colour, even to the point of symmetry, in architectural colouring, if the balance is to be maintained. There must be “echoes” or “recalls” of the same, or very similar, tints and shades in ceilings, walls, woodwork, and other parts of interior colouring if the qualities of good decoration, such as breadth, repose, and rhythm are to be secured. The rhythm of colour in decoration is of far more importance than that of the ornamental forms.

These laws and principles apply to all kinds of architectural decoration and their colour schemes, but if possible with more force to the richer and more complex polychromy, where pure and intense colours are employed with others of lesser intensity, together with gold, silver, white and black.

Contours, or outlines.—Coloured ornament or pictorial decoration on coloured grounds ought to be outlined, especially so if the ornament or decoration does not differ much in colour from that of the ground. Even colours that greatly contrast with each other ought to be outlined to prevent them from having the appearance of mixing with each other, for most colours will not show their true value unless they are outlined with a neutral one such as black, white or gold, or with some lighter or darker colour than their own. The general rule is, that if the superimposed ornament is of a lighter colour than the ground, provided that it is not excessively light, it should be outlined with a still lighter colour, but if darker than the ground, the outline should be still darker.

Certain ornamental compositions, such as arabesques that are painted in light and shade on a coloured or gold ground, may not require decided contours. The absence of outlines on such ornament is not so detrimental to them as it would be to decoration that is painted in flat tints, because such arabesques or tracery are sufficiently relieved by their light and shade treatment, and are usually painted in dark and intense colours, if the background is white or light in tint, and on dark-coloured grounds they are generally executed in lighter and brighter colours on the dark ground.

Light or pale-coloured grounds are made to appear deeper in hue by painting a fine tracery of a similar but deeper and purer colour on them, or by “powdering” small patterns or spots of such colour on these light surfaces, and a deeply-coloured ground may have its colour considerably lightened by superimposing on it a fine tracery pattern in white. Also, a fine pattern painted in two distinct colours, or a series of small dots in two colours, evenly distributed on a brightly-coloured ground, will change the colour scheme by causing another, and a new colour to appear, when the work is viewed from a distance. All these changes and effects are produced in an optical sense, for the new colours are those which are due to the mixtures of the painted ones on the retina of the eye, as they are not the inherent colours of the decoration. Though these optical colours are not, as a rule, purposely sought for, yet a consideration of them is valuable to the decorator. Much of the beauty of certain kinds of decoration is due to them; for example, that of the strongly coloured Moorish schemes, where red and gold, which supplies the yellow, combine to produce an optical orange colour, and where blue and gold mingle to produce a violet, when seen at some distance away. In the same way when white is introduced into these colour arrangements, as in the outlining of the patterns, or in numerous small touches, paler tints of the new colours are optically produced. Other illustrations of new colours that are produced in an optical sense may be noticed in the old glass of the Romanesque and early Gothic periods, where the magnificent purple and violet hues are more than often obtained by the juxtaposition of deeply saturated reds and crimsons with intense and rich blues, that notwithstanding their separation by the leading of the stained glass, which acts as black outlines, mingle together and produce rich purples and violets when seen at a distance. It has been noticed that even the negative shades of greys, which are made from mixtures of black and white, if surrounded by, or in juxtaposition with, warm shades of yellowish-red, or red ochres, will appear as refined tones of blue when seen from a distance, as in the case of ceiling decoration.

There are certain colours which “carry” or “read” well at a distance, and others which, however brilliant they may be near at hand, become obscured or indefinite when they are viewed from afar. For example, deep reds, dark blues and greens, intense purples and violets, all become either much darker, or are changed into dirty browns when seen far off, though they may all appear very brilliant when seen near to. Such colours have all low degrees of luminosity, and therefore do not reflect sufficient white light to enable them to carry well. It follows from this that if they were made lighter by the addition of white their carrying powers would be considerably increased, though at a loss of their intensity. The colours that carry, or tell at a distance, in addition to the pale shades of the above-mentioned ones, are the yellows and red ochres, white, buff, emerald green, and cerulean blue.

Coloured surfaces under artificial light.—We have already mentioned that it is only very rarely that the decorator is asked to arrange his colour schemes for rooms that are only used when artificially lighted, and also if his colouring has been planned to be seen in daylight, it will almost invariably look well under artificial light, provided that the room is well lighted. It may, however, be of some advantage to consider some of the more important changes and modifications of colour when viewed by artificial light. Such light would be in ordinary cases that of gas or electric

lighting, and although the latter is not so deficient in violet and bluish rays as the former, still it has a considerable amount of yellow rays, though not so much of orange-yellow as gaslight. All kinds of artificial light impart some of their yellow to all colours, and while this kind of illumination improves the brilliancy of yellow and yellowish-reds, or of such colours as lie closely to yellow in the chromatic circle, it dulls and saddens blues, bluish-greens, and violet-blues, or in other words, the colours that are more distantly removed from the orange-yellow in the chromatic circle. Blues and bluish-greens suffer most change in artificial light, as they become degraded to duller and greyer shades. Greens become bluish-greens, yellow-greens are not much changed, bluish-greens become more yellowish. Indigo blue changes to greenish grey. Violet becomes purple, and purple much redder. Yellow becomes paler in artificial light, but, on the contrary, orange becomes redder, and all bright reds from vermilion to carmine become still brighter in hue. Brilliant blues, like cobalt and ultramarine, appear more purplish in gaslight. If we wish, therefore, to obtain a tint of blue that will look blue by gaslight, it must appear as a slightly greenish shade of blue by daylight, and must not be dark in tone. On Plate 13 there are shown a few colours on the left of the diagram, at A, and the approximate changes in these colours, at B, when seen in artificial light.

CHAPTER VI

ITALIAN DECORATION AND ORNAMENT

the scale of art to the best examples of figure composition, it is in no way, when appropriately designed and applied, inferior as legitimate material for the proper decoration of a building.

The Italians made great use of both carved and painted ornament, which was usually well designed, and in their best work it was employed in a restrained sense as to quantity; the colour and distribution of it, whether in the flat, or in relief, enhanced the beauty of their architecture by assisting, but in no way disturbing, the architectural repose of the building.

The Italian artists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries used coloured ornament, both of the geometrical and floral varieties, largely in friezes, bands and borders, as a rich kind of framing to enclose, and also to separate, panels which contained their figure compositions, and these ornamental framings were extremely valuable as contrasting foils to the more pictorial compositions which they enclosed. In some cases the ornament itself occupied even as much, and sometimes more, space on the curved and flat surfaces, such as domes, spandrels, panels, and walls, as the figures themselves. A good example of this may be seen in the mosaics of the semi-dome of San Clemente at Rome and also on that of the Church of St. Maria Maggiore, both of which are examples of decoration which are in singular and good harmony with the architecture of the respective churches. We see in this ornament of the twelfth century on the semi-dome of San Clemente a specimen of that variety which was developed, with some modifications, by Cimabue, Torriti, Giotto, and other Italian artists in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The particular class of ornament we have now to examine was mainly founded on Roman work, but in addition it was mixed with some geometrical forms, which in the painted variety were copied from the inlaid marble decorations and mosaic patterns of earlier times, and in these geometrical patterns, as well as in some of the floriated scroll-work, derived from early Roman sources, there may be detected a strong influence of Persian or Eastern design. (Plate 16.) It may be said that in all flat ornament used in the decoration of buildings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Italy, either in painting, mosaic, or inlaid work, Byzantine, Saracenic, or Persian influences may be noticed. This is apparent in the geometrical interlacings, and also in the more natural floral and foliage forms of Western design, where we see strong reflections of certain types of the flat variety of ornament, which is common in the decoration of tiles, pottery, carpets, and other textiles of Asiatic countries.

The Romanesque variety of ornament may be seen in the bands, friezes and borders which frame the paintings attributed to Cimabue in the upper church of St. Francesco at Assisi, and

around most of the frescoes by Giotto in the same church.

The drawings on Plate 16, from the mosaics of the window reveals in the Church of St. John, Lateran, by Torriti, illustrate the type of ornament that was common in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth centuries. Plate 15 shows the position this ornament occupied in the window reveals, below the semi-dome, and how well it serves as a contrasting division between the figures of the Apostles on the wall spaces between the windows. Here the ornament plays a most effective decorative rôle in combination with the figure subjects of the tribune, and goes to prove that Torriti was fully sensible of the value of ornamental contrast in decorative mosaic, and that he was further aided in obtaining the desired unity of effect by his proper use of colour and simplicity of execution. This work testifies that Torriti was a master in the science of decoration, as he applied the true principles of his art with a correct and profound judgment, and is therefore worthy to be classed among the great forerunners of the Renaissance, and of modern art.

About the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Italy was in a highly prosperous condition, numerous churches, civic and private palaces, guild houses and merchants’ houses were erected, most of which were of magnificent proportions, and were richly decorated with sculptured marbles, frescoes, and other ornamentation. The civic palaces and merchants’ houses generally presented a solid and massive appearance, the style of architecture, especially in Florence and Central Italy, being a sort of mixture of Romanesque and Gothic styles, the latter being expressed in the window-heads, doorways, lower arcading, and in other details. The massive appearance of the façades were somewhat lightened by the battlements of the top storey and by the boldly projecting cornices and string-courses under them, and under the windows. These projecting features sometimes took the form of a gallery carried on brackets or corbels, between which the machicolations appeared. Types of these civic palaces with their elegant and lofty towers are seen in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, and the Palazzo Publico at Siena. Many castle-like guild houses of the fourteenth century are still in existence in Florence and in other cities of Italy, and representations of such may be seen pictured in the frescoes of Giotto at Assisi, and in paintings by other artists in Florence and Siena, where the interiors, with their furniture and decorations, as well as the exteriors are represented. The ceilings of the rooms in these houses were generally flat, or coffered between the beams, or the flat ceiling was often painted to represent coffered panelling. The walls were sometimes painted from the floor up to the dividing line of the deep frieze with imitations of textile hangings, decorated with geometrical patterns of a severe design, heraldic devices, or conventional

flowers and foliage. These imitation hangings were represented as suspending from a horizontal rod, hanging perfectly straight, or in some cases from fixed points at regular intervals so as to give them a festoon-like appearance. This was a common method of decorating the lower wall space of house and palace interiors, as well as of churches and chapels. A good illustration of this method of decoration is seen in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, where the lower walls under the frescoes of Pinturrichio, Botticelli, C. Rosselli, Perugino, and others are decorated with painted imitations of tapestry hangings. The friezes of the old houses under notice were very important features in the decoration, and were as a rule extremely beautiful in design and colour, the designs usually consisting of a row of fruit trees, such as the orange, lemon, pomegranate, apple, etc., alternating, and placed behind and above a net-work fence, which usually divided the lower wall decoration from the frieze proper, while between the trees, and at the bottom appeared groups of gay flowers, and singing birds at intervals helped to enliven the scene. The friezes often represented stately gardens or orchards, painted in the lively colours of nature, with the backgrounds behind the trees and flowers in black, and the spaces between a deep vermilion red. In some cases the garden frieze was continuous, and complete in itself, and other examples, as in the wall decoration from an old house formerly in the Mercato Vecchio, and now in the monastery of San Marco at Florence, the trees were placed under Gothic canopies, with little towers between, or in arcading supported by pillars, above which were triangular panels filled with heraldic devices. Some of the wall decorations of these old houses had other schemes of diaper-like ornamentation, consisting of lozenge-shaped and foiled figures interlacing at the angles, some spaces being occupied by figures of ladies on horseback, and others by various kinds of birds grouped in landscapes, while the alternating spaces were occupied by circles containing shields with heraldic devices, and around these foliated ornament. The general colour scheme of the walls, frieze, and ceiling was daring, yet delightful. It consisted of a warm harmony of strong reds, black, various greens, golden yellows and russets, modified here and there by the introduction of pearly greys, umber tones, and mellowed white. Rooms decorated in this fashion would be very sumptuous and rich, and would not require the aid of pictures to help out the colour scheme. (Plate 18.) A satisfactory finish to such apartments was admirably achieved by the furniture of the period, which consisted of beautiful Cassoni, in carved or inlaid woods, or decorated in gesso-work, painted and gilded, with representations of lively scenes of the tournament, of hunting and hawking parties, and other romantic subjects. The chairs, the seats against the walls, and the table were of carved walnut, chestnut or cypress wood. If we add to these such accessories as Majolica dishes of

lustred pottery, copper and brass vessels, Venetian glass and Oriental carpets, we may conceive some idea of the magnificent effect that a reception-room must have presented in one of these old Florentine houses in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

In the charming medley of forms and colour which the wall decorations of these houses presented we may clearly see the development of Giotto’s Italian Gothic ornament, still mixed with some of the older Romanesque forms that Torriti loved to use, and while Saracenic influences are not absent, the chief element of beauty in the mixture is the definite expression of natural form and colour, obtained by the trees, flowers, and birds which are introduced in such a dignified manner that they harmonise perfectly with the severer forms of the ornament to which they are allied.

It is to be regretted that this interesting class of ornament was not more fully developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alongside, if not instead of, the less virile but more classical type which was adopted and developed by Raffaelle and his pupils, Giovanni da Udine, Giulio Romano, and Perina del Vaga, when they came to decorate the Loggie of the Vatican, the interiors of the “Villa Madama,” Palazzo del Tè, the Ducal Palace at Mantua (Plates 19 and 20), and the Castello Sant’ Angelo at Rome.

In the early years of the sixteenth century excavations were being made at San Pietro in Vincoli and among the ruins of the Palace of Titus, in hopes, as Vasari states, of finding antique statues, when certain subterranean chambers were discovered that were decorated with small “grottesche,” so called because they were found in these grottos, or underground chambers; some of the latter were evidently the bathrooms of the palace. Other examples of this kind of decoration were found in the Coliseum, and in the Baths of Diocletian at Rome. Some of these ancient Roman grotesques were modelled in stucco in very low relief, and others were painted, having subjects of mythological figures, amorini, stories, and ornament. (Plate 21.) Raffaelle and his pupil Giovanni da Udine went to see these works, and were so astonished with their novelty, freshness and beauty that they resolved to imitate or adapt them for the decoration of the Loggie of the Vatican. Thus Raffaelle and Giovanni first conceived the idea of a risorgimento, a resurrection as well as a revival of these antique forms of decoration, and adopted the scheme and style of ornamentation for the piers, pilasters, arches and friezes of the Vatican Loggie. The painted portion of the pilasters have elaborate scroll-work, based on acanthus foliage, with designs consisting of fruit, flowers, trees, birds, quadrupeds, human figures, and enlarged copies of antique gems and bas-reliefs in panels surrounded by decorated mouldings, all in a rich scheme of polychromy on cream-coloured grounds. The vaulted ceilings of the Loggie are divided into compartments having stucco mouldings, some of which contain painted figure subjects, and others are executed in low-relief stucco work. The decorations of the lower parts are now, however, in a bad state, being mostly perished or rubbed off, but those of the ceilings and arches are in a fairly good condition.

In some of the apartments of the Popes, in the Castello Sant’ Angelo at Rome, there are many examples of this kind of decoration, executed by Da Udine, Giulio Romano and Perina del Vaga, among which may be mentioned the beautiful little bathroom, the walls and ceiling of which are entirely covered with arabesques and grotesques, in colour on a white ground, which Giovanni da Udine painted for Pope Leo.

The “Villa Madama,” near Rome, was built, or finished about 1521, from designs by Raffaelle, a year or so after his death, and the interior was decorated by Giovanni da Udine, chiefly in stucco, or gesso duro, in the same manner as the work in the Vatican Loggie. The decorated portion of this villa is chiefly confined to the great Loggia and its vestibule, and the two square recesses between them. The Loggia is divided into three bays, the centre one having a domed roof, while the other two have vaulted roofs, each roof being divided into four segments. The designs on the piers are executed in gesso duro, and consist of conventional renderings of the vine, maple, and other plants, admirable in conception and skilful in technique. This work, together with the relief decorations of the circular vaulting of the recesses, and soffits of the arches, is left uncoloured. Colour is used sparingly amongst the high reliefs which cover the greater part of the central dome. There are four panels in this dome with paintings of the figures of Neptune, Jupiter, Juno and Plato which are attributed to Giulio Romano. The groin ceiling-ribs of the right and left bays are painted with bands of arabesques and foliage designs, and the surfaces of the vaults are richly decorated with coloured ornaments. In the centre of each of these four vault divisions there is a large oval panel, one set of four having groups of sporting amorini, and the other four have mythological subjects. The three recesses have similar decorations. Much of the painting has suffered from damp, and wet from the roof, but in the better preserved remains of the painted work, and of the stucco decorations, there is sufficient evidence left to justify the great praise that Vasari has bestowed upon it, for on the whole it is more refined in design and execution than Giovanni’s early work in the Loggie of the Vatican. Similar kind of stucco decoration may be seen on the richly ornamented columns of the courtyard in the Palazzo Vecchio, at Florence, and similar painted arabesques on the vaulted ceilings and arch soffits of the same courtyard, though now much decayed and darkened by age and weather.

In the Ducal Palace at Mantua are three

celebrated “Camerini,” or apartments of Isabella d’Este, who became Marchioness of Mantua by her marriage in 1490 with the Marquis Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga. These rooms are in the part of the palace known as the “Paradiso,” and were beautifully decorated by the best known artists of the period to the orders of the Marchioness. The first of the three apartments was the music-room, the walls of which were lined with “intarsia” of different coloured woods representing views of towns. The ceiling was panelled and decorated with ornament and heraldic devices in low relief, and the frieze was formed of musical instruments carved in the wood. The second apartment was the painting-room, which from the point of decorative beauty was the most important of the three. Its chief interest consisted in the six pictures which Isabella had painted to her orders by Mantegna, Lorenzo Costa, Perugino, and Bellini. These famous pictures, with the exception of the one painted by the last-named artist, which cannot be traced, were taken from their places on the walls of the room, and sold by Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga in 1627 to Cardinal Richelieu, and were afterwards bought from the heirs of the Cardinal by the French Government, and are now in the Louvre at Paris. A model of one side of this beautiful “Camerino,” two-thirds of its actual size, with copies of the three allegorical pictures which once adorned its walls, together with the richly carved candelabra-like pillars that separated the pictures, a portion of the frieze and panelled ceiling in gold and blue, with the marble doorway by Cristoforo Romano is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and another copy is in the Dublin National Museum. The third apartment was reserved for receptions and was decorated with delicately carved devices, mottoes, and the heraldic arms of the family, executed in wood-carving and stucco finished in gold and having a blue background. The celebrated pictures that originally adorned the walls of the painting-room are elaborately finished and highly imaginative works, and are therefore to be regarded more as easel paintings than decorative compositions. This small room, which measures only seventeen feet by ten feet, must have appeared, in its original state, a veritable cabinet of the finest art and craftsmanship of the Renaissance period.

Mantua is very rich in the work of Giulio Romano (1492-1546) and of his pupils, Primaticcio and Niccolo dell’ Abbate; the two latter with Serlio, the architect, were chiefest among the many Italian artists and craftsmen who were summoned to Fontainebleau by the French King, François I, and were in a great measure responsible for the spread of the Italian influences which were so apparent in the art of the early French Renaissance.

Giulio Romano settled in Mantua in 1524, when he was employed by Federico II to alter and decorate some of the rooms in the Ducal Palace. He was also the architect and decorator of the Palazza del Tè, the country house of Federico, near Mantua. The paintings executed on the walls of these palaces by Giulio Romano and his pupils, Primaticcio, Francesco Penni, Rinaldo of Mantua, and Niccolo dell’ Abbate, consist chiefly of mythological subjects, and historical events from classic literature, battles of giants, gladiatorial combats, market-place, seaside and fishing scenes, with occasional subjects from the Old Testament, all of which were painted in the vigorous style and strong colouring so characteristic of Romano’s work. On the other hand, there were many cabinets and apartments in these palaces that were richly decorated with beautiful designs in stucco-work and fanciful arabesques, painted in colours and in monochrome, with great brilliancy and freedom, refined in conception, with lightness of touch in the execution, and not wanting in the frank gaiety of colour expression. This kind of relief and painted decoration occurs mostly on the vaulted and coved ceilings, on soffits of the arches, in spandrels, and on numerous borders, friezes and pilasters. (Plate 21.) The purely arabesque ornamentation usually occupied the large spaces on ceilings and elsewhere that surround the central oval, circular or rectangular panels which often contained figure-subjects of a mythological character, or sometimes heads, busts, or devices of various kinds, and usually consists of scroll-like foliage of vines and other plants, interspersed with sporting amorini, birds, and other creatures (Fig. 21), precisely a reflex of the grottesche decorations of the Roman Imperial times, except that such painted Italian arabesques of Raffaelle’s time, and later, would be more often, in the earlier Roman period, modelled in very low stucco-relief, for the ancients used their magnificent stucco composition to a far greater extent in decoration than the Renaissance artists, whether it was afterwards coloured or not.

It will be seen that all this kind of decoration, whether ancient or modern, painted or modelled, was entirely an applied decoration, and therefore non-constructional; that is to say, the ornamentation was applied to large surfaces of walls, ceilings, piers and pilasters, etc., after the building was completed. The decoration was added, and did not grow out of the structure, and was therefore unlike the Egyptian, Greek, Persian, Arabian, Medieval Gothic, and much of the Byzantine decoration, which grew out of the structure, as an inevitable growth, and which would be illogical and incongruous if applied to any other style of architecture than the particular style that had given birth to it.

The case is different in the applied decoration of the Roman and Pompeian houses, baths and grottos, and in the Renaissance adaptation of this kind of adornment, which does not appear to be strictly connected with the architecture. Similarly shaped spaces, for example, are found to be decorated in many different ways, some vaulted ceilings are covered with elaborate scroll-work, others are divided into panels of various shapes having stucco mouldings planted on the walls surrounding them, or dividing all forms of space divisions. Wall spaces are decorated in the Roman examples, but more especially in Pompeian decoration, without much regard to the wall as an architectural feature, for we find superimposed forms of thin columns, supporting fantastical and impossible entablatures, curtains, festoons, scroll-work, landscapes, figure subjects, animals, and all kinds of arbitrary spacings. It must be said, however, that if this applied decoration is unconnected with the building, it is very interesting and often charming in its spontaneity of colour and form, while the beauty and refined technique of the low-relief figure and animal forms go a long way to counterbalance the illogical nature of the general surface adornment.

CHAPTER VII

COLOURED ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE

IN France the traditional custom of colouring as applied to the exteriors of buildings was continued and maintained throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, but it had gradually declined in the reign of Louis XIII (1610-42), and was practically non-existent in the time of Louis XIV. In the Gallo-Roman era public buildings and monuments in France were coloured inside and out. Gregory of Tours (539-93), and Frodoard (894-966) make mention of churches and palaces that were decorated with paintings in their time. The Church of Saint-Savin, near Poitiers, dating from 1023, has the oldest monumental paintings in France, which were executed a little after the church was built. The façade of Notre Dame in Paris still bears slight traces of painting. According to Viollet-le-Duc’s researches the three doors with their arches and tympana were painted and gilded, also the niches, the “galerie-des-Rois,” the arcades under the tower, and the great central rose of the façade were all “radiant with bright colour and gilding.” This colouring occurred principally on the mouldings, columns, sculptured ornament and figure work. The outside colouring was much more vivid than the inside work. There were bright reds, crude greens, orange, yellow ochre, blacks and pure whites, but rarely blues, outside, the brilliancy of light allowing a harshness of colouring that would not be tolerable under the diffused light of the interior. The large gables of the transept also bear traces of old painting. There is also evidence that the greater portion of similar edifices of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in France, were decorated in colour.

Enamelled tiles, pottery plaques and gilded leadwork were largely used at the beginning of the Renaissance. Enamelled pottery and terra-cotta decoration were introduced into France by Girolamo della Robbia, who was invited in company with Primaticcio, Serlio and many other Italian artists by François I. Girolamo decorated the Château-de-Boulogne with glazed earthenware; this building was demolished in 1792, and some of the earthenware plaques are now in the Cluny Museum at Paris. During the reigns of François I and Henri II, in the sixteenth century, the architectural colouring was mostly a development of that of the Middle Ages, but towards the end of the century the taste for colour decoration rapidly declined, and from the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV the marble, and cold white stone style of building, introduced from Italy, became the fashion in France. This applies more particularly to the exteriors of French edifices, for during the reign of the Grand Roi the interiors continued to have a goodly share of coloured decorative paintings.

In the “Louis-Quinze” period (1715-74) colour was still used, but more sparingly, on the exterior and interior of buildings. Some ceilings and doorhead panels were painted in colours, but as a rule white relieved with gold was the common scheme of decoration, or sometimes pale and weak tints of colour were used.

In the period of the “Louis-Seize” style (1774-92), the schemes of decoration were almost as colourless as in the former period, although some exceptions must be noted, as in the case of some exquisitely decorated boudoirs painted for Marie Antoinette and her ladies of the court, examples of which are the Queen’s boudoir at Fontainebleau, and one which was formerly that of one of her maids-of-honour, a beautiful specimen of its kind, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington. (Plates 22 and 23.) From the days of the Republic to the end of Napoleon’s reign, 1792-1814, the architecture and decoration became still more cold and austere, and except in isolated instances there was not much employment of colour to relieve the conventional formality of the so-called “Empire” style.

The Romantic School of artists, poets, and

historians was ushered in after the Revolution of 1830, when greater attention was paid to the interesting works in art and literature of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance, and one of the consequences of this great movement was the revival of colour decoration on buildings. Many old frescoes which had been covered with whitewash, not only in France, but in Germany, in the Rhine valley, and in England also, were once more brought to light, after the whitewash of previous centuries had been removed. Many French architects, artists, and archæologists, among whom were Prosper Merimée, Didron, and Viollet-le-Duc, advocated a more generous use of colour, not only in the interiors, but on the exteriors of buildings. Many works on ancient art were published about this time, which also contributed to the education of the public taste, and French architects and students were becoming enthusiasts for the application of deep colouring to architecture, being led in this direction by the discoveries of Hittorf, in 1823, and subsequently by others, who went out to Greece and Sicily and found traces of strong colouring on the ancient Greek temples at Segesta and Selinus in Sicily. Hittorf was the first to discover and make known the ancient polychromy of the Greeks. The traces of colouring which he found on the three temples near the Acropolis of Selinus, and those on the small temple of Empedocles at the same place, enabled him to restore the colouring of these buildings, and in 1851 he published his work, entitled L’Architecture Polychrôme chez les Grecs, and also a view of the great Temple of Jupiter. About the same time the sculptor Thorwaldsen also found numerous traces of blue, red, and gold on the Temple of Ægina. Hittorf’s discoveries of Greek colouring were at first received in France with a good deal of scepticism and violent opposition, as he was told that the colouring of the Sicilian temples was only the remains of “the vulgar daubing of Byzantine, Norman, or Arab origin.” It is now, however, clearly proved by the light of subsequent investigations that Greek polychromy was a tradition of the colouring of still older temples, and that the latter was only a development of the archaic polychromy of the primitive Mycenian decorators, who in their turn derived it from Egyptian sources.

About the middle of the nineteenth century the art of colour decoration on buildings was greatly advanced, as the public were becoming familiarised with ancient work by means of copies made of it, illustrated books, and photographs of Pompeian, Roman, Greek, Byzantine, Persian, Egyptian, Eastern and Italian Renaissance work. The decoration of buildings in France in the nineteenth century in respect to the revival of polychromy may therefore be looked upon as a veritable colour renaissance, for a reaction had set in against the almost colourless buildings of the two former centuries. Not only was colour extensively employed in the interiors of French buildings, but on the exteriors it was used in a structural sense by the employment of natural coloured materials, such as marbles, bronze, terra-cotta and enamelled earthenware, and by the applied decoration of mosaic.

The architects, Duban and Labrouste, were among the first to assist in the creation of this new taste for colour, they having thoroughly studied the remains of Greek and Roman architecture, and especially the colour decoration of Pompeii. Duban set about the work of restoring the colour decorations of the Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and those of the Chateau-de-Blois, where in the latter he used ceramic tiles successfully in the decoration, taking his models from the tile work of the Middle Ages. Other works done by