admitted into Egyptian buildings, and those outside were | turies, and by their artistic superiority to have prevented subdued by contrast with the brilliant blue sky and glowing sunshine under which they were always seen.1 As the development of a more original and native school of Etruscan Painting.—The rock-cut sepulchres of the Etrurians (see ETRURIA, vol. viii. p. 645) supply the only existing specimens of their mural painting; and, unlike the tombs of Egypt, only a small proportion appear to have been decorated in this way. The actual dates of these paintings are very uncertain, but they range possibly from about the 8th century B.C. down to almost the Christian era. The tombs which possess these paintings are mostly square-shaped rooms, with slightly-arched or gabled roofs, excavated in soft sandstone or tufa hillsides. The earlier ones show distinct Egyptian influence alike in drawing and in composition: they are very broadly designed with flat unshaded tints, the faces in profile, except the Greek Painting.-This is a very obscure subject, for, eyes, which are drawn as if seen in front. Colours, as in although Strabo, Pliny, Pausanias, and others have left us Egypt, are used conventionally-male flesh red, white or minute descriptions of Greek paintings and ample accounts pale yellow for the females, black for demons. In one of painters and styles, yet of the pictures themselves respect these paintings differ from those of the Egyptians; almost nothing now remains. Even in Egypt the use of very few colours are used-red, brown, and yellow ochres, colour does not appear to have been more universal than it carbon-black, lime or chalk-white, and occasionally blue was among the Greeks, who app'ied it freely to their marble are the only pigments. The rock-walls are prepared by statues and reliefs, the whole of their buildings inside and being covered with a thin skin of lime stucco, and lime out, as well as for the decoration of flat wall-surfaces. They or chalk is mixed in small quantities with all the appear to have cared but little for pure form, and not colours; hence the restriction to "earth pigments," made to have valued the delicate ivory-like tint and beautiful doubly necessary by the constant dampness of these sub- texture of their fine Pentelic and Parian marbles, except terranean chambers. The process employed was in fact a as a ground for coloured ornament. A whole class of kind of fresco, though the stucco ground was not applied artists, called ȧyaλμáτwv eykavoтai, were occupied in in small patches only sufficient for the day's work; the colouring marble sculpture, and their services were very dampness of the rock was enough to keep the stucco skin highly valued. In some cases, probably for the sake moist, and so allow the necessary infiltration of colour of hiding the joints and getting a more absorbent surface, from the surface. Many of these paintings when first dis- the marble, however pure and fine in texture, was covered covered were quite fresh in tint and uninjured by time, with a thin skin of stucco made of mixed lime and pow but they are soon dulled by exposure to light. In the dered marble. Among the extremely rare specimens of course of centuries great changes of style naturally took Greek painting still existing, the most important is an place; the early Egyptian influence, probably brought to alabaster sarcophagus, found in a tomb near Corneto, and Etruria through the Phoenician traders, was succeeded by now in the Etruscan museum at Florence. This is decorated an even more strongly-marked Greek influence-at first outside with very beautiful and purely Greek paintings, archaic and stiff, then developing into great beauty of executed on a stucco skin as hard and smooth as the drawing, and finally yielding to the Roman spirit, as the alabaster itself. The pictures represent combats of the degradation of Greek art advanced under their powerful Greeks and Amazons, drawn with marvellous beauty_of but inartistic Roman conquerors. outline and grace of movement and composition. Throughout this succession of styles-Egyptian, Greek, colouring, though rather brilliant, is very simply treated, and Græco-Roman—there runs a distinct undercurrent and the figures are kept strictly to one plane without any of individuality due to the Etruscans themselves. This attempt at complicated perspective. Other most valuable appears not only in the drawing but also in the choice specimens of Greek art, found at Herculaneum and