Volltext Seite (XML)
Chap. V. PROGRESS OP RELIGIOUS FEELING 155 CHAPTER V. PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY. To the general picture of the degeneracy of Italian painting from the earlier times to the middle of the thir teenth century, it may be now useful to add more par ticular notices of special schools; and as the rise of sculpture at Pisa has been traced, the course pursued by painting there and in the neighbouring Lucca, Sienna, and Arezzo many naturally claim the first attention. In the absence of all public spirit and enterprise, the dark ages could not yield great monuments of painting; and artists are accordingly found chiefly confining them selves to the reproduction of one great and universal sub ject, that of the Saviour on the cross. In proportion as the movement was slow and gradual by which the martyr dom of Christ was allowed to become a fit object for delineation, in the inverse ratio was the speed with which artists yielded to the tendency of representing his suffer ings and agony. With steps hesitating and reluctant at first, they accompanied him on the road to Calvary, with holding from the masses the spectacle of his shame, when, carrying his cross, he was dragged to the place of execu tion. Slowly, this sentiment of repugnance gave way, till in the eleventh century, the whole tragedy was unfolded. Yet whilst the sentiment of painters led them to the final resolution of actually presenting the Redeemer as he stood upon the cross, a remnant of respect for the ideas that swayed early churchmen, forbade them to deline ate any signs of grief or pain. So in the earliest crucifixions