Greek mythology again, as exemplified in Greek art, expresses itself symbolically, and shows a gradual development from the primitive, ruder, and often savage personification of the powers of nature, more allied to the conceptions of the Northmen, to the idealized, refined, poetic and beautiful personifications of their later vase painting and Phidian sculpture. The symbolic intention and the personifying method was carried on and embodied in free and natural forms, though always governed by the ornamental feeling and necessities of harmonious relation to architectural and decorative conditions.

The first observers of the heavens, the primitive herdsman, hunter, the fisherman and the shepherd, have left their symbolic heraldry in the very stars above our heads; and Charles's or ceorls' wain and the signs of the zodiac still remind us of the primitive life of a pastoral and agricultural people.

The pediments of the Parthenon, for instance, are great pieces of symbolical art, and at the same time most beautiful as figure design and sculpture. It is distressing to think that so late as 1687 the Parthenon was practically complete as far as its sculpture and architecture. It was first used as a Greek Christian Church during the Middle Ages, and then, falling into the hands of the Turks, became a mosque; when the Venetians bombarded Athens in 1687 a shell dropped into the Parthenon, where the Turks had stored their powder, and blew out the whole centre of the building. Even in the broken and imperfect state in which we are now only able to see them, from the more or less complete figures and groups which compose its parts, we can gather an idea of the harmony and unity of the whole, and the complete union of the symbolism with the artistic treatment. The whole conception strongly appealed to the sentiment of the Athenian citizen, since the two pediments represented the contest of Athene and Poseidon for the patronage of Athens, arts and laws, or the rule of the sea. We all know that the arts and laws won, and that Athens is immortal by reason of her art and poetry and philosophy, not by her command of the sea. We modern English, perhaps, might do well to apply the lesson, and consider that after all it is not in mere appropriation of riches, extension of empire, material prosperity, or in our volume of trade, that the true greatness of a country consists, but in the capacity and heroism of her people.

In the eastern pediment the centre group expressed the birth of Athene herself, or rather her first appearance amongst the Olympians—the divine virgin deity and protectress of the city which bore her name, and whose colossal statue in ivory and gold stood on the Acropolis in front of the Parthenon. The other deities are grouped around, and on one side we have the Parcæ, the three fates controlling the life of man (which the Northmen embodied in the Norns); then, reclining at one side where the pediment narrows, the figure of the great Athenian hero, Theseus; and in the extreme angle the sun-god, Helios, with outstretched arms is seen guiding his horses, which emerge from the sea—being balanced at the corresponding angle by Selene, the moon, descending with her horses into the sea. Thus, we have a series of ideas expressed symbolically in heroic figures of deep import to the Athenians, and having also in the suggestion of the fateful control of human life, and the continuous order of nature in the rising sun and setting moon, a wide and lasting significance apart from the beautiful form and consummate art by which they are embodied.

The Parthenon stands high upon a rocky eminence, and from its western door you can see the blue Ægean Sea, the island of Salamis, and the harbour of Athens, the Piræus. Accordingly the sea-god Poseidon is sculptured upon the western pediment, with Cecrops, the first king and founder of Athens, with the queen. Another conspicuous figure there is the reclining figure of Ilissus, who represents the stream that flows around the western side of the Acropolis. The Greeks, and the Romans who borrowed from them, always symbolized a stream or a fountain by a reclining figure, half turned upon its side, and very frequently leaning upon an urn placed horizontally, from the mouth of which flows the wavy lines of water.

There is in the Vatican a Roman representation of the River Nile as a colossal reclining figure with long flowing hair and beard, like Zeus or Poseidon, holding a paddle. His tributaries being represented by a number of small Cupid-like boys, who clamber and play about him, or nestle at his side. The land of Egypt is typified by the sphinx upon which the figure leans.

Father Thames has often figured in "Punch" depicted by John Tenniel as an old man with long hair and beard, not unlike his prototype, but somewhat degraded and worse for wear.

The Greek gods, too, and their Roman representatives were each distinguished by their proper and appropriate emblems, as well as by marked differences of character and physical type.