now of subjects. In addition to pictures of banquets with in the Naples museum, are some small paintings, one of musicians and dancers, hunting and racing scenes, the girls playing with dice, another of Theseus and the workshops of different craftsmen and other domestic sub- Minotaur. These are painted with miniature-like delicacy jects, all thoroughly Hellenic in sentiment, other paintings on the bare surface of marble slabs; they are almost monooccur which are very un-Greek in feeling. These repre- chromatic, and are of the highest beauty both in drawing sent the judgment and punishment of souls in a future and in their skilfully-modelled gradations of shadowlife. Mantus, Charun, and other infernal deities of the quite unlike any of the Greek vase-paintings. The first-menRasena, hideous in aspect and armed with hammers, or tioned painting is signed ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ ΑΘΗΝΑΙΟΣ. furies, depicted as black bearded demons winged and It is probable that the strictly archaic paintings of the brandishing live snakes, terrify or torture shrinking human Greeks, such as those of Polygnotus in the 5th century souls. Others, and not the earliest in date, represent B.C., executed with few and simple colours, had much human sacrifices, such as those at the tomb of Patroclus- resemblance to those on vases, but Pliny is certainly wrong a class of subjects which, though Homeric, appears but when he asserts that, till the time of Apelles (c. 350-310 rarely to have been selected by Greek painters. The con- B.C.), the Greek painters only used black, white, red, and stant import into Etruria of large quantities of fine Greek painted vases appears to have largely contributed to keep up the supremacy of Hellenic influence during many cen 1 See Champollion, Panthéon Egyptien (1825); De Joannis, Peintures murales . . . des Egyptiens; Biechy,, La Peinture chez les Egyptiens (1868); Lenormant, Antiquités Egyptiennes; Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Aegypten; Wilkinson, Anc. Egypt.; Descr. de l'Egypte (Paris, 1821, &c.); Perrot et Chipiez, L'Art d'Egypte (1880), and other works on Egypt. The See Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (1878); Golini, Pitture murali Etrusche; Micali, Mon. inediti; Mon, and Ans. d. Inst. Arch. (Rome, various years); Canina, L'antica Etruria (1846, et sq.); Bartoli, Sepolchri Rom. ed Etrus. (1727); Müller, Etrusker, and other works; Helbig, Pitture Cornetane (1863); Inghirami, Mon. Etruschi (1821-26); Byres, Sepulchral Caverns of Tarquinia (1842); and Raoul Rochette, Mon. d'Antiquité Grecque, Etrusque, et Romaine (1833). This process, circumlitio, is mentioned by Pliny (II. N., xxxv. 40). ע yellow. Judging from the peculiar way in which the Greeks and their imitators the Romans used the names of colours, it appears that they paid more attention to tones and relations of colour than to actual hues. Thus most Greek and Latin colour-names are now quite untranslatable. Homer's "wine-like sea (oivoy), Sophocles's "winecoloured ivy" (Ed. Col.), and Horace's "purpureus olor" probably refer less to what we should call colour than to the chromatic strength of the various objects and their more or less strong powers of reflecting light, either in motion or when at rest. Nor have we any word like Virgil's "flavus," which could be applied both to a lady's hair and to the leaf of an olive-tree.2 During the best periods of Greek art the favourite classes of subjects were scenes from poetry, especially Homer, and contemporary history. The names Tivaкobýη and σrod TOLKίan were given to many public buildings from their walls being covered with paintings. Additional interest was given to the historical subjects by the introduction of portraits; e.g., in the great picture of the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.), on the walls of the σToà Toukian in Athens, portraits were given of the Greek generals Miltiades, Callimachus, and others. This picture was painted about forty years after the battle by Polygnotus and Micon. One of the earliest pictures recorded by Pliny (xxxv. 8) represented a battle of the Magnesians (716 B.C.); it was painted by Bularchus, a Lydian artist, and bought at a high price by King Candaules. Many other important Greek historical paintings are mentioned by Pausanias and earlier writers. The Pompeian mosaic of the defeat of the Persians by Alexander is probably a Romanized copy from some celebrated Greek painting; it obviously was not