Evolution in Italian art

Front matter

EVOLUTIONIN liSLIAN ART

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

Contents

INTRODUCTION ....

I. THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN II. THE VISITATION ....

III. THE ANNUNCIATION .

Conclusion

PAGE

PAGE

MADONNA AND CHILD Giovanni Bellini ... 4

Academy, Venice. Photograph: Anderson

MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Giotto 37

Madonna deli.' Arena, Padua. Photograph : Alinari

MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Taddeo Gaddi .... 41

Santa Croce, Florence. Photograph : Brogi

MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Fra Angelico .... 45 Uffi-zi Gallery, Florence. Photograph: Anderson

MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Raphael 49

Brera Gallery, Milan. Photograph : Anderson

MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Lo Spagna 53

Musee de Caen. Photograph : Giraudon

THE VISITATION Giotto 65

Madonna delP Arena, Padua. Photograph : Alinari

THE VISITATION Taddeo Gaddi .... 69

Santa Croce, Florence. Photograph : Brogi

THE VISITATION Ghirlandajo .... 73

Santa Maria A'ovella, Florence. Photograph : Anderson

THE MAGDALEN 13th Century 77

The Academy, Florence. Photograph : Brogi

THE MAGDALEN Titian 81

Pitti Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson

PAGE

THE VISITATION, WITH SAINTS . Pacchiarotto .... 85 The Academy, Florence. Photograph : Alinari

THE VISITATION Mariotto Albertinelli 89

THE ANNUNCIATION Giotto 103

Madonna delV Arena, Padua, Photograph : Alinari

THE ANNUNCIATION Neri di Bicci .... 107

THE ANNUNCIATION Fra Angelico .... hi

The Monastery of San Marco, Florence. Photograph: Anderson

THE ANNUNCIATION Fra Filippo Lippi. . . 115

THE ANNUNCIATION Botticelli 119

Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : W. A. Mansell

THE ANNUNCIATION Carlo Crivelli. ... 123

THE ANNUNCIATION Lorenzo di Credi. . . 127

THE ANNUNCIATION Fra Bartolommeo . . 131

Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Alinari

THE ANNUNCIATION Paolo Veronese ... 135

Uffiii Gallery, Florence. Photograph: Anderso^i

THE ANNUNCIATION Andrea del Sarto . . 139

Pitti Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson

MADONNA AND CHILD Giotto 149

Madonna del P Arena, Padua. Photograph: Alinari

MADONNA AND CHILD Botticelli 153

MADONNA AND CHILD Fra Filippo Lippi . . .157

Pitti Gallery, Florence. Photograph: Anderson

PAGE

MADONNA AND CHILD LuiNl i6i

Brera. Gallery, Milan. Photograph: W. A. Mansell

MADONNA AND CHILD Correggio 167

National Gallery, London. Photograph ; IF. A. Mansell

MADONNA AND CHILD Cima da Conegliano . 171

Doge's Palace, Venice. Photograph : Anderson

MADONNA AND CHILD WITH )

INFANT ST. JOHN | Perugino ,75

MADONNA AND CHILD WITH -j

INFANT ST. JOHN. (Z^ ^f//« I Raphael 179

Jardiniere) J

Louvre, Paris. Photograph : IV. A. Mansell

MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Andrea Mantegna . . 189

National Gallery, Londott. Photograph : IV. A. Mansell

MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Fra Angelico .... 193

Academy, Florence. Photograph : Anderson

MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Ghirlandajo 197

Uffizi Gallery, Floreftce. Photograph : Alinari

MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE . Ambrogio Borgognone. 201 National Gallery, London. Photograph : W. A. Mansell

MADONNA DELL' ARPIE .... Andrea del Sarto , . 205

Ufjizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson

MADONNA ENTHRONED .... Fra Bartolommeo . . 209

Ufflzi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Alinari

MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Giovanni Bellini . . .213

Academy, Venice. Photograph: Anderson

MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Cima da Conegliano. . 217

Pinacoteca, Parma. Photograph : Anderson 11

PAGE

ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Giotto 229

Madonna delV Arena^ Padua. Photograph : Alinari

ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Don Lorenzo Monaco . 237

Uffi-zi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Brogi

ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Gentile da Fabriano . 241 Academy, Florence. Photograph: Anderson

ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Ghirlandajo 245

ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Andrea Mantegna . . 249 Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson

ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Bonifacio Veronese. . 255

Academy, Venice. Photograph: Anderson

IN THE TEMPLE j ^"'^^ ^^3

Academy, Ve^iice. Photograph : Anderson

\ Tintoretto 269

IN THE TEMPLE /

Madonna delF Orto, Venice. Photograph : Anderson y Giotto 273

IN THE TEMPLE / .

