^ 



Ctmabue, It is with the name of Cimabue (Giovanni Cenni), 



Margaritone's younger contemporary, that the awaken- 



* "The fulness of feeling and the charm of poetry enter Western 

 Christian art in the thirteenth century. The beginning may be traced in 

 the Roman mosaics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For example, 

 the mosaics in the apse of S. Maria in Trastevere (1140) and in the apse of 

 S. Clemente {c. 11 50) show a little poetic feeling which was not theological. 

 Yet these elements are still very faint. They become more pronounced in 

 Torriti's Coronation of the Virgin, in the apse of S. Maria Maggiore (1295), 

 and still more in the lovely mosaics depicting the Virgin's life in the lower 

 zone of the upper apse of S. Maria in Trastevere {c. 1290) by Cavallini. 

 One may say as to these mosaics, that the stags which drink of the waters 

 of life have become eager for them." — H. O. Taylor, The Classical Heritage 

 of the Middle Ages, 1901, p. 331, note. 



12 



1240-1302 