designed for mosaic work. Landscape painting appears to have been unknown among the Greeks, even as a background to figure subjects. The poems especially of Homer and Sophocles show that this was not through want of appreciation of the beauties of nature, but partly, probably, because the main object of Greek painting was to tell some definite story, and also from their just sense of artistic fitness, which prevented them from attempting in their mural decorations to disguise the flat solidity of the walls by necessarily delusive effects of aerial perspective and distance. It is interesting to note that even in the time of Alexander the Great the somewhat archaic works of the earlier painters were still highly appreciated. In particular Aristotle gives high praise to Polygnotus, both for his power of combining truth with idealization in his portraits and for his skill in depicting men's mental characteristics; on this account he calls him & loypápos. Lucian too is no less enthusiastic, and praises Polygnotus alike for his grace, drawing, and colouring. Later painters, such as Zeuxis and Apelles, appear to have produced easel pictures more than mural paintings, and these, being easy to move, were mostly carried off to Rome by the early emperors. Hence Pausanias, who visited Greece in the time of Hadrian, mentions but few works of the later artists. Owing to the lack of existing specimens of Greek painting it would be idle to attempt an account of their technical methods, but no doubt those employed by the Romans described below were derived with the rest of their art from the Greeks. Speaking of their stucco, Pliny refers its superiority over that made by the Romans to the fact 1 Pliny's remarks on subjects such as this should be received with caution. He was neither a scientific archæologist nor a practical artist. * So also a meaning unlike ours is attached to Greek technical words -by révos they meant, not "tone," but the gradations of light and shade, and by åpuoy the relations of colour. See Pliny, H. N., xxXV. 5; and Ruskin, Mod. Painters, pt. iv. cap. 13.. that it was always made of lime at least three years old, and that it was well mixed and pounded in a mortar before being laid on the wall; he is here speaking of the thick stucco in many coats, not of the thin skin mentioned above as being laid on marble. Greek mural painting, like their sculpture, was chiefly used to decorate temples and public buildings, and comparatively rarely either for tombs or private buildings,at least in the days of their early republican simplicity. They were in the true sense of the word works of monumental art, and were no doubt designed and executed with that strict self-restraint and due subordination to their architectural surroundings which we see so strongly marked in all Greek sculpture of the best periods. Roman Painting.-A very large number of Roman mural paintings now exist, of which by far the greatest quantity was discovered in the private houses and baths of Pompeii, nearly all dating between 63 A.D., when the city was ruined by an earthquake, and 79 A.D., when it was buried by Vesuvius. A catalogue of these and similar paintings from Herculaneum and Stabiæ, compiled by Professor Helbig, comprises 1966 specimens. The excavations in the baths of Titus and other ancient buildings in Rome, made in the early part of the 16th century, excited the keenest interest and admiration among the painters of that time, and very largely influenced the later art of the Renaissance. These paintings, especially the "grotesques" or fanciful patterns of scroll-work and pilasters mixed with semi-realistic foliage and figures of boys, animals, and birds, designed with great freedom of touch and inventive power, seem to have thoroughly fascinated Raphael during his later period, and many of his pupils and contemporaries. The "loggie" of the Vatican and of the Farnesina palace are full of carefully-studied 16th-century reproductions of these highly-decorative paintings. Of late years the excavations on the Palatine and in the garden of the Farnesina in Rome have brought to light some mural paintings of the 1st century of our era, perhaps superior in execution even to the best of the Pompeian series. The range of subjects found in Roman mural paintings is very large-mythology, religious ceremonies, genre, still life, and even landscape (the latter generally on a small scale, and treated in an artificial and purely decorative way), and lastly history. Pliny mentions several large and important historical paintings, such as those with which Valerius Maximus Messala decorated the walls of the Curia Hostilia, to commemorate his own victory over Hiero II. and the Carthaginians in Sicily in the 3d century B.C. The earliest Roman painting recorded by Pliny was by Fabius, surnamed Pictor, on the walls of 3 One instance only of a tomb-painting is mentioned by Pausanias (vii. 22). Some fine specimens have recently been discovered in the Crimea, but not of a very early date; see Stephani, Compte rendu, &c., St Petersburg, 1878, &c. • Some of the following works contain accounts of the painting of the Romans as well as of the Greeks:-Letronne, La Point. histor. murale (1835); Hittorf, L'Arch. polychrome chez les Grecs (1851); Wornum, Hist. of Painting (1847); Newton, Lect. on the Painting of the Ancients, deliv. at Univ. Coll. Lon. (1882); Hermann, Die Polygnotischen Gemälde; Lenormant, Les Peintures de Polygnote (1864); Winckelmann, Storia dell' Arti (1784); Müller, Handbuch d. Archäol. der Kunst, &c. (1830); Pliny, H. N., Books xxxv., xxxvi.; Pausanias, I. 25-31,-description of paintings in the Lesche at Delphi, and various other passages throughout his work; Artaud de Montor, Peintres primitifs (1841-43); Humphrey Davy, "Colours used by the Ancients," Trans. Roy. Soc. (1815, pp. 97-124); Bluemner, Gewerbe u. Kunst bei Griechen u. Römern (1879); Brunn, Gesch. der Griech. Künstler (1853-56); Durand, Hist. de la Peinture Ancienne (1725); Meyer, Gesch. der bildenden Künste (1824); Raoul Rochette, La Peinture des Grecs (1840), and Mon. d'Antiq. (1833); Poynter, Decorative Art, series of lectures published by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (1882). XVII. 6 - the temple of Salus, executed about 300 B.C. (H. N., | third or fourth hand, from celebrated Greek originals. XXXV. 4). Unfortunately no existing Roman paintings seem to be earlier in date than the Christian era, and all belong to a period of decline in art. Pliny (xxxv. 1) laments the fact that the wealthy Romans of his time preferred the costly splendours of marble and porphyry wall-linings to the more artistic decoration of paintings by good artists. Historical painting seems then to have gone out of fashion; among the numerous specimens now existing very few from FIG. 8.-One Figure from a Pompeian Wall-Painting-Ariadne and Dionysus. Now in the Naples Museum. Pompeii represent historical subjects; one has the scene of Masinissa and Sophonisba before Scipio, and another of a riot between the people of Pompeii and Nocera, which happened 59 A.D. Mythological scenes, chiefly from Greek sources, occur most frequently: the myths of Eros and Dionysus are especial favourites Only five or six relate to purely Roman mythology. We have reason to think that some at least of the Pompeian pictures are copies, probably at The frequently repeated subjects of Medea meditating the murder of her children and Iphigenia at the shrine of the Tauric Artemis suggest that the motive and composition were taken from the celebrated originals of these subjects by Timanthes. Those of Io and Argus, the finest example of which is in the Palatine "villa of Livia," and of Andromeda and Perseus, often repeated on Pompeian walls, may be from the originals by Nicias.1 In many cases these mural paintings are of high artistic merit, though they are probably not the work of the most distinguished painters of the time, but rather of a humbler class of decorators, who reproduced, without much original invention, stock designs out of some pattern-book. They are, however, all remarkable for the rapid skill and extreme "verve" and freedom of hand with which the designs are, as it were, flung on to the walls with few but very effective touches. Though in some cases the motive and composition are superior to the execution, yet many of the paintings are remarkable both for their realistic truth and technical skill. The great painting of Ceres from Pompeii, now in the Naples museum, is a work of the highest merit-the simple grandeur of the drawing and the delicate modelling of the flesh, executed in the easiest and most direct manner possible, are alike admirable. The round juiciness of the fruit in her basket, rapidly painted with a few telling strokes of the brush, recalls to mind in effect, though not in execution, the startling realism of the Dutch painters of still life, who laboured painfully to gain the effect produced with such rapidity and ease by the