Madonna delF Arena, Padua. Photograph : Alinari

^ \ Taddeo Gaddi . . . .281

IN THE TEMPLE /

Santa Croce, Florence. Photograph: Brogi

„ „, ^ - Giovanni da Milano . 285

IN THE TEMPLE J ^

Santa Croce, Florence. Photograph: Brogi

PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN IN THE TEMPLE . . .

Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Photograph :" Anderson

PIETA Giotto 299

Madonna deW Arena, Padua. Photograph : Alinari 1^

\ Ghirlandajo 291

PAGE

DESCENT FROM THE CROSS . . Fra Angelico .... 303 Academy, Florence. Photograph : Anderson

PIETA CosiMO TURA 307

Louvre, Paris. Photograph : Giraudon

ENTOMBMENT Michael Angelo . . .313

PIETA Francia 317

CRISTO MORTO Bronzing 321

Ujffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Alinari

ST. CATHERINE Umbrian School

National Gallery, London. Photograph : Morelli

ST. CATHERINE Raphael . . .

National Gallery, London

■327

MADONNA ENTHRONED .... CosiMO Tura 337

National Gallery, Londo?i. Photograph : Morelli

MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH^

ST. WILLIAM AND ST. JOHN ^ Grandi 343

THE BAPTIST J

BAPTISM OF CHRIST School of TaddeoGaddi 349

National Gallery, London. Photograph : Morelli

BAPTISTERY OF THE ORTHODOX, RAVENNA 353

Photograph : Alinari

BAPTISTERY OF THE ARIANS, RAVENNA 357

Photograph : Alinari

BAPTISM OF CHRIST Piero della Francesca 361

Grant Allen, who has been described as naturaUst, anthropologist, physicist, historian, poet, noveUst, essayist, and critic, in the following pages applies his versatile mind, the mind of an expert in natural science, to kindred problems in artistic method. He was not a specialist in the criticism of pictures, yet a trained power of observation and a mind sensitive to life in all its aspects, gives interest and point to his attitude. He had the sympathetic imagination of a born teacher; he was also a constant learner, and the fact that he was not professionally a critic of art, brought him in some ways nearer to the student, and enabled him to understand the difficulties of the beginner.

The present series of papers appeared originally in the Pall Mall Gazette and the English Illustrated Magazine. They were based on observations made in Italian and other galleries, during many journeys arising from the sad necessity of spending winters abroad on account of ill-health. Many years before these journeys were undertaken, preparation for such studies had been made in an investigation into the physiology of aesthetics, a treatise published in 1877. The treatment of the present subject was not intended as an authoritative criticism, it was rather a carefully planned suggestion to help those who desire to have some clue in the study of such a complex thing as Italian art.

The object of this introductory chapter is to suggest in brief outhne some of the forces affecting the painters of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, so that the reader may be assisted to place Grant Allen's detailed examination of the subjects in a general view of the period.

§ 1. Exterior Influences affecting Italian Art

These were mainly three in number — (1) Byzantine art of Constantinople, predominant between the sixth and twelfth centuries. (2) French art, powerful throughout the latter part of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. (3) Classical art.

(1) Byzantine Influence. — The Byzantine emperors in Constantinople, from the year 476 up to 800, were the only representatives of imperial power, and in this character they claimed the right of the empire in Italy. Their principal seat of government was at Ravenna, and in that city the Exarchs represented the emperor until they were driven out by the Lombards in 751. The influence of Constantinople did not cease with the extinction of political power ; the close connection of Venice with the East was continued for many centuries, and, generally speaking, the authority of the higher Byzantine civiUsation over the more elementary conditions in Italy was maintained until the thirteenth century.