Chronos, or Time, afterwards Saturn, is always known by his scythe; Zeus or Jupiter, the Thunderer, by his thunderbolt; Poseidon or Neptune by his trident; Helios by his horses, and Apollo by his bow; Aphrodite or Venus by the golden apple won by the most beautiful; Pallas Athene, or the Roman Minerva, as goddess of the arts, by her serpent, her lamp, and her owl of wisdom; Artemis or Diana by the crescent moon; Hermes or Mercury by his caduceus—the serpent-twined staff, which has in modern times become an emblem of commerce—since Mercury was the messenger, the fetcher and carrier of the ancients, quick-witted and keen, and, according to some legends, not over scrupulous. His rod and serpents have reference to the story of his parting two snakes in combat, in which might be read a modern meaning of the individual gaining fortune through commercial competition, though that is not its usual signification. I only offer it as an example of reading a new meaning into an ancient symbol. Then, of course, Heracles or Hercules bears the apples of the Hesperides, or the Nemean lion's skin and his club. In the Hesperides story of the dragon-guarded tree of golden apples, and its three guardian sisters, we seem to have another form of the tree of life and the fates. An interesting Greek relievo in marble, enriched with mosaic in parts, at Wilton House, shows the Hesperidean tree with the apples, and twined with the guardian serpent, with Paris seated and Aphrodite approaching as if asking for the apple—the prize of the most fair.

In the ancient Greek story of Pandora and her box—so suggestive a subject to artists, and fruitful in art—we have the classical version of the fall of man and origin of evil.

In the no less picturesque and poetical story of Persephone (or Proserpina), the daughter of Ceres, carried away by Pluto, the king of the underworld, darkness, and death, we have a beautiful allegory of the spring and the winter, since Persephone was allowed to return every year to the earth for a season, after she had eaten of the fatal pomegranate tree which grew in Pluto's garden.

One might multiply instances of the symbolic character of classical story and its symbolic embodiment in Greek and Roman art, but we must pass on to touch upon other sources and aspects of symbolism and emblem in art.

We know that many of our old fairy tales have a symbolical origin in ancient mythology, and have taken new and varied forms and local colours as they have travelled from their southern and eastern homes, and become naturalized in the art and literatures of different countries.

In such tales as "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," the climbing hero ascending the heavens to destroy the giant of darkness, in the first, the hero penetrating the darkness and awakening his destined bride from her enchanted sleep, in the second, for instance, the old solar mythology has been traced, and if we could trace the old folk tales back to their sources we might find them all related to primitive mythology or hero and ancestor worship. Thus do the spirits of the remote past sit at our firesides still, and kindle the imagination of our little folks: and in the rich tapestry of story and picture which each age weaves around it, elements from many different sources are continually and almost inextricably interwoven, as if the warp of human wonder and imagination was crossed with many coloured threads of mythological lore, history and allegory, symbolism and romance.

The early Christians, no less than the pagans, felt the necessity for symbols of their faith; and while at first borrowing considerably, and incorporating in their art forms belonging to the other faith they were supplanting, gradually, with the rise of power and influence, emblems more peculiarly belonging to an expression of the Christian ideal were adopted, or underwent considerable transformation. The design met with in the mosaics of the sixth century at Ravenna, the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, of the two stags drinking from a fountain, embodying the Psalmist's verse beginning, "As the hart panteth for the water brooks," although from the imagery of the older Scriptures, became an emblem of Christianity. The peacock appears, too, in Byzantine art, carved upon stone sarcophagi as an emblem of immortal life, either from the many eyes its feathers always open, or more probably because the eye feathers are shed and renew themselves every year. The vine, too, appears constantly as a Christian emblem, although with the Greeks it was sacred to Dionysos, and represented to them the divine, life-giving earth-spirit continually renewing itself, and bringing joy to men.

Although the symbolic use no less than the decorative beauty of winged figures had long ago been recognized, as Asiatic, Egyptian, and Greek art show, yet the Christian angel, both in its refined, half-classical form, as developed by the early Italian painters and sculptors from the thirteenth century onwards, and in northern Gothic work, became a distinct and beautiful type in art. In the work of Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli the angel figures are especially lovely.

No less distinct in its grotesqueness was the mediæval devil, although its origin was very probably the satyr of ancient classical art. The Roman satyr, with goat-legs and hoofs, bearded head, horns, and tail, furnishes, in fact, a very close prototype; and, being banned long ago as pagan when Christianity was in hand-to-hand conflict with paganism, would be sufficient to associate such a form with evil. There are some fiends represented in Orcagna's fresco, "The Triumph of Death," which are quite satyr-like, despite talons and bats' wings. Although with the Greeks the great god Pan is a mild and gentle deity enough, and though of the earth earthy, in a sense, yet as symbolical of spontaneous nature, and simple animal existence, piping on his reeds by the riverside, he always remains a favourite with the poet and the artist. Signorelli, for instance, in a beautiful picture (which our National Gallery somehow missed the opportunity of acquiring), gives a fine presentment of him.

It is interesting to compare the mediæval embodiments of evil with the ancient Persian symbolical representation of a combat of a king with a griffin, which may represent the conflict of Ormuzd and Ahrimanes as the typical principles or embodied powers of good and of evil.

The creature (representing evil) is winged, and has birds' claws for its hind feet (like Orcagna's fiends), and lions' paws for its fore feet, the body of an ox or horse, the beak of an eagle or griffin, in some instances, in others it appears with a bull's head, and is certainly suggestive of power and terror.

The favourite Greek conception of the centaur, too, is an expressive symbolic embodiment of animal force, and the mythical sculptural combat in the metopes of the Parthenon is again suggestive of the conflict between the higher and the lower elements of human nature.

Returning again to Christian art, we find the image of the lamb, with the banner of the cross, was the badge of the Templar; and we find abundant symbolism in the various emblems and attributes of the apostles, saints, and martyrs, distinguished by the various emblems of their evangel, conversion, or martyrdom. The mystic symbols of the four evangelists are well known to every ecclesiastical designer—the angel of St. Matthew, the lion of St. Mark, the bull of St. Luke, the eagle of St. John.

The winged lion of St. Mark has become the distinguishing badge of the city of Venice, since the evangelist was supposed to be buried in the great church dedicated to his name. Its image in bronze upon the column in the Piazza impresses itself upon the eye and imagination of every visitor, while upon the companion columns we see the patron saint of the ancient republic—St. Isidore, with the crocodile. Placed there in 1329, the statue recalls the early days of Venice, and suggests its connection with the East.

Now national heraldry is often derived from the bearings of families or chiefs. Of such is our royal standard with its Plantagenet leopards and red lion of the Scottish kings. Though in the Irish harp we seem to get a purely national emblem, strictly speaking it is the heraldic bearing of one of the four provinces—Leinster.

These heraldic bearings and badges had their origin in very remote times, and take us back to earliest forms of human society, to the gens, and the tribe, who named themselves after some animal or plant, and adopted it as the distinguishing mark and ensign of the family to which they belonged, or to such primitive times as we read of in Mr. William Morris's "Roots of the Mountains" and "House of the Wolfings," where he speaks of "The House of the Steer" and "The House of the Raven." The distinguishing badges would be carved or painted over the porch, and borne upon the shield of the chief and the banner in battle.

In feudal times the practice was continued until family heraldry, owing to intermarriage, became very complicated, and family shields much quartered.

Distinctness and definite characterization of form were highly necessary, since in battle it was important to distinguish your enemies from your friends, and the banner of the chieftain, the knight, or king, would be the rallying point for their followers and retainers.

Heraldry became regulated by strict rules, and is now called a science, though its vitality and meaning have departed, except in an antiquarian and archæological sense. It has, however, a certain decorative value to the designer, as illustrating the principle of counterchange of colours, and from the heraldry of the mediæval period much may be learned in point of decorative treatment.

The shield itself varies considerably in form. There is the round shield of the ancients used both by Greeks and Norsemen. This with the Greeks had pieces cut out at the sides sometimes. There was also a moon-shaped shield, similar in form to the shield used by our old invaders the Danes. Then we get the parallelogram, kite-shaped and oval shields of the Romans; the kite-shaped shield of the Normans; the lancet pointed shield, cut square at the top, of the first crusades. The Gothic shield becomes more variously hollowed and shaped with the development of plate armour, and in the fifteenth century frequently has a space cut out on the outer edge to allow of the tilting lance of the knight passing through without interfering with the guard. In Renascence times there was a revival of classical and fanciful forms in shields, and a return to its original form in the escutcheon, the term being derived from the Latin (cutis) word for skin or hide, which covered the ancient shields: but with the use of fire-arms shields declined, until the small steel buckler for the short-sword became its last working representative.

The character and the art of heraldic devices varies very much according to these changes in methods of warfare, and was also affected by the state of the arts generally.

We have only to compare the bold and frank heraldry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with the coach-painter's heraldry of the present to realize the great change in feeling. Compare a Plantagenet lion with a Victorian one, a mediæval griffin with a nineteenth century specimen.