Roman artist. Fig. 8, from a Pompeian picture, is a fine example of good modelling of flesh. In the usual scheme of decoration the broad wall-surfaces are broken up into a series of panels by pilasters, columns, or other architectural forms. Some of the panels contain pictures with figure-subjects; others have conventional ornament, or hanging festoons of fruit and flowers. The lower part of the wall is painted one plain colour, forming a dado; the upper part sometimes has a well-designed frieze of flowing ornaments. In the better class of painted walls the whole is kept flat in treatment, and is free from too great subdivision, but in many cases great want of taste is shown by the introduction of violent effects of architectural perspective, and the space is broken up in a disagreeable way by complicated schemes of design, studded with pictures in varying scales which have but little relation to their surroundings. The colouring is on the whole very pleasant and harmonious quite unlike the usual chromolithographic copies. Black, yellow, or a rich deep red are the favourite colours for the main ground of the walls, the pictures in the panels being treated separately, each with its own background. Technical Methods of the Romans.-Much has been written on this subject, and the most varying opinions have been expressed. The real fact appears to be that several methods were employed in each painting. First, the ground of the required colour was laid on while the stucco was still moist. This ground therefore was true fresco or "fresco buono." On this, when dry, the various pictures and ornaments were painted in tempera. That the pictures themselves were not in true fresco is shown: (1) because the coloured ground always exists under the pictures; (2) by the wide distances apart of the "fresco edges" or joinings in the stucco, showing that a much larger area of stucco was applied at once than could have been covered with the frequently elaborate paintings before the stucco was dry; (3) by the fact that many of the brilliant pigments were not such as could have been used upon moist stucco. The next point-is how these tempera paintings on the fresco ground were fixed so as to last for nearly eighteen hundred years uninjured by the damp which necessarily soaked through into the soil and ashes in which they were buried. This was probably effected by and dry, hot melted wax was brushed all over it; and then a redthe "encaustio" process (Eykavois). When the painting was finished I See Newton, Lect. on Painting of the Ancients, 1882, hot iron or brazier of burning charcoal was held near the face of the | pedum, special attributes of Hermes, but quite foreign to wall till, bit by bit, all the wax disappeared from the surface and the notion of Christ. Though in a degraded form, a good soaked thoroughly into the absorbent stucco,-thus fixing the pig ments with a vehicle that could stand the effects of damp. This deal survives in some of these paintings, especially in the application of hot wax appears to have been repeated more than ance. The extreme smoothness of the fresco ground under the tempera pictures seems to show that the ground itself was both waxed and polished before the pictures were painted over it. By another method of encaustic the pigments themselves were mixed with hot wax, probably rendered more fluid and easy to work by the addition of some mineral spirit or essential oil. The final application of heat to the painted surface blended the colours together and fixed them on and into the absorbent stucco ground. Vitruvius (vii. 9) describes the former process, in which the wax was applied after the colours were laid on the wall. According to him this was necessary in order to prevent the painted surface becoming patchy, especially in the case of the red ground made of vermilion, an oxide of mercury. This, as well as the evidence of the paintings themselves, shows that Pliny is mistaken in asserting that encaustic work could not be used for walls.1 Vitruvius (vii) also gives an interesting account of the great care that was needed in preparing stucco for painting. Three coats of old slaked lime and sand were first to be laid, and then three more coats mixed with pounded white marble, each coat of more finely powdered marble than the one beneath; the last coat was to be polished till it gave a reflexion like a mirror. Damp or external walls were to be built hollow, and the cavity ventilated; this was sometimes done, e.g., in the Palatine villa, by facing the wall inside with hollow bricks or tiles, on which the stucco was laid. Vitruvius, who probably died shortly before the Christian era, laments the decay of taste in his time, much as Pliny does; he specially deprecates the use of gaudy red lead, and the sham architectural paintings in which candelabra, reeds, and other incongruities are made to support heavy cornices and roofs of buildings. He complains also of the novel taste for expensive but inartistic colours, such as purple and azure. Early Christian Mural Paintings in Italy.