The art of Constantinople expressed the mystical and philosophical feeling which resulted from the influence of Neo-Platonism on Eastern Christianity. Its aim was to express the passion for union with the Infinite. Giving but slight heed to the world of sense and to human emotions, it became abstract and ascetic. Its neglect of the accidental and transitory led to a rigid and impassive habit ; yet so deep was its sense of relationship with the world of the unseen that it seldom failed to be impressive. It touched ordinary human nature most nearly in a passionate love of technique. No skill, no labour was grudged, and never did the imagination clothe itself in more magnificent colour.

The church of Sta. Sophia, rebuilt by Justinian in the sixth century, and the church of S. Vitale, at Ravenna, of the same date, represent the earlier development of Byzantine art.

In the eighth and ninth centuries, subsequent to the Iconoclastic controversy, Byzantine art was neither so imaginative nor so sympathetic ; it bears a more distinct mark of non-classical feeling, yet it continued to be the most civilised form of European invention. The Menologium of Basil II., for instance, made at the end of the tenth century, is one of the finest books in existence, and the figure of Christ in the apse of the church at Cefalu, in Sicily, dated in the middle of the twelfth century, excels any Italian mosaic or painting of the same period.

The actual workmanship of Byzantine artists is comparatively rare in Italy, and it hardly exists in any other part of the West. This work must be carefully distinguished from native Italian work modelled upon it. The mosaics in Roman churches, the sculptures and most of the mosaics at S. Marco in Venice and at Torcello, the frescoes of the Old and New Testament series in the Upper Church at Assisi, the frescoes in SS. Quattro Coronati in Rome, many panel pictures of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in the Uffizi, the Museo Civico at Pisa, and in the Gallery at Siena, together with countless other early works commonly described as Byzantine, were made by native craftsmen who were deeply influenced by the art of Constantinople, but their work has no claim to be called Byzantine in any proper sense of the word. These works by Italian craftsmen vary from the beautiful sculptures at Torcello down to the panels that do not deserve the name of fine art at all. The word " Italo-Byzantine " has been used to characterise the former ; the latter can only be described as examples of a rude native manner.

(2) French Irijiuence. — The impressive influence of Constantinople began to give place to that of France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as that country became the centre of spiritual and intellectual life in Western Europe.

The Norman conquest of Naples and of Sicily at the end of the eleventh century, the settlement of Cistercian monks in the middle of the twelfth century, the Angevin conquest of Naples and Sicily in the thirteenth century, and the frequent passage of French knights as a consequence of the Crusades, brought Italy and France into close contact. The new influence is visible in the architecture of the Cistercian churches (Fossanova was consecrated in 1208), and in the castles built in the time of Frederick II. Later it appears in the sculpture of Giovanni Pisano, and finally the " sweet new style " received its specifically Italian form in the painting of Giotto.

(3) Classical Influence. — ^In a certain sense classical tradition lay behind all Italian art, but it did not become predominant until the fifteenth century. In the twelfth century it influenced the Romanesque architecture of Pisa and the sculptures of the Antelami at Parma. In the thirteenth century the sculpture of Niccolo Pisano on the Pisan pulpit is an evident attempt to reproduce the classical Roman style, but the young Italian nation, descended alike from a southern and northern stock, had to go through its time of storm and stress, its wanderjahr was spent in company with the brilliant transcendentalism of the North. The study which Donatello and Brunelleschi made of the remains of ancient Rome serves to mark the impulse which Italian painters and sculptors found in the ancient civilisation of their own country. This impulse was twofold : it widened the sympathies of men, it cleared many fettering preoccupations from their thoughts, it gave a fresh impulse to learning, it ennobled life with a new sense of power, and in all such ways it reacted on art with immense effect.

On the other hand, where the influence of ancient art was mainly archaeological — as in the school of Padua — its effect was no less marked but much less powerful, for classical preconceptions can no more give life to art than the preconceptions of a civilisation Byzantine or medieval.

§ 2. Design and Composition

Grant Allen's thesis was that the individual composition of a picture should be conceived as an organic type evolving along lines of its own. He thought of the art of composition as being in constant process. The plain gestures, the unaffected pose, the simple forms of the fourteenth century become an artificial composition in the sixteenth century, in which gesture expresses compUcated feehng, each figure signifies a mood, and the design as a whole is the response to a sensitive and characteristic emotion, the result of large and vital experience.