The Gothic heraldic designer felt he must be simple and bold for the sake both of distinctness and ornamental effect. He emphasized certain features of his animals: he insisted very much, for instance, upon the claws of the lion, its mane and tail, its open mouth and tongue; in short, he felt it was his first business to make a bold and striking pattern, and whatever the forms of his heraldry, they were controlled by this feeling.

Heraldic devices formed a large part of the ornamental design of the Middle Ages in all kinds of materials. They were abundantly used in dress patterns and in hangings and textiles of all kinds. In the beautiful Sicilian silk stuffs, for instance, a leading feature of the repeat often consists of an emblematic or heraldic device of animals or birds, which give character and agreeable massiveness to the pattern.

Mediæval brasses afford many beautiful examples of heraldic treatment. Indeed, for ornamental feeling, expressed by very simple means and under very limited conditions, those of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries afford beautiful instances, which may be most profitably studied by designers of all kinds. Mr. Creeny's book on the Continental brasses may be recommended as containing many very beautiful examples from his own rubbings, notably from Belgium. Two specimens are given in Chapter VIII.

But the love of symbol and emblem did not expire with the vigour of heraldic design. Indeed, a certain impetus was given to it by the invention of printing, which, diverting it into another channel, seemed to give it fresh life in association with literature. The sixteenth century was remarkable for its love of allegory and emblem, which was no doubt stimulated by the opening up of the stores of classical lore at the Renascence, and by the general stir and activity of thought of a time of transition, when new and old ideas were in conflict or in process of fusion. Life was full of variety, contrast, hope, fear, strife, love, art, romance and poetry, learning and the beginnings of scientific discovery. Out of the seethings of such elements, joined with the relics of mediæval naïveté and quaintness, came into existence the emblem book, which offered compact pictorial epigrams, by means of the woodcut and the printing press, to fit every phase of human life, thought, and vicissitude.

Holbein's "Dance of Death" was really a book of emblems, and the subject was a favourite one with the German sixteenth century designers. Very ancient ideas reappeared in these books, unearthed by scholars, from all sorts of sources, from the ancient Egyptians onwards. Such designs as those of the pelican feeding its young from its own breast, and the stork carrying its parent on its back, constantly reappear; and also the bees making their hive in a helmet, with the motto Ex bello pax, which reminds one of Samson's riddle of sweetness and strength.

The device of the crab, too, with a butterfly between its claws, and the motto Festina lente—hasten slowly—is a favourite. The phœnix, also, borrowed from ancient Egypt, but nowadays generally associated with life insurance. Fortune, with the sail of a ship standing on a globe, and sometimes a wheel, floating in a tempestuous sea, to express her fickleness and uncertainty, often appears. The fate of Ambition, in the fable of Phaeton falling from Apollo's car; the snake in the grass—Latet anguis in herba; labour in vain, a man pouring water into a sieve, the sieve held by blindfold Love, also figures; the ass loaded with dainties and rich food, but stooping to eat the thistle by the wayside, appears as a symbol of Avarice. Æsop's fables were utilized, and classical mythology, in fact all was fish to the moral net of the emblem designer, and the multiplication of such collections in printed books is evidence of the moralizing, philosophizing tendency of the times, and the love of personifying and imaging ideas.

Elaborate designs, such as one of Romeyn de Hooghe (1670)—following the tablet of Cebes, b.c. 390, or the Latin version of 1507—allegorizing human life as a whole, from birth to death, under the device of a labyrinth or maze, with figures wandering about in its walks, under different influences, down to simple devices like the moth and the candle, are comprehended in these emblem books; but it is only reducing to small compass and to compact, portable, and popular form the same spirit of quaint invention which covered the walls and ceilings of great houses and public halls and tapestries with personifications, like the splendid series of the "Triumphs" of Petrarch, Love, Time, Death, and Chastity in our National Museum at South Kensington, as well as endless embodiments of the seasons, the senses, the virtues, and the vices. Emblematic art, however, like heraldry, became overlaid with pedantry, and its artistic interest died when its form became prescribed, and precedent and rule took the place of original invention.

The chief scope for symbol and emblem in our time lies in the province of decorative design, which in its highest forms may be regarded as the metre or poetry of art. The designer, like the poet, rejoices in certain limitations, which, while they fix and control his form and treatment, leave him extraordinary freedom in dealing suggestively with themes difficult or impossible to be approached in purely naturalistic form.

