godlike mien and heavenly grace, whose foot rests upon the mane of a conquered lion; his sacrifice is typified by a lamb expiring at the foot of a cross, which it sprinkles with its blood; and his resurrection by a radiant pheenix, which, triumphing over death, mounts into the air, or rests upon the summit of a palm-tree, the emblem of its victory.

Another incident, which contributed still more to the perpetuation of this symbolical style of design, was the difficulty of reconciling the prejudices of the orientals to the ignominious circumstances attendant on the death of our Saviour. The scourge and crown of thorns, were ideas totally incompatible with their conceptions of the majesty of heaven; and the cross, which sacred associations have taught us to revere as the emblem of all that is venerated and holy, was regarded by them with the same feelings of detestation and disgust which attach in modern times to a gallows or a gibbet. It required, therefore, extreme caution to prevent a symbol so offensive from giving scandal to the weak; and it was rarely, if ever, employed in the services of the altar before the seventh century in Greece, and the beginning of the eighth in Italy. To supply its place, allegories without

Emeric-David.

*

end were invented; and as these, in the decline of painting, had verged into puerilities and obscurity, the influence of the hierarchy was at length obliged to interfere in their suppression. In A. D. 692, at the Quinesextile, or Council in Trullo, it was ordered, that thenceforth fiction should disappear before realities, and that the real figure of the Saviour should be depicted upon the tree. It was with reluctance that the Greeks acceded to this proposed reformation; and it was long ere they could bring themselves to depict the Saviour expiring in all the humiliating throes of mortal agony. By degrees, however, they obeyed to a letter the authoritative injunction of the Church; but their anxiety to produce an effect, by the delineation of the sufferings of the Redeemer, tended only to degrade the images of Jesus. Their talents were unequal to the expression of agony and passion, united to majesty and grace; and their only resource was, by increasing the deformity of the subject to add to its disagreeable effect on the nerves of its specta

* The four Evangelists were represented as four rivers, whose waters were to overflow the earth; the Gentiles as stags, who bounded down a mountain's side towards a living fountain; and the faithful, as trees, plants, sheep, and birds. -Emeric-David, p. 115.

+ Can. 82. Act. Concil. Paris, 1714, v. 3. col. 1691, 1692.

tors. Hitherto, likewise, the use of undraped figures in their allegories had perpetuated in some degree the knowledge of anatomy and figure; the severity of historical design now demanded the introduction of costume, and anatomical correctness was for ever lost to the Greeks. In the examples which remain of naked figures on their crucifixes, the drawing is invariably wretched; and the artists seem to have endeavoured to illustrate the figurative allusion of the Psalmist, "All my bones are out of joint, and my heart like wax is melted in the midst of my bowels."*

Such was the perverted taste universally prevalent throughout Greece in the eleventh century, and which continued unaltered down to the restoration of art in Italy and the West. By the Latins, these depraved and superstitious ideas had never been cordially nor extensively imbibed; and the Roman painters had almost from the earliest period coincided with the majority of the fathers, in asserting the beauty and grace of the Saviour's form. Nearly a century elapsed ere they acceded to the decree of the Quinesextile council; and when they did, their first efforts, instead of depicting the crown of thorns, the lance, and the sponge, represented

* Psalm xxii. v. 14.

Jesus as a youth of heavenly mien, crowned with a diadem, and inaccessible to human sufferings or pain.* The letter of Lentulus, whose promulgation dates between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, serves to show that the ideas of Hadrian I. and St. Bernard, relative to the beauty of Jesus, had then become prevalent and popular in the West; and the description of Nicephorus Xanthopulus, which agrees with it, seems to indicate that the same opinion was not altogether without supporters at Constantinople. The features, figure, and expression attributed by both to the Saviour, are precisely those which, on the restoration of painting, served as models to the works of Guido of Sienna, Cimabue, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michel Angelo. So that to the Italian followers of Gregory, Ambrose, and Augustine, we are indebted for the portraits of Jesus at present in use; nor is it necessary to add, that their forms are imaginary, and that their authenticity is supported neither by sacred authority nor attested models.†

Emeric-David, p. 66. A proverb still in use in the south of France, which compares a lean or meagre person to un crucifix des Grecs, serves to point out the remarkable distinction between these paintings in the Italian and Constantinopolitan churches.

It was with extreme awe and hesitation that the Greeks

To return.-During the fourth and fifth centuries, the same hostility to the monuments of ancient art prevailed throughout Greece which I have mentioned as having disgraced

seem to have ventured on a delineation of the Almighty; down to the eleventh century, they continued to represent His presence by the symbol of a hand extended from a cloud, an idea borrowed, most probably, from the figurative words of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. (Jer. c. i. v. 9.; c. xxvii. v. 5. Ezek. c. ii. v. 9.) It was only when an example had been set to them by the artists of the West, that they presumed to paint Him in a human form. Some miniatures of the ninth century executed in France, as decorations for a Bible, still preserved at Paris, afford the first specimens of designs of this kind with which we are acquainted, and depict the Creator under the figure of a beardless youth, a golden cloud encompassing bis head, clad in an azure robe, and bearing a sceptre in his hand. The Greeks, improving upon this conception, adopted for their model the sublime vision of Daniel: "I beheld till the thrones were cast down and the ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him." (Dan. c. vii. v. 9, 10.) The Greeks now painted him as an old man of venerable aspect, full of majesty and goodness, seated amidst rolling clouds, dividing chaos by his look, and calling forth light from the midst of darkness. These splendid imaginings, though rudely expressed, seemed to have been never either abandoned or surpassed; and in the lofty designs of Michel Angelo and Raphael, the spectator will recognize the first bold conceptions of the Greeks.