This ideal of the early part of the sixteenth century was too high for most of the followers of Michael Angelo and Raphael. They were seldom able to make action serve intention, gesture and movement were frequently the instrument of rhetorical sentiment, the human form expressed a simulated passion, design became theatrical.

Nevertheless, although the secondary artists of the sixteenth century could not follow in the footsteps of the great masters, the finer characteristics of the time are well marked ; and if the visitor to Florence will compare a series of the frescoes in Santa Croce with the designs of Andrea del Sarto in the small cloister of Lo Scalzo, the principles which guided the evolution of composition between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries will become clear.

Leonardo da Vinci touches upon the most important of these when he says, " that figure is most worthy of praise, which by its action best expresses the passion which animates it."

Grant AUen devoted his attention primarily to evolution in composition, but the reader will at once perceive from his analysis that it is impossible to limit the idea to any one point. Other changes incidental to increasing knowledge and varying social conditions were equally marked, and they were subject to the same process as the changes in composition.

§ 3. The Effect of Increasing Knowledge ON Painting

In the light of increasing knowledge the methods of painters were in a state of continuous change. The comparatively simple means of the fourteenth century grew into the complex practice of the sixteenth century. Men were always trying to express themselves more fully, and as likeness to nature is the most direct means of attaining expression, there was a constant effort in the direction of realism ; not because the painter desired to imitate nature, but because in the fullest realisation he found the most complete means of reaching other minds. Hence every increase in knowledge was seized upon, particularly among the Florentine artists.

The knowledge of linear perspective was only instinctive among the Giotteschi ; in the fifteenth century it became scientific. The effects of light and shade were hardly understood in the fourteenth century ; it was not until the following century that Leonardo and others perceived fully the importance of these phenomena. The true relation of a figure to the atmosphere through which we see it was even more difficult to realise, and it was not until we reach the fully developed art of the closing years of the fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth centuries that the methods of the artist were perfected.

In addition to the increased knowledge of perspective, and of the phenomena of light and atmosphere, the study of anatomy added greatly to the artist's control over his subject. Leonardo, who was equally great as an artist and as a man of science, carried his studies to the length of becoming a practical anatomist. He warns his fellow-artists that it is necessary to understand the framework of the body in order to reach the full power of expression ; he also gives a significant caution against the exaggeration which the gain of such knowledge may lead to.

§ 4. The Influence of Social Conditions

The student of natural science treats existence as a whole ; he places, therefore, the methods of art along with all other signs of life. They are subject to the same changes and the same general principles as other phenomena. The rise and fall of schools, varieties of method, are no matters of chance nor of individual caprice, they follow the natural order of things.

Grant Allen confined himself to the Italian schools of painting from the time of Duccio at the end of the thirteenth century to the close of the period of the great Venetians at the death of Tintoretto.

The changes affecting social life were pretty clearly marked in each of these three centuries and they produced well-defined characteristics in painting. It has, therefore, become usual to speak of these tendencies in connection with the century to which they principally belong, although they overlap any chronological arrangement.

(a) The Fourteenth Century. — The new art which flourished throughout this century began with the painting of Duccio in Siena. It was developed by Giotto, whose most important work is the series of frescoes in the K chapel of the Arena in Padua. It ended with Spinello Aretino, who painted in the sacristy at S. Miniato in Florence.

From one point of view the revival which led up to the art of this century was influenced by a Roman view of life. Orcagna, for instance, paints his saints in Paradise in serried ranks like the legionaries on Trajan's Column — the atmosphere is one of authority ; the hierarchical spirit rules the whole conception.

From another point of view the life of the fourteenth century was ascetic. Theologians regarded the earth as a wilderness through which we advance to a better home, the body was the prison-house of the soul, humility was the basis of character, the contemplative life leading up to ecstasy was the ideal of perfection. The frescoes of the Giotteschi are informed, on the one hand, by a holy calm and a spirit of self-abnegation ; on the other hand, by awe of death, of judgment, and of hell.

(b) The Fifteenth Century. — The current of life, however, was too strong to allow the ascetic ideal to have permanent control. Already in the middle of the fourteenth century Petrarch and Boccaccio were opening out new ways.

