In the commencement of the eleventh century, we find the first dawnings of a restoration lations; mais à cette incorrection, effet inévitable du defaut de savoir, le dessin associoit je ne sais quelle grandeur, qu'il faut attribuer au souvenir et à l'habitude; l'artiste le plus ignorant montroit une sorte de grâce et même de majesté; les draperies offroient un assez beau developpement, les têtes du charactère et de l'esprit; les profiles des membres formoient communément de grandes lignes courbes, où l'on retrouvoit une application aveugle des regles antiques."Emeric-David, Discours, p. 165. One of the most interesting remains of Greek art in the tenth century is the celebrated Menologue of Basil II. deposited in the Vatican by Pius V. in 1015. It contains, for each day in the year, a story of some saint or champion of the Greek Church, and is ornamented with four hundred and thirty miniatures on gold grounds, executed by various artists, some of whom have attached their names to their productions. In the variety and number of the figures and events, this extraordinary collection of drawings is inconceivably rich, and may well be considered as a satisfactory specimen of the Greek school in this remote age. The colouring is, of course, brilliant in the extreme, the drawing defective; and the difference of sex only discoverable by the costume. Nevertheless, as Agincourt observes, the dignity conspicuous in the heads of the old men, and the modesty which distinguishes the attitudes of the women, attest that this is still a production, though a degenerate one, of the school of Greece. (Hist. de l'Art, v. ii. P. D. p. 55.) As models of costume, arms, customs, and architecture in the middle ages, the Menologue of Basil is invaluable. Its miniatures will be found figured in plates xxxi. xxxii. xxxiii. of the Decline of Painting, by Agincourt, and are described at pp. 55, 56. of his second, and pp. 38, 39, 40. of the third volume. of painting in Italy and Europe, the impetus to which was communicated by the mosaics executed by the Greeks who had been invited to Pisa and Venice. These continued for nearly two centuries to be the only models of the Tuscan and Lombard school, till the improvement of sculpture by Nicolo Pisano and Arnolfo Florentino led to the final restoration of taste in every other department of design, and taught the Romans to apply the treasures of ancient art to the cultivation of their own.* But in Greece herself the hour of redemption never arrived; nor do her annals, down to the period of her final overthrow, record. any important event in the history of design. From an incidental remark in one of the historians of the twelfth century, we merely learn that it was still employed for domestic decoration by the Byzantine nobles, and that its subjects were chosen principally from the actions of the former Greeks, or the battles and chases of the Lower Emperors; † but of these productions Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, l. iii. s. ix. Lanzi, Storia Pittorica d'Italia, v. i. p. 3. ; v. iii. p. 7.; v. v. p. 7. 185. Felibien, Entretiens sur les Vies des Peintres, v. i. 1. ii. p. 95. Agincourt, v. ii. Peint. Decad. p. 38. + Cinnamus, in relating the circumstances which attached a suspicion of treason to Alexius the Protostrator, against Manuel, the warrior of the Comneni, mentions his having decorated his palace with paintings of the victories gained time has spared us no satisfactory specimens. Throughout the convulsions of the Crusades, the brief and inglorious dynasty of the Latins, and the powerless reigns of the restored Palæologi, the practice of painting was never thoroughly abandoned; but the soul of art had fled, fancy and invention were extinct; the productions of the Grecian artists were but puerile copies of the works of their predecessors, which they continued to reiterate with a powerless hand, till, in the maturity of political and intellectual decay, the empire and its arts sunk into the same abyss.* by the Sultan of Iconium, (with whom he was suspected to be in correspondence,) instead of the pictures of the wars of the ancient Greeks, or the battles and hunts of the moderns, with which the nobles were wont to adorn their dwellings. σε Χρόνῳ δὲ ὕστερον ἐς Βυζάντιον ἐπανιών, ἐπειδή ποτε γρα φαῖς ἐπαγλαΐσαι των προαστίων αὐτῷ δωματίων ἠβουλήθη τινὰ, οὔτε τινας Ελληνίους παλαιοτέρας ἐνέθετο πράξεις αὐτοῖς, οὔτε μὲν τὰ Βασιλέως ὁποῖα καὶ μᾶλλον τοῖς ἐν ἀρχαῖς εἴθισται, διεξ ἦλθεν ἔργα ὅσα ἔν τε πολέμοις καὶ θηροκτονίαις αὐτὸς ειργαστο. τούτων ἀφέμενος τὰς τοῦ Σουλτανοὺ ἀνεστηλου· στρατηγίας ἐπὶ δωμάτων αὐτὸς δημοσιεύων κατὰ τὴν γραφήν. - Cinnami Histor. l. vi. c. 6. p. * Agincourt supposes that at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries there were some traces of a revival of painting in Greece, and that her artists were quickly following the example of those of Italy; but the specimens which he has adduced in support of this idea are The religious prejudices of the Turks, which induce them to consider all representations of the human form as impious, operate as an effectual barrier to the practice of the arts in their dominions. Their houses are ornamented with a few landscapes and paintings of inanimate nature, and their chambers are decorated with arabesques and gilded tracery; but as these childish productions require neither attentive study nor scientific execution, design may be said to be unknown amongst them. The Greeks, in their churches, still use some miserable portraits of Christ, the Panagia, and the Saints, generally drawn upon a gilded ground, such as exists in the works of Giotto, Cimabue, and the fathers of the Italian schools. Of these, a large proportion is said to be imported from Russia, where their primitive workmanship attests the little progress made by these ecclesiastical artists since the days of Helena and Vladimir. Nay, so debasing are the trammels of bigotry, that even ugliness is considered an enhancement of these sacred emblems, which seem to excite the stronger feelings of devotion almost too miserable to afford any grounds for the theory. They are principally taken from a MS. of a Greek Bible of the fourteenth century, preserved in the Vatican, and will be found in plate lxii. of his Decline of Painting. * Eton, p. 211. Guys, v. i. l. 32. p. 509. the farther they recede from the likeness of humanity.* In the islands and the remoter districts, too, a feeling of superstition attaches fatal consequences to the drawing of portraits, and the death of the individual represented is considered as a speedy consequence of the act. But though the practice of the arts is thus virtually extinct amongst the Greeks,† it is a remarkable fact, that they have still preserved a recollection of the modes of working pursued by their ancestors; and the knowledge both of frescoes and encaustic is still said to exist in the Archipelago, and on the shores of Greece.‡ * Waddington's Present Condition and Prospects of the Greek Church, c. v. p. 59. I remember, likewise, to have met with an anecdote of a Greek prelate, who refused to take a painting executed by Titian (I think,) because the chiaroscuro was so perfect as to give it a scandalous resemblance to a sculptured figure. "Les beaux arts Aujourd'hui + Guys, v. i. l. 31. p. 482. l. 32. p. 509. ont été fort en règne dans les Isles de Grèce. c'est la barbarie et la grossièreté même. Pour la peinture, c'est pitié que de voir leur méchant goût; le plus mauvais barbouillage est regardé avec admiration, parcequ'il n'y a personne qui puisse faire mieux. Les peintres Candiots sont renommez, quoique leurs tableaux soient pitoiables."-Hist. de l'Archipel, 1. iv. p. 380. Paris, 1698. + "The Greeks have a very curious manner of painting in fresco, which has many advantages. I also saw the ancient method of painting with wax, and fixing the colours by heat, |