Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/590

IX. Painting in France. A HISTORY of the French school of painting can be traced almost as far back as the history of France itself. Even in the time of Charlemagne it was the custom to cover the walls of churches with paintings " in order to instruct the people, and to decorate the buildings." Painting on glass for cathedral windows was likewise invented or perfected : and many French prelates and abbots ornamented their churches and monasteries with paintings of all kinds. But the real history of French art, the pupil of Italy, can only be said to have commenced after the slow and laborious development of the Middle Ages; when all the knowledge possessed by antiquity re-appeared at one time, and produced the revival known by the name of the Renaissance. In Italy, this began as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, but it was nearly a hundred years later before the French school felt its influence. 1. In the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. Rene of Anjou, Count of Provence, — the prince who was successively despoiled of Naples, Lorraine and Anjou, and who consoled himself for his political disgraces by cultivating poetry, music, and painting,— was born about 1408, and learnt painting in Italy, either under II Zingaro at Naples, when he was disputing the crown of the Two Sicilies with the kings of Aragon, or under Bartolom- meo della Gatta at Florence when forming an alliance with the Duke of Milan against the Venetians. "He composed," says the chronicler Nostradamus, " several