The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was due to the Greek spirit, thus contrasting with the Roman outlook of the previous century. ]\Ien felt the charm of the independence of Greek ideals. They saw that life on this earth was a marvellous thing, that the world was no mere vale of tears ; they were seized

with an unconquerable desire to widen the horizon of knowledge ; they were filled with a passion for beauty. Plato became to the philosophers of Florence what Aristotle had been to Dante and to St. Thomas Aquinas.

Men valued strength of body, vigour of intellect, greatness of personality ; fame became a ruling impulse. The relative estimation of the terrestrial and celestial was almost entirely reversed. DonateUo and Ghiberti and Masaccio mark the beginnings of the Greek Renaissance. Raphael's frescoes in the Camera della Segnatura are among the last results of the Hellenic impulse.

(c) The Sixteenth Century. — The secular spirit of the fifteenth century, like the ascetic ideal of the fourteenth century, proved inadequate. In Teutonic Europe the original impulse of the Renaissance was developed in the Reformation ; in Latin Europe the Catholic reaction against Hellenic and secular feeling took the form of a fresh assertion of papal authority, and the invigoration of the principle of dogmatic teaching.

In architecture St. Peter's is the embodiment of the ideals of the sixteenth century. In painting, Titian and Tintoretto, although far from being moved by the ideals of the Catholic reaction, represent something of the grandiose formality of Spanish manners. In the later days of Italian painting, gesture became stately, emotion was translated into terms of dignified reticence, design was artificial and elaborate, the ideal of beauty

changed from the spontaneous freshness and the naive charm of the fifteenth century to the middle-aged magnificence and the composed mien of the sixteenth century.

The genius of Michael Angelo, of Giorgione, of Titian, of Paul Veronese, was unable to conquer the inevitable. When the headship of Spain and the decrees of the Council of Trent became possible, the great period of Italian art was at an end, there was no longer a correspondence between the Italian organism and its environment.

During these three centuries the development of art was closely connected with the life of the people ; racial distinctions, tendencies in politics, literature, and religion reacted on the painters. In Siena and Florence the beginnings of the new art coincide with the greatest power and glory of the Republics. In literature likewise the greatest poets were contemporary with the greatest painters. Dante and Giotto are supposed to have been personal friends. Petrarch and Boccaccio lived through the time of the men who covered with frescoes the churches of Florence, the Campo-Santo at Pisa, and the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena. Ariosto was contemporary with Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Titian ; the tragedy of Tasso's life ended a year later than the hfe of Tintoretto, the last of the great painters.

The history of art ran concurrently with that of the Papacy ; it sprang into new life at the time of the great Popes who crushed the empire ; it flourished exceedingly in the times of the Popes of the Renaissance, men who were in sympathy with humanism, who were themselves scholars, founders of museums, and ardent worshippers of classical ideals ; it died away in the period when Popes such as Paul IV. and Sixtus V. sat in the chair of St. Peter.

For the important sources of the impulse that produced the art of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, we must consider the slow unwinding of the coil of circumstance in the " dumb centuries," i.e. from the seventh to the eleventh. In the ninth and tenth centuries organised society suffered eclipse during the breaking up of the Prankish empire, and it was only after the reforms of the Emperor Henry III. and the revival under Hildebrand in the middle of the eleventh century that modern life began to emerge. The twelfth century was a time of great activity. The study of Roman law was revived, classical literature once more gave form to human thought, St. Bernard preached afresh the love of God, the way was made straight for the Mendicant revival. Politically Italian nationality was asserting itself in the Lombard League, and by the middle of the thirteenth century the Tuscan Republics had reached to the height of their power.

The astonishing vitality of Itahan art was due to the extraordinary power which enabled painters and sculptors to synthesise so completely not only the life of their own time, but the spirit which had moved bygone ages. In classical life they found an ideal of freedom and beauty ; from the Byzantine civilisation of Constantinople came the love of symbolism and mysticism ; from Rome came regard for law, a passion for order, and the tendency to crystallise life into form ; while the conception of love, of which asceticism is the final term, sprang from Christian tradition, and brought into being the emotional life of the Middle Ages.

As the panorama of the three important centuries passes before our eyes, we see that its form is determined by the relative importance of one or other of these forces, never by the entire suppression of any of them.

I PROPOSE in the following chapters to trace a few successive stages in the evolution of painting in Italy.