-A very interesting series of these exists in various catacombs, especially those of Rome and Naples. They are of great value, both as an important link in the history of art and also as throwing considerable light on the mental state of the early Christians, which was distinctly influenced by the older faith. Thus in the earlier paintings of about the 4th century we find Christ represented as a beardless youth, beautiful as the artist could make him, with a lingering tradition of Greek idealization, in no degree like the "Man of Sorrows" of medieval painters, but rather a kind of genius of Christianity in whose fair outward form the peace and purity of the new faith were visibly symbolized, just as certain distinct attributes were typified in the persons of the gods of ancient Greece. The favourite early subject, Christ the Good Shepherd (fig. 9), is represented as Orpheus playing on his lyre to a circle of beasts, the pagan origin of the picture being shown unmistakably by the Phrygian cap and by the presence of lions, panthers, and other incongruous animals among the listening sheep. In other cases Christ is depicted standing with a sheep borne on his shoulders like Hermes Criophoros or Hermes Psychopompos-favourite Greek subjects, especially the former, a statue of which Pausanias (22) mentions as existing at Tanagra in Boeotia. Here again the pagan origin of the type is shown by the presence in the catacomb paintings of the pan-pipes and 1 His remarks on the subject (xxxv. 11) are quite unintelligible. Gell and Gandy, Pompeiana (1817-19 and 1835); Herculaneum Pompei, Recueil des Peintures, &c., Paris (1870-72); Jorio, Descr. des Peintures antiques (1825); Renier et Perrot, Les Peintures du Palatin (1870); Hittorf, Arabesques of the Ancients; Real Museo Borbenico (1824 et seq.); Mau, Gesch. der Decorativen in Pompei (1882); Donner and Helbig, Wandgemälde der vom Vesuv verschütteten Städte (1868); Ann. and Bull. dell' Inst. di Cor. arch. di Roma (various years); Ternite and Müller, Wandgemälde aus Pompei; Zahn, Gemälde aus Pompei (1828); Rochette, Peintures de Pompei (1844-59); Mazois, Ruines de Pompei (1824); Overbeck, Pompei, &c. (1856); Revue Archéo, vol. ii. (1845); Le Pitture antiche d'Ercolano (1757-79); Fiorelli, Pomp. ant. Hist. (1860-4); Sogliano, Le Pitture murali Campane (1880); Paderni, Dipinti, &c., di Pompei, Ercolano, &c. (1865); Cayins, La Peinture à l'Encaustique (1755); and Minervini, Bull. arch. Napol, (1852-59). See also the list of works on Greek painting. FIG. 9.-Painted Vault from the Catacombs of St Callixtus, Rome. In the centre Orpheus, to represent Christ the Good Shepherd, and round are smaller paintings of various types of Christ. earlier ones, of the old classical grace of composition and beauty of drawing, notably in the above-mentioned representations where old models were copied without any adaptation to their new meaning. Those of the 5th and 6th centuries still follow the classical lines, though in a rapidly deteriorating style, until the introduction of a foreign-the Byzantine element, which created a fresh starting-point on quite different lines. The old naturalism and survival of classical freedom of drawing is replaced by stiff, conventionally hieratic types, very superior in dignity and strength to the feeble and spiritless compositions produced by the extreme degradation into which the native art of Rome had fallen. The designs of this second period of Christian art are very similar to those of the mosaics, such as many at Ravenna, and also to the magnificently illuminated MSS. on which the utmost skill and labour of the time were lavished. For some centuries there was but little change or development in this Byzantine style of art, so that it is impossible in most cases to be sure from mere internal evidence of the date of any painting. This to some extent applies also to the works of the earlier or pagan school, though, roughly