RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Paine Painting:
wood, Mass.; and in 1866 became teacher of Hebrew in the theological school of the General Convention of the New Jerusalem Church in the United States, now located at Boston, Mass. He applied himself closely to the study of Scripture, in the attempt to reproduce the allegorical forms or types. He is the author of Solomon's Temple, or the Tabernacle; The First Temple; House of the King, or House of the Forest of Lebanon; Idolatrous High Places; The City on the Mountain (Rev. xxi.); The Oblation of the Holy Portion; and The Last Temple (Boston, 1861); and Solomon's Temple and Capitol, Ark of the Flood and Tabernacle, or The Holy Houses of the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan, Septuagint, Coptic, and Itala Scriptures (Boston and New York, 1885). Selections from Poems was published posthumously (New York, 1897).
PAINTING, DECORATIVE AND ILLUSTRA- TIVE ART, CHRISTIAN.
I. Early Christian.
Catacombs and Manuscripts (§ 1).
Mural Mosaic (§2). II. The Carolingian and Othonian Period III. Byzantine. IV The Middle Ages.
Miniatures and Books (§1).
Mural Decoration (§2).
Glass (§ 3). V. The Modern Period.
The Renaissance; Florence and Rome (§ 1).
The Netherlands (§ 2).
Germany; Diirer (§ 3).
Germany; Sixteenth Century and After (§ 4).
Other Countries (§5).
Painting has ever formed the favorite form of art in Christianity. Both in the early and in the medieval church sculpture was subordinate, and though the Renaissance broke through this principle, its most important contribution to religion was its paintings, even architecture occupying a secondary place. In the Middle Ages painting was practically confined to frescoes and the adornment of manuscripts, but in the course of the Renaissance it was applied to large canvases.
I. Early Christian: Christian painting previous to Constantine is known only from its connection with places of burial. This sepulchral art begins late in the first or early in the second century (catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples), and
l. Cata- is contained in the catacombs of Rome, combs Naples, and Syracuse, as well as elseand where, until these catacombs ceased Manuscripts, to be used in the fourth or fifth century. The art here preserved was an increasingly Christian adaptation of pagan materials, with slight claim to merit, and aiming merely at simple illustration of definite ideas of practical religion. The sources were the Old and the New Testament, sometimes in symbolic form, religious and secular life, and reproduction of classic concepts and legends either directly or in Christianized adaptations (see Mithra, Mithraism). In nearly every instance there is allusion to death and resurrection. Even Biblical material is chosen with reference to its adaptability to the resurrection, as in the favorite theme of the good shepherd as the lord and protector of the dead. Early Christian painting was not, however, restricted to the cata-
combs, for not only allusions in literature but also the discovery of a Christian private house on the Cselian Hill show that it was employed both in private life and in divine worship. Early Christian miniatures were equally dependent on classic ideals. The use of miniatures to adorn Biblical manuscripts seems to have arisen in the third century and was practised skilfully by the beginning of the fourth, as is shown by the miniatures of the Quedlinburg fragments of the Itala. About a century later come the charming miniatures of the Vienna Genesis, but with the fifth century distinctly Christian motifs tend to displace the pagan elements, the oldest representative of the transition apparently being the Rossano Codex purpureus of the Gospels. Here artistic freshness is killed by conventionality, and the same general tendency, though in less exaggerated form, is seen in the Syriac manuscript of the Gospels of Rabbula (end of the sixth century) . The last phase of the struggle between old and new may be traced in the miniatures of a Cosmas Indicopleustes of the Justinian period, where classic influences are seen in complete subjugation to ecclesiastical art; while the final echoes of early Christian miniature painting are to be found in a Cambridge Latin evangelary of the seventh century and in the almost contemporary Ashburnham Pentateuch.
A far greater task than in miniatures was demanded of painting in the adornment of the churches built during and after the reign of Constantine. Painting had long been used in em- 2. Mural bellishing these edifices, as is shown Mosaic, by canon xxxvi. of the Synod of Elvira (Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, i. 170, Eng. transl., i. 151, and Fr. transl., i. 1, p. 240, the bibliographical notes to which are very useful), but now the necessity arose of rivaling the richly adorned temples of the conquered faith. The special form of art here adopted was the mosaic, now first widely employed for mural decoration in contradistinction to its classic use mainly for pavements. The earliest specimen, the fragments of the mausoleum of Constantine's daughter, Constantina, on the Via Nomentana before Rome, still is prevailingly pagan in motif, though, as in sepulchral art, Christian elements steadily gain the upper hand. Pagan elements are still essential, even though only as a framework, in the fifth-century baptistry of Naples and the oratory of San Giovanni Evangelista near the Lateran, as well as in the slightly later baptistry of the Lateran, the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, and the orthodox baptistry of Ravenna; but in the great mosaics of the basilicas the classical elements almost entirely disappear. The glorified Savior, surrounded by apostles and saints amid the wonders of Paradise, with the holy city in the background, and angels or the symbolic figures of the four apostles as a frame, filled the vaulted apse. On the walls of the arcades were scenes from the Bible, or solemn processions of the sanctified toward the apse. Only seldom are scenes from the present world portrayed, as in the Church of San Vitale at Rome. Mosaics are preserved in the churches of San Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, and Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Costanza at Rome, and reach
Painting: