RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Painting
the eleventh century, however, the change set in which was to dominate the Middle Ages until their end — the rise of the knights and burgers, with a resultant increasing tendency to secularize and popularize art. The figuration now became more slender and delicate and in better proportion; psychological processes were more clearly expressed; and pen drawings were found to be better adapted to the new style of art than body coloring. This transformation, with its commingling of lay and clerical art, was best exemplified in the Hortus deliciarum, completed about 1175 (destroyed in the siege of Strasburg in 1870). Non-religious manuscripts were now also illuminated, the result operating to the advantage of religious art; and the whole was fostered and promoted by the rise of Gothic art. The favorite subjects of the new popular art were chronicles and devotional works which directly touched the interests of the people, as well as the Biblia pauperum (see Bibles, Illustrated, § 4). Side by side with this popular art went the courtly art which, inspired by the French illuminations which had come into vogue with Louis IX., fostered the spiritual interests of more cultured circles. Here pen drawings were discarded in favor of the French plastic modeling, while in the school founded by Charles IV. at Prague and extending to Vienna, Treves, and elsewhere, there was a characteristic framing of initial letters or miniatures by rich and involved tracery. With the beginning of the fifteenth century, however, German illumination entered upon a decline which soon ended in utter extinction. See Dance of Death.
The rise of Romanesque architecture afforded a welcome opportunity for mural painting. The scanty specimens now extant show, on the one hand, a break with Carolingian and Othonian conventionality with a consequent uncer- 2. Mural tainty, and, on the other hand, an in- Decoration. creasing individualism of treatment and keenness of insight. The most conspicuous examples of this style are the mural paintings in the Unterkirche of Schwarzrheindorf near Bonn (1151-56), the frescoes of the chapterhall of Brauweiler (a few decades later), the mural decorations of the cathedral at Brunswick, and the paintings of the nuns' choir of the cathedral of Gurk in Carinthia. Gothic architecture checked this development, however, by cutting up the mural spaces and the vaultings, so that in the Gothic period mural paintings are the exception, though specimens may be seen in the apse of the church at Brauweiler, the church of Ramersdorf, now translated to Bonn, and the crypt of the minster of Basel. A new element, moreover, was introduced in this cycle by the dance of death, inspired by the terrible pestilences of the fourteenth century; and here the theme afforded the artist, as at Basel, Berlin, and Lubeck, full scope for the exercise of unrestricted individuality. In France illumination and mural painting were inferior to German productions during the Romanesque period, but in the second half of the fourteenth century the Latin country reached a high degree of true artistic merit, as in the two Psalters of the duke of Berri. Though prevented by Gothic architecture from
attaining full development, painting was still able to manifest itself in works on canvas and glass. The former occurs sporadically in the Romanesque
period, as in antependiums, but its 3. Glass, real existence begins only toward the
close of the Middle Ages. The German centers were Prague (established, as already noted, by Charles IV.), Nuremberg (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), Soest (Master Conrad, first half of the fifteenth century), and especially Cologne (Master Wilhelm and Stephan Lochner, fourteenth and fifteenth century respectively). Stained glass was used almost contemporaneously in the second half of the tenth century at Tegernsee in Germany and St. Remy in France, serving originally as a substitute for the tapestries formerly adorning the walls and curtaining the windows, so that the tapestry designs are still preserved. The oldest specimens of glass paintings, or rather of glass mosaics, of this type are five individual figures in the cathedral of Augsburg, dating from about 1000, each bit of colored glass being joined by lead and having a simple outline and modeling of black lead. While at first the figure alone was considered, a wealth of ornamental detail was soon introduced, as in the twelfth-century Cistercian monastery of Kremsmiinster. The large windows demanded by the Gothic style, moreover, gave a new impulse to stained glass both in the thirteenth century (Strasburg and Freiburg) and in the fourteenth (Regensburg, Oppenheim, and Cologne cathedral), especially as the technic had been improved, particularly by the discovery of overlaying of glass and the extension of the color scale. Toward the end of the fourteenth century, however, rivalry with painting caused the glass mosaic to be superseded by stained glass, and in the fifteenth century the original form had been entirely given up. The finest examples of this latter phase are the glasses in St. Sebald and St. Lorenz in Nuremberg, while France (Chartres, Le Mans, and Bourges) also contains excellent specimens. Italy, on the other hand, here presents little of interest. In the latter country mosaic painting attained modest proportions, and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries enjoyed a marked development, as shown by the Roman churches of San Clemente and Santa Maria in Trastevere. The sources for the themes of medieval painting were primarily Biblical, with a marked influence of the traditions of the Church and the metaphorical exegesis of medieval theologians. The cult of the Virgin likewise gave scope for allegory and typology, while legend, liturgy, folk-beliefs, and scholarly subtleties combined to give richness and diversity to the painter's art.
V. The Modern Period: Medieval art was essentially based upon tradition, but with the fourteenth century came, especially in Italy, a veritable revolution in the rise of individualism not less in art than in the spheres of politics and learning. The leader here was the brilliant republic of Florence. The beginning is marked by Giotto (b. about 1266; mural paintings in Assisi and Padua), and a distinct advance is seen in Masaccio (d. 1428) and Masolino (d. about 1447). The ex-monk Filippo Lippi (d. 1469), a master of coloring, represented
Painting: