The Story of Mankind [174]
as no people
have ever done either before or since! Nothing is considered
too good or too costly or too wondrous for this House of God
and Home of Man. The sculptors, who since the destruction
of the Roman Empire have been out of employment, haltingly
return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses
and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord
and the blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work
to make tapestries for the walls. The jewellers offer their
highest art that the shrine of the altar may be worthy of complete
adoration. Even the painter does his best. Poor man,
he is greatly handicapped by lack of a suitable medium.
And thereby hangs a story.
The Romans of the early Christian period had covered the
floors and the walls of their temples and houses with mosaics;
pictures made of coloured bits of glass. But this art had been
exceedingly difficult. It gave the painter no chance to express
all he wanted to say, as all children know who have ever tried to
make figures out of coloured blocks of wood. The art of
mosaic painting therefore died out during the late Middle
Ages except in Russia, where the Byzantine mosaic painters
had found a refuge after the fall of Constantinople and continued
to ornament the walls of the orthodox churches until
the day of the Bolsheviki, when there was an end to the building
of churches.
Of course, the mediaeval painter could mix his colours with
the water of the wet plaster which was put upon the walls of
the churches. This method of painting upon ``fresh plaster''
(which was generally called ``fresco'' or ``fresh'' painting)
was very popular for many centuries. To-day, it is as rare
as the art of painting miniatures in manuscripts and among
the hundreds of artists of our modern cities there is perhaps
one who can handle this medium successfully. But during the
Middle Ages there was no other way and the artists were
``fresco'' workers for lack of something better. The method
however had certain great disadvantages. Very often the
plaster came off the walls after only a few years, or dampness
spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will spoil the pattern
of our wall paper. People tried every imaginable expedient
to get away from this plaster background. They tried to mix
their colours with wine and vinegar and with honey and with
the sticky white of egg, but none of these methods were satisfactory.
For more than a thousand years these experiments
continued. In painting pictures upon the parchment leaves
of manuscripts the mediaeval artists were very successful. But
when it came to covering large spaces of wood or stone with
paint which would stick, they did not succeed very well.
At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the
problem was solved in the southern Netherlands by Jan and
Hubert van Eyck. The famous Flemish brothers mixed their
paint with specially prepared oils and this allowed them to use
wood and canvas or stone or anything else as a background for
their pictures.
But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle
Ages was a thing of the past. The rich burghers of the cities
were succeeding the bishops as patrons of the arts. And as
art invariably follows the full dinner-pail, the artists now began
to work for these worldly employers and painted pictures for
kings, for grand-dukes and for rich bankers. Within a very
short time, the new method of painting with oil spread through
Europe and in every country there developed a school of
special painting which showed the characteristic tastes of the
people for whom these portraits and landscapes were made.
In Spain, for example, Velasquez painted court-dwarfs
and the weavers of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts
of persons and subjects connected with the king and his court.
But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer
painted the barnyard
have ever done either before or since! Nothing is considered
too good or too costly or too wondrous for this House of God
and Home of Man. The sculptors, who since the destruction
of the Roman Empire have been out of employment, haltingly
return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses
and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord
and the blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work
to make tapestries for the walls. The jewellers offer their
highest art that the shrine of the altar may be worthy of complete
adoration. Even the painter does his best. Poor man,
he is greatly handicapped by lack of a suitable medium.
And thereby hangs a story.
The Romans of the early Christian period had covered the
floors and the walls of their temples and houses with mosaics;
pictures made of coloured bits of glass. But this art had been
exceedingly difficult. It gave the painter no chance to express
all he wanted to say, as all children know who have ever tried to
make figures out of coloured blocks of wood. The art of
mosaic painting therefore died out during the late Middle
Ages except in Russia, where the Byzantine mosaic painters
had found a refuge after the fall of Constantinople and continued
to ornament the walls of the orthodox churches until
the day of the Bolsheviki, when there was an end to the building
of churches.
Of course, the mediaeval painter could mix his colours with
the water of the wet plaster which was put upon the walls of
the churches. This method of painting upon ``fresh plaster''
(which was generally called ``fresco'' or ``fresh'' painting)
was very popular for many centuries. To-day, it is as rare
as the art of painting miniatures in manuscripts and among
the hundreds of artists of our modern cities there is perhaps
one who can handle this medium successfully. But during the
Middle Ages there was no other way and the artists were
``fresco'' workers for lack of something better. The method
however had certain great disadvantages. Very often the
plaster came off the walls after only a few years, or dampness
spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will spoil the pattern
of our wall paper. People tried every imaginable expedient
to get away from this plaster background. They tried to mix
their colours with wine and vinegar and with honey and with
the sticky white of egg, but none of these methods were satisfactory.
For more than a thousand years these experiments
continued. In painting pictures upon the parchment leaves
of manuscripts the mediaeval artists were very successful. But
when it came to covering large spaces of wood or stone with
paint which would stick, they did not succeed very well.
At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the
problem was solved in the southern Netherlands by Jan and
Hubert van Eyck. The famous Flemish brothers mixed their
paint with specially prepared oils and this allowed them to use
wood and canvas or stone or anything else as a background for
their pictures.
But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle
Ages was a thing of the past. The rich burghers of the cities
were succeeding the bishops as patrons of the arts. And as
art invariably follows the full dinner-pail, the artists now began
to work for these worldly employers and painted pictures for
kings, for grand-dukes and for rich bankers. Within a very
short time, the new method of painting with oil spread through
Europe and in every country there developed a school of
special painting which showed the characteristic tastes of the
people for whom these portraits and landscapes were made.
In Spain, for example, Velasquez painted court-dwarfs
and the weavers of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts
of persons and subjects connected with the king and his court.
But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer
painted the barnyard