speaking, it may be said that the least meritorious pictures are the latest in date. These catacomb paintings range over a long space of time; some may possibly be of the 1st or 2d century, e.g., those in the cemetery of Domitilla, Rome; others are as late as the 9th century, e.g., some full-length figures of St Cornelius and St Cyprian in the catacomb of St Callixtus, under which earlier paintings may be traced. In execution they somewhat resemble the Etruscan tombpaintings; the walls of the catacomb passages and chambers, excavated in soft tufa, are covered with a thin skin of white stucco, and on that the mural and ceiling paintings are simply executed in earth colours. The favourite subjects of the earliest paintings are scenes from the Old Testament which were supposed to typify events in the life of Christ, such as the sacrifice of Isaac (Christ't death), Jonah and the whale (the resurrection), Moses striking the rock, or pointing to the manna (Christ the water of life, and the Eucharist), and many others. later paintings deal more with later subjects, either events The in Christ's life or figures of saints and the miracles they performed. A very fine series of these exists in the lower church of S. Clemente in Rome, apparently dating from the 6th to the 10th centuries; among these are representa tions of the passion and death of Christ-subjects never chosen by the earlier Christians, except as dimly foreshadowed by the Old Testament types. When Christ Himself is depicted in the early catacomb paintings it is in glory and power, not in His human weakness and suffering. Other early Italian paintings exist on the walls of the church of the Tre Fontane near Rome, and in the Capella di S. Urbano alla Caffarella, executed in the early part of the 11th century. The atrium of S. Lorenzo fuori le mura, Rome, and the church of the Quattro Santi Incoronati have mural paintings of the first half of the 13th century, which show no artistic improvement over those at S. Clemente four or five centuries older. It was not in fact till the second half of the 13th century that stiff traditional Byzantine forms and colouring began to be superseded by the revival of native art in Italy by the painters of Florence, Pisa, and Siena (see FRESCO). During the first thirteen centuries of the Christian era mural painting appears to have been for the most part confined to the representation of sacred subjects. It is remarkable that during the earlier centuries council after council of the Christian church forbade the painting of figure-subjects, and especially those of any Person of the Trinity; but it was quite in vain. The double desire, both for the artistic effect of painted walls and for the religious teaching afforded by the pictorial representation of sacred scenes and the celebration of the sacraments, was too strong. In spite of the zeal of bishops and others, who sometimes with their own hands defaced the pictures of Christ on the walls of the churches, in spite of threats of excommunication, the forbidden paintings by degrees became more numerous, till the walls of almost every church throughout Christendom were decorated with whole series of pictured stories. The useless prohibition was becoming obsolete when, towards the end of the 4th century, the learned Paulinus, bishop of Nola, ordered the two basilicas which he had built at Fondi and Nola to be adorned with wall-paintings of sacred subjects, with the special object, as he says, of instructing and refining the ignorant and drunken people. These painted histories were in fact the books of the unlearned, and we can now hardly realize their value and importance as the chief mode of religious teaching in ages when none but the clergy could read or write.1 English Mural Painting.-During the Middle Ages, just as long before among the ancient Greeks, coloured decoration was used in the widest possible manner, not only for the adornment of flat walls, but also for the enrichment of sculpture and all the fittings and architectural features of buildings, whether the material to be painted was plaster, stone, marble, or wood. It was only the damp and frosts of northern climates that to some 1 See Rossi, Roma sotterranea (1864-77); Northcote and Brownlow, Subterranean Rome (1877); Bottari, Roma sotterr. (1787-54); Perret, Catacombes de Rome (1851-55); Bellermann, Katacomben zu Neapel; Garrucci, Arte Cristiana (1880); Mullooly, Paintings in S. Clemente, Rome (1868); Lord Lindsay, Christian Art (1847); Agincourt, Hist. de l'Art, iv-zvi siècle (1828-47); Theophilus, Div. Art. Schedula, Hendrie's ed. (1847); Eraclius, De Art. Romanorum, MS. in Bibl. Roy, Paris, partly printed by Raspe; "Mappa Clavicula "-a 12thcentury MS-Archeologia, xxxii. pp. 188-244; Cennino Cennini, Trattato della Pittura; Vasari, Tre Arti del Disegno, Milanesi's ed. (1882); Mra Merrifield, Fresco Painting (1856); L Batista Alberti, De Re sedificatoria; Richmond, Monumental Painting, Lectures on Art published by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (1882); Martigny, Dict. des Antiquités Chrétiennes (1877); Dionysius of Zagora, Epupela ris (wypadukis (1858); Eastlake, Materials for Hist. of Painting, now ed. (1869); Wessely, Iconographie Gottes u. der Heiligen (1874); Didron et Durand, Iconographie Chrétienne (1845); Cave Thomas, Mural Decoration; Bull, di Arch, Cristiana (1864-65). extent limited the external use of colour to the less exposed parts of the outsides of buildings. The varying tints and texture of smoothly-worked stone appear to have given no pleasure to the medieval eye; and in the rare cases in which the poverty of some country church prevented its walls from being adorned with painted ornaments or pictures the whole surface of the stone-work inside, mouldings and carving as well as flat wall-spaces, was covered with a thin coat of whitewash. Internal rough stonework was invariably concealed by stucco, forming a smooth ground for possible future paintings. Unhappily the ignorant barbarity of the 19th century has in the case of most English cathedrals and parish churches stripped off the internal plaster, often laying bare rubble walls of the roughest description, never meant to be exposed, and has scraped and rubbed the surface of the masonry and mouldings down to the bare stone. In this way a great proportion of mural paintings have been destroyed, though many in a more or less mutilated state still exist in England. It is difficult (and doubly so since the so-called "restoration" of most old buildings) to realize the splendour of effect once possessed by every important medieval church. From the tiled floor to the roof all was one mass of gold and colour. The brilliance of the mural paintings and richlycoloured sculpture and mouldings was in harmony with the splendour of the oak-work-screens, stalls, and roofsall richly decorated with gilding and painting, while the light, passing through stained glass, softened and helped to combine the whole into one even mass of extreme decorative effect. Colour, and not in dull tints, was boldly applied everywhere, and thus the patchy effect was avoided which is so often the result of the modern timid and partial use of painted ornament. Even the figure-sculpture was painted in a strong and realistic manner, sometimes by a wax encaustic process, probably the same as the circumlitio of classical times. In the accounts for expenses in decorating Orvieto cathedral wax is a frequent item among the materials used for painting. In one place it is specially mentioned that wax was supplied to Andrea Pisano (in 1345) for the decoration of the beautiful reliefs in white marble on the lower part of the west front. General Schemes of Mural Painting.-From the 11th to the 16th century the lower part of the walls, generally 6 to 8 feet from the floor, was painted with a dado-the favourite patterns till the 13th century being either a sort of sham masonry with a flower in each rectangular space (fig. 10), or a conventional representation of a curtain with regular folds stiffly treated (Plate L). Above this dado ranges of pictures with figure-subjects were painted in tiers one above the other, each picture frequently surrounded by a painted frame with arch and gable of architectural design. Fra. 10.-Wall-Painting, of the 13th Painted bands of chevron century. "Masonry pattern." or other geometrical ornament till the 13th century, and flowing ornament afterwards, usually divide the tiers of pictures horizontally and form the top and bottom boundaries of the dado. In the case of a church, the end walls usually have figures to a larger scale. On the east wall of the nave over the chancel arch there was generally a large painting of the "Doom" or Last Judgment. One of the commonest subjects is a colossal figure of St Christopher (fig. 11), usually on the nave wall opposite the principal entrance-selected because the sight of a picture of this saint was supposed to bring good luck for the rest of the |