question is of no little weight in the history of Christian iconography, when we reflect that these books were followed in the mural paintings, the stained glass windows, the sculpture and the religious drama of the Middle Ages. The natural result of adherence to such a system of illustration as this laid down in the Speculum was the development of certain established symbols, sacred types of phases in the history of the moral strife and victory of humanity, of the mysteries of birth and death, and of the fall and redemption of man. For they offered a series of scenes from the history of the Jews as a nation, such as should serve as examples to mankind as individuals; these types all finding their fulfilment in the person of Christ, all again to be reflected in the spiritual experiences of each and all of His followers. Yet, while in these books we have scriptural subjects, thus selected and grouped according to a certain preconceived plan, yet the treatment of such was left to the knowledge and individual power of the painter. There is much evidence of the fact that it was owing to the number and variety of such books that Italy and France succeeded in shaking themselves free of the paralysing traditions of Byzantinism and developing what of original thought lay in the mind of the artist, who we may imagine could with comparative freedom best work out his own conceptions at first in the quiet of his chamber and at his desk.*

In France, as in Italy, mural painters sought in manuscript miniatures for their designs.† In Pisa, whence the

*The art of miniature painting was practised at a very early period in Italy, as we know from the beautiful examples of the third and fourth century in the Vatican Virgil. It was especially encouraged by the Carlovingian emperors, and also much cultivated in Paris before the thirteenth century, as we know from Dante, "quell' arte ch' alluminare è chiamata in Parisi." (Purg. c. xi. 81.) Indeed, the French excel the Italian miniaturists as colourists.

Jean Costa in France was favourite painter of King John. He began to work in 1349. He worked alone, leaving nothing to his pupils. He sought in manuscript miniatures for models for his mural paintings. Miniatures were too often taken as models by mural painters, hence a dryness and minute detail in these life-size subjects which should only characterise miniatures. France was especially the home of miniature painting. Dante

Kugler, Handbook, p. 20, refers to the Bible of St. Paolo fuori le mure, preserved in San Calisto in Trastevere See D'Agincourt, Peinture, pp. 40-45.

art spread over Tuscany, were miniature painters, who, "transferring their art from small to large works," like Franco of Bologna, "betook themselves to painting on walls and panels" (see Lanzi, Painting in Italy, vol. i. p. 37, ed. Bohn). This Franco, founder of the Bolognese school, was himself the pupil of the miniature painter Oderigi of Gubbio, who worked long at Bologna. He whom Dante hails in Purgatory:

"Art thou not Oderigi? Art not thou
Agobbio's glory, glory of that art

Which they of Paris call the limner's skill?'
'Brother!' said he, with tints, that gayer smile,
Bolognian Franco's pencil lines the leaves.""

Some Italian schools took their origin, without any Byzantine aid or example, from such miniature painters, who in the twelfth century formed a very distinct class. Treviso and other minor cities gave birth to a style which may be termed national, and which owed much of its originality to the miniature painters who improved their talent by drawing from the life and not from any Greek or Italian master, whether Panselinos or Giotto. To this class belong M. Paolo,* the earliest painter in this national manner, circ. 1300. Giottof himself was a miniature painter

makes illumination an entirely Parisian art. However, there is very noble design in some Italian illuminated books. It is probable that Dante was familiar with some such text as that of the Biblia Pauperum, since in the series of sculptures described by him among the bas-relief on the second cornice of Purgatory were the subjects forming part of that series. The Annunciation, The Ark drawn to the house of Obed-edom, David dancing before the Ark, Michal deriding David, which he tells us were 'so exactly wrought

66

With quaintest sculpture, that not there alone

Had Polycletus, but e'en nature's self

Been shamed."

* A record of this painter exists in a parchment dated 1346, and examples of his work may be seen on the front of the great altar of St. Mark's and in the Sacristy of the Padri Conventuali at Vicenza, dated 1333. See Lanzi, vol. ii. p. 77.

† Giotto began by studying the art di minio, i.e. the art of painting with a peculiar red colour early applied to the ornamenting and illuminating of MSS., hence the derivation of the word miniature, and one of the minor peculiarities which differentiates his work from that of the Byzantine schools is the adoption of this delicate pale red in place of the darker tints of the former school.

who gave a great impetus to his art as well as Taddeo Gaddi, after whose death the fraternity of the Camaldulites furnished some remarkable miniaturists such as D. Silvestro. But it was in Mantua* that this method reached its highest perfection, and in the school of Giulio Romano where Clovio was trained and whence the art spread throughout Lombardy.

Among the artists of Italy who imitated or copied the subjects in the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis are Ugolino di Prete Ilario, G. Pisano, Orcagna, and Taddeo Gaddi.†

The frescoes of the Capello del Corporale at Orvieto and some scenes painted on the wall of the tribune in the same cathedral, the bas-reliefs of Giovanni Pisano, framed in by Tuscan pillars like those that enclose the subjects in the Biblia Pauperum, all correspond with these books of types and antitypes. They were probably begun in 1290. The story of the Creation, the Fall and Expulsion, the fratricide of Cain, are ably told and well contrasted with the scenes of Mercy and of Judgment in the new. Our Lord is seen attended by two angels throughout the work of Creation, and their floating attitudes may have suggested to Ghiberti his exquisite amplification of this idea on one of the Gates of the Florence Baptistery.‡

A volume containing a hundred miniatures, examples of Italian Art in the thirteenth century, was secured some years ago by the late Sir William Boxall, who presented it to Lord Coleridge. This is a fragment of an original copy of the Speculum Sancte Marie Virginis and Speculum Humane Salvationis, the text of which was written by Joannes Andreas de Bologna (circ. 1270-1348). The miniatures appear to belong to the same early date, and their origin may perhaps be traced to some painter of the school of Siena.

In Germany the number of artists whose names are said to be connected with the Speculum and Biblia

*See the Anthem Book preserved at S. Benedetto in Mantua, one of the most ancient remains of this art existing.

See in the Sacristy of the Vatican the representation in miniature of the Acts of St. Peter and St. Paul, with some representations of the lives of our Saviour and various saints.

Lord Lindsay, vol. ii. p. 121.

Pauperum are very numerous: Van Liesborn, Quentin Matsys, Lucas van Leyden, Joachim Patenier, Albert Dürer, Hans Schæuffelein, Joh. Memlinc, Martin Schoen. The Annunciation painted in 1465 for Liesborn, the former convent near Münster, the Presentation in the Temple, and the Virgin and Child accompanied by seven figures of mystic meaning from the Old Testament, may be seen in an altar-piece painted by Quentin Matsys for the church of S. Donatus at Bruges; the Crucifixion by Cornelius Engelbrechtsen of Leyden, flanked by the Sacrifice of Isaac and the uplifting of the Brazen Serpent ; the Tree of Jesse below. The subject most frequently copied is that of Christ on the Judgment Day, seated on a rainbow, His feet resting on the globe, a sword and lily at either side of His head, and the graves below giving up their dead. In a triptych of Lucas van Leyden some of the subjects of the Passion are treated as in the block book Biblia Pauperum. Albert Dürer in his treatment of the Ascension, the Entry into Jerusalem, and Apotheosis of Christ, followed the same work.*

The Duomo of Orvieto, circ. 1300, with its ornamented gables, windows divided by a single pillar, reminds us of the framework of the Biblia Pauperum. The Coronation of the Virgin, the Creation of Eve, &c., seem as if derived from the same origin as the windows of Hirschau Abbey in the Black Forest, painted in the year 1085, after the subjects in the Biblia Pauperum.

Another class of miniature painting besides that on vellum are such Byzantine miniatures on wood as may be seen in numbers in the Vatican museum; the subjects generally resemble those in mosaic and mural painting. We see there a subject exactly corresponding to the fresco in the Pisan Campo Santo, illustrating the ascetic life in the desert, aged men seated in mountain caves, some reading, some plaiting straw for baskets. At one side the death of St. Ephraim and his soul borne aloft by an angel-at the other St. Simeon Stylites. Emmanuel Tyanfurnari was the author of this painting, and there is

*The Passion of Christ, with types of the successive scenes, is shown in the painted windows of Bourges Cathedral. Also the Resurrection of our Lord, with Elisha raising the widow's child, and the Lion-cub legend, which latter also occurs at Tours as type of the Resurrection.

VOL. II.

P

a tradition that the work was brought into Italy by Squarcione, master of Mantegna.

In all such works we still find evidence of the double current flowing through art, the feeling for the antique side by side with the ascetic type; and in these manuals and texts we have been dealing with it is interesting to find many types of events in the Christian life drawn from Classic and Pagan mythologies. On this subject we hope to enlarge in the following chapter.