The development of the various products of man's collective action closely resembles, in not a few respects, the natural development of plants and animals. Phenomena well known in the organic world have their counterpart and parallel in the super-organic. Everybody is now aware that this is true in the case of languages, which can be traced back, like birds or beasts, to a common origin ; but not everybody is aware that it is equally so in the case of arts, of religions, of institutions, of ceremonies. In these papers it is my intention to take certain products of early ItaUan art, and show how closely their evolution resembles that familiar process of " descent with modification" which Darwin pointed out for us in fish and insect, in fern and flower.

The epoch of Italian painting which began with Duccio and culminated in Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Titian, is in many ways a most favourable one for illustrating this cardinal principle. In the first place, the development of painting during that relatively short period was rapid and marvellous ; art passed step by step with accelerated haste through many successive stages, so that every half-century of that brilliant time marks a distinct advance upon the half-century that preceded it. But in the second place — what is more important still — the painters of that age exerted their faculty for the most part upon a comparatively limited range of subjects, the elements of which were rigorously prescribed for them by religious convention. At the present day the artist seeks his theme throughout the whole wide world ; he paints at will a landscape or a figure-piece, the Death of Ceesar or a Street Scene in Cairo, the Defence of Metz, the Briar Rose cycle, the Christian Martyr, the Matterhorn, the Derby Day. His choice is unlimited. But in the Italy of Giotto and of Filippo Lippi things were ordered quite otherwise. There art was almost entirely religious in character, and the subjects with which it dealt were few and well specified. The artist received a commission from his patrons for such-and-such a definite work — a Madonna and Child, a St. Sebastian, a Transfiguration ; and he produced a panel which resembled in all its principal features similar pictures of the same subject by earlier painters. Originality in design was strongly discouraged ; indeed, in many cases it was even expressly stated in the bond that the painting agreed upon should closely follow a certain treatment of the theme with which it dealt by some previous hand in such-and-such a church or such-and-such a convent. So many figures were to be introduced for the money. It was also stipulated with legal accuracy that the haloes should be diligently gilded throughout, and that the jewels and ornaments proper to saint or bishop should be carefully designed in the most elaborate and correct fashion.

These brief introductory remarks will serve to show, I hope, the spirit in which I approach my subject. I look at it rather with the eye of an evolutionist than with the eye of an artist or a technical critic. 1 trust this plea will be held to excuse any shortcomings I may chance to exhibit in knowledge of technique or aesthetic appreciation. I desire to speak rather of the paintings as products than of the painter as producer. I wish to show the stream of development by which, through the hands of various artists and various schools, the dry and lifeless picture in the rude native manner was vivified and spiritualised into the art of Fra Angelico, of Bellini, of Leonardo. For this purpose I will take advantage of the opportunity afforded me by the set subjects of early Italian art, and will trace the evolution in the treatment of each particular theme from the earliest available examples to the fuU Renaissance, exactly as one might trace the variations in structure and function of an organ or an organism. Other subsidiary principles to which I desire to direct attention must appear one by one in the course of our examination of the various subjects.

I begin my survey with the Sposalizio or Marriage of the Virgin. This sacred theme comes almost earliest in time among the more familiar moments in the cycle which deals with the life of Christ and His mother : for though the meeting of Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate, the Birth of the Virgin, and her Presentation in the Temple are all anterior to it in historical order, they are less frequent and apparently less rigid in composition than this famous subject, made familiar to us all by Raphael's exquisite and poetical representation in the Brera at Milan. But to judge Raphael's treatment in isolation, without any knowledge of others that preceded it, is almost as futile a proceeding as to judge an Egyptian or Assyrian statue without reference to the mythology and art -products of Egypt and Assyria generally.

When a fourteenth or fifteenth century Italian painter received an order to produce a Sposalizio, what were the elements which his patrons counted upon his introducing into the picture, and without which they would have considered themselves cheated in their bargain ? What were the figures and incidents they had learnt from the legends, or had seen before in every Sposalizio with which they were acquainted — the figures and incidents they expected to find in the picture they had commissioned, as necessary parts of a Marriage of the Vii-gin ? To answer this question we must glance for a moment at the legendary story whose details are embodied in every treatment of the subject down to the latest period of sacred art in Italy. For Art in these matters was but the servant of Faith, and reproduced exactly the current spirit of Christian tradition.