It is true we find emblematic art in very stiff and degraded forms, and applied to quite humdrum purposes. It is largely used in commerce, for instance, and one may find classical fable and symbolism reduced to a trade mark or a poster. Still trade marks, after all, fill the place, in our modern commercial war, of the old knightly heraldry—shorn of its splendour and romance, certainly—and given trade marks and posters they might as well be designed, and would serve their purpose more effectively if they were treated more according to the principles of mediæval heraldry, since they would gain at once character, distinctness, and decorative effect.

Allegorical art has, too, a modern popular form in the region of political satire and caricature, often potent to stir or to concentrate political feeling. This is almost a distinct province, to which many able and vigorous artists devote their lives and show their invention in the effective way in which the political situation is put into some piece of familiar symbolism which all can recognize and remember.

In the region of poetic design symbolism must always hold its place. When the artist desires to soar a little above the passing moment to suggest the past, to peer into the future; when he looks at human life as a complete whole, and the life of the race as an unbroken chain; when he would deal with thoughts of mans origin and destiny, of the powers and passions that sway him, of love, of hope and fear, of the mystery of life and nature, the drama of the seasons, he must use figurative language, and seek the beautiful and permanent images of emblematic design.

CHAPTER VIII.—OF THE GRAPHIC INFLUENCE, OR NATURALISM IN DESIGN

"THE graphic influence!" my readers may exclaim, "what existence has design apart from this, since the depicting power with whatever pencil, brush, modelling tool, chisel, pen is by its very nature bound up with it?"

That is quite true, yet for all that there is discernible a very distinct line of cleavage in art, a distinction of spirit and aim which seems to have divided or characterized artists and epochs from the very earliest.

I have often alluded to the drawings of the prehistoric cave men. These graphic outlines of animals, although generally incised upon the handles of weapons, always appear to me to indicate the purely naturalistic aim as distinct from the ornamental sense, as if the first object of the primitive artist had been to get as exact a profile as possible of the animals he knew; just as a modern artist, with superior facilities of pencil and paper, might make sketches at the Zoological Gardens without any idea of making them parts of a decorative design. The main difference seems to be that in purely graphic or naturalistic drawing individual characteristics or differences are sought for, while in ornamental or decorative drawing typical forms or correspondences are sought for.

In the course of the development of historic art in different countries and among different peoples, under different social and political systems, we may yet discern a kind of strife for ascendency between these two principles, which still divide the world of art; and though in the most perfect art the two are found reconciled and harmonized, as being really two sides of the same question, the general feeling for art seems to swing from one side to the other, like the tides in ebb and flow. At one time human feeling in art seeks to perpetuate types, symbols, and emblems of the wonder of life and the mysteries of the universe, as in the art of ancient Egypt. At another its interest is absorbed in the representation of individual characteristics and varieties, striving to follow nature through her endless subtleties and transformations, as in our own day; when the different aims inspiring our artists might be set down as—

(1) The desire to realize, or to represent things as they are.

(2) The desire to realize, or to represent things as they appear to be.

Under whatever differences of method or material, I believe it will be found that this real difference of mental attitude behind them accounts for the varieties we see, that is to say, in any genuine and thoughtful work.

Every sincere artist naturally desires to realize his conception to the best of his ability, in the most harmonious and forceful way; but in the course of the development of a work of art of any kind there are problems to be solved at every turn.

Is it a piece of repeating surface ornament we are designing? We feel we must subordinate parts to the whole, we must see that our leading structural lines are harmonious, we cannot emphasize a bit of detail without reference to the total effect. We may find the design wants simplifying, and have to strike out even some element of beauty. Such sacrifices are frequently necessary. Our love of naturalism may induce us to work up our details, our leaves and flowers, to vie with natural appearance in full light and relief, until we find we are losing the repose and sense of quiet planes essential to pattern work, and getting beyond the capacities of our material, so that we may realize that even skill and graphic power may be inartistic if wrongly applied or wasted in inappropriate places.

Is it a landscape we desire to transcribe or express upon paper or canvas? Sun and shadow flit across it, changing every moment dark to light and light to dark, so that the general emphasis and expression of the scene constantly vary, like the expression of a human face, as we watch it. Which shall we choose? Which seems the most expressive, the most beautiful? Again, shall we content ourselves with a general superficial impression, leaving details vague? Shall we aim at truth of tone, or truth of local colour? Shall we dwell on the lines of the composition? Shall we spend all our care upon getting the planes right, or rely for our main interest upon light and shade and delicate definition of detail?

All these different problems belong to graphic representation of nature, to graphic methods of drawing and design, and the work of different artists is distinguished usually by the way in which they seem to feel—the particular aspect or truth on which they mostly dwell in their work.

Even the most abstract symbolic or ornamental drawing in pure outline must have some graphic quality, though intentionally limited to the expression of few facts.

The method by which an ancient Egyptian painter or hieroglyphic carver blocked out a vulture or a hawk, relying either solely on truth of mass or silhouette, or on outline and emphatic marking of the masses of the plumage, or the salient characteristics, such as claws and beak, although extremely abstract, was full of natural truth and fact as far as it went, and left no doubt as to the birds depicted.

Something of the same kind of quality is found in Japanese drawings of birds, with less severity and monumental feeling. The graphic or naturalistic feeling is strongest and the individual accidents are dwelt upon. In modern European natural history drawings of birds and animals, we often lose this bold graphic sense of character in the general aspect, while small superficial details of plumage and textures are carefully attended to. There is often less life though actually more likeness. The general tendency in the development of the art of a people seems to have been from the formal, monumental, and symbolic type of representation and design in strict relation to architectural structure and decoration, towards freer naturalism, individual portraiture, and a looser graphic style.

We may trace this tendency even in the strictly monumental and stereotyped art of ancient Egypt, which notably in the portrait sculpture even of the ancient empire is remarkable for extraordinary realism; and in the wall paintings of the later period of the Theban empire (as in the tomb of Beni Hasan), which show considerable freedom and vitality.

A most notable example of realism is the famous "Scribe" in the Louvre, a coloured statuette, believed to date from the fifth or sixth dynasty, of extraordinary vitality. The eyes consist of an iris of rock crystal, surmounting a metal pupil, and set in an eyeball of opaque white quartz.

Greek sculpture, again, shows a gradual development from the archaic period, in which it resembles early Asiatic art, up to the refinement, freedom, and beauty of design of the Phidian period, when the balance between naturalistic feeling and monumental feeling appears to have been perfect. Then later, as the result of a desire for more obvious naturalism and dramatic expression, we get quite a different feeling in the sculptures of the frieze of the great altar at Pergamos, which represents the strife of the gods and the Titans—a tremendous subject, worked out with extraordinary power, skill, and learning in alto relievo; but despite the energy and dramatic movement, after the delicacy and reposeful beauty of the Parthenon sculptures, we feel that these qualities have been gained at a considerable cost and loss; but it is interesting as representing the more realistic and dramatic side of Greek art.11

But the grace and charm of Greek art never seemed really to die out. All the best Roman art was inspired by it, if not actually carried out by Greek artists; and, owing to Greek colonies, Greek traditions had long been naturalized in Italy, where they found a congenial soil. Fine portrait sculpture was done in the imperial period—as the Augustus and the head of Julius Cæsar and many other well-known busts testify. Also the truth and beauty of some of their animal sculpture we may see in the fine style of the frieze of sacrificial animals discovered in 1872 in the Forum. We seem to see the Greek spirit in the decorative splendour of the Byzantine period, and again, in Italian dress, inspiring the painters and sculptors of the early Renascence, in the work of Giotto, Ghiberti, and Donatello for instance. With the development of Gothic architecture in the thirteenth century a new and distinct feeling for naturalism arose, which influenced through architecture all the arts of design. In fact, all through the Gothic period design seems to have had more the character of a vital organic growth, controlled by a certain tradition and the influence of architectural style, yet within these limits and those of the material of its expression developing an extraordinary freedom both of invention and graphic power, which culminated at the end of the fifteenth century, or was perhaps absorbed by the classicism of the Renascence. Thirteenth century Gothic sculpture at its best, as we find it in France, has almost the simplicity, grace, and natural feeling of Greek work. This may be seen in the figures from the west front of Auxerre Cathedral, and also in the porch of Amiens; and in the portrait effigies of this period and onwards through the three centuries in those of our own cathedrals and churches we find abundant evidence of graphic power in careful and characteristic portraiture, united with beauty of design in detail and decorative effect.

What we should call realism comes out wonderfully in the treatment of the statue of St. Martha at St. Urbain, Troyes, a work of the fifteenth century.

Gothic art, too, was a familiar art, intimate and sympathetic with human life in all its varieties.

In the beautiful illuminated Psalters, Missals, Books of Hours, and chronicles of the Middle Ages, the life of those days is presented in bright and vivid colours. We see the labourers at work in the fields, ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, treading the wine-press. We see the huntsman, the fisherman, and the shepherd; the scribe at his work, the saint at his prayers, the knight at arms. The splendour and pomp of jousts and tournaments, with all their bright colour and quaint heraldry; we see the king in his ermine, and the beggar in his rags, the monk in his cell, the gallant with his lute—delicate miniatures often set in burnished gold, and adorned with open fret-work or borders of flowers and leaves.

These borders in course of time from a purely fanciful ornamental character become real leaves, flowers or fruit, as in the Grimani Breviary, attributed to Memling, the famous Flemish painter, where the borders are in some pages naturalistic paintings of leaves and berries, birds and butterflies, on gold grounds with cast shadows. Here we get the naturalistic feeling dominating again and the pictorial skill of the miniaturist triumphing, but the effect is still rich and ornamental.

When the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century began to rival the scribe with his manuscript, it offered in the woodcut a new method to the artist, which led to a new development of graphic power and design by means of line and black and white, though at first intended merely as a method of furnishing the illuminator with outlined designs as book illustrations and ornaments to be filled in with colour and gold.

The black and white effect, however, grew to be liked for its own sake: not only was it found to afford a considerable range of decorative effect by different treatment of line and solid black, but the graphic designer found in the rich vigorous woodcut line a suggestive and emphatic means of expression. The best artists of the time gave themselves to the work, and notably in Germany, the home of the invention of printing itself. Cologne, Mainz, Augsburg, Ulm, Nuremberg were all famous centres of activity in the printer's art, as well as Venice and Florence, Basle and Paris.

Up to the end of the fifteenth century the Gothic and ornamental feeling is still dominant in the treatment of the design of woodcuts in books, and most instructive and suggestive they are in simplicity of method and line, and directness of expression.

Characteristic German work of Gothic feeling and considerable graphic force is seen in the woodcuts of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) designed by Michael Wolgemuth, the master of Albert Dürer. In these vigorous cuts we may plainly see the tradition of that Gothic feeling and style of graphic design afterwards developed in the work of the great German designer.

The splendid woodcuts of Dürer's "Apocalypse," and of the "Little Passion," and the design called "The Cannon" (1518), give us further insight into his method of drawing and his graphic power; and one can hardly go to stronger or better examples for the study of expression by means of bold line work, a command of which is most valuable to designers in all materials, though, of course, especially so to those who desire to make black and white drawing their principal pursuit. For Dürer's finer line treatment on copper there is no better example than the portrait of Erasmus.

The style of drawing shown in these woodcuts was no doubt to a great extent determined by the nature of the method of cutting the block. The drawing on the smooth plank—not on the cross section of the tree, as in modern wood-engraving—was actually cut with a knife, not a graver. Each line had to be excavated, as it were, from the surface, the ground or white part sunk each side, so as to make it take the ink and print the impression of its surface sharply upon the paper in the press. These conditions would necessarily lead to a certain economy of line both as to quantity and direction, and would favour the use of bold outline and lines expressive of relief surfaces or shadow arranged in a comparatively simple way, and often running into solid black, as in small folds of drapery and details. The drawing was probably done with a reed or quill pen, which latter still remains perhaps the best tool for emphatic, graphic drawing on the scale of book designs, since it offers the maximum possibility of effect with the minimum of simplicity and economy of means. Its only rival (though it may also be regarded as a useful auxiliary to the pen) is the narrow flexible brush point, and this has the advantage of spreading more easily into solid blacks, though more likely to lead one into looseness of style owing to its very facility.

Fine and firm graphic draughtsmanship and rich design, with a fine sense of the decorative value of armorial bearings and processional grouping, may be seen in the famous series of woodcuts called "The Triumphs of Maximilian," in which Albert Dürer and Hans Burgmair co-operated. That is to say each did a large proportion of the designs. It was a very vast work for wood-engraving. The scheme was in two parts, one consisting of a design of a triumphal arch, in general idea in emulation of the old Roman imperial triumphal arches. This part of the work consisted of ninety-two blocks which, when put together, form one woodcut 10½ feet high by 9 feet wide. This part was all designed and drawn upon the blocks by Albert Dürer, and engraved by Hieronymus Andreæ.