ECCLESIASTICAL
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ECCLESIASTICAL
turicchio, Francia, Albertinelli, and Fra Bartolomeo,
almost exclusively religious painters, prepared those
masterpieces of religious art to set upon the altars of
the private chapels and great churches of the day, that
are now among the treasured masterpieces of all time.
This era was also the period of Humanism, of the re- turn to the love of the classics. It may be difficult in this complex period to mark the boundary line be- tween religion and that strange paganism which was an emblem of the classical revival, but the Certosa of Pavia and the work of the early German painters, rep- resented by such men as Schongauer and the elder Holbein, mark that side by side with the Humanistic movement there was a strong religious one. In this religious movement art had its full share, and engaged in its tasks, not perhaps with the austere simplicity and singleness of aim which belonged to an earlier period, but still with a definite determination that the best products of artistic craftsmanship should be de- voted to the service of God. There was, however, a growing desire that the home should be more beauti- ful and more luxurious. The decoration of churches was ceasing to be the sole aim of the art-worker, and he was finding other fields, but the chief encourage- ment of art still came from the Church and for the Church, and even upon domestic work the Church set her hand and seal. The period of the Full Renais- sance may be taken as lasting from 1450 to 1550, and here must be noticed the advent of a new movement in art, or at least a stronger development of what had undoubtedly begun to arise in the previous century. Hitherto, in pictorial art, notably in that of Italy, the aims had been form, drawing, composition, devotion, and the expression of spiritual conceptions rather than colour; but in the Venetian School, that took its rise in the earlier century with the first Bellini, Carpaccio, and Crivelli, and that was to see its development at this time in the later Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Paolo Veronese, and Tintoretto, the claims of colour gain a supremacy over the kindred branches of pictorial art. The Venetian School is the one in which brilliant colour attains to its apotheosis, and everything else is sub- servient to it. The simplicity of aim which character- ized such a man as Fra Angclico passed away, the de- votional feeling that marked the works of Albertinelli and Fra Bartolomeo gave place to an overpowering desire for decoration as such, and in Venice, although the Church commissioned the great altar-pieces and the schemes of interior ornamentation for which these noble artists were responsible, it had to be content to accept Venetian tradition and to see religious scenes treated as gorgeous pieces of sumptuously coloured decoration. Although there might not be the sim- plicity of a past generation, yet there still existed in the artists the .same desire to offer to the Church the greatest works of their genius. In this period of the Full Renaissance are found the work of Raphael and of Michelangelo; of Clouet, Mabuse, and Scorel; of Durer, Holbein, and Cranach; of Leonardo da Vinci, and of Correggio, while in applied arts there was im- mense industry and great development. The German metal-workers and goldsmiths prepared church ves- sels innumerable; Cellini and Caradosso produced ornaments for church vestments; the screen and the woodwork for King's College Chapel, Cambridge, typified the ecclesiastical wood-carving of the time in England; while the stained-glass windows at King's College Chapel, in other chapels, and in great churches show what was attained in this branch of ecclesiastical art.
The fall of Florence marked the close of the period of great art in that city, while the paintings and tapes- try execut<;d for Francis I at Fontainebleau, for Louis XII at Tours, and some sculpture done by Michel- angelo for the Medici Chapel, all point out the en- hanced power of the Humanistic movement and the destruction of that devotion to faith which had been
so marked a feature of the earlier centuries. The
epoch of the Late Renaissance, extending from 1500 to
1600, and overlapping that of the Full Renaissance,
was still, however, distinguished by a considerable
amount of earnest religious fervour in art. The paint-
ings of Luini, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Andrea del Sarto,
Sodoma, Bronzino, and Peruzzi, are strongly religious,
full of right feeling, and almost exclusively done for
churches, religious houses, guild chapels, and private
oratories, but outside of Italy the connexion between
the Church and art is by no means so apparent.
Spanish supremacy in Northern Europe had been de-
stroyed, and 1576 was marked by the rapid decline of
Spain. The Iberian goldsmiths and iron-workers still
certainly produced their famous grilles, jewels, morses,
chalices, and crucifixes, while in needlework the finest
workers of Castile were elaborating some of the most
perfect examples of church vestments that have ever
been produced. In bronze, the smiths of Aragon were
casting superb church candelabra, and some of the
weavers in France and England were producing tapes-
try decoration for churches; but the greater part of the
Gobelin, Brussels, and Mortlake tapestry-weaving was
for domestic use, the greatest architects were working
on domestic architecture, the potters on domestic pot-
tery, and the printers and engravers upon work which
cannot be termed religious. The names of certain men
stand out, however, as representing persons of deep
personal religion, who brought their own devotion to
duty to bear upon the work they executed. Such men
were Giulio Romano, Palladio, and the Behaims, but
the period of that supreme hold which the Church
had retained upon the art of the world, which she had
initiated, developed, and encouraged, was passing
away, never more to appear in its full fruition. Some
reference should be made to the system under which
during this time many of the great decorative schemes
of Italian painting were executed. The encourage-
ment which the Church gave to the Italian painters
took various forms. It was permissible for an influen-
tial or a wealthy family to have allotted to it a small
chapel in the large parish or town church, and the
decoration of the chapel was left to the care of the
family whose name it received. In some cases, these
chapels were built onto the chiu-ch, and in such in-
stances an architect, a builder, a decorator, and an
artist were all employed, and the Church gladly gave
permission for such additions to the church structure,
in order that the family might have a meeting-place
and an opportunity to make an endowment for per-
petual Masses for its deceased members. In cases
where a new structure was not erected, a portion of the
existing church was enclosed as a private chapel, per-
haps in memory of a father, a mother, or some chil-
dren, and a painter of repute was called in to devise a
scheme of decoration for its walls, in which would be
introduced the figures of saints to whom the deceased
persons had been dedicated, or scenes from the lives of
such saints ; in many cases life-size figures of the saints
were represented with their hands upon the kneeling
figures of the donors of the chapel. There was no
thought of an anachronism; it was considered per-
fectly right that representations of persons who had
died but a few weeks or months before should be intro-
duced into the scenes in which the saints of early
church history were depicted. It then became the
amliition of later members to add to the beauty of the
family chapel as means allowed. The walls having
been decorated, an altar-piece would be painted by
another artist, while perhaps, following him, yet a
third would ornament the front of the altar, or crafts-
men would be called in to supply objects used in the
sacred service, or vestments and books for the priests.
In this way these little chapels became shrines for
artistic work, the productions of many hands, repre-
senting the desires of many persons to place the best of
work at the service of the Church, to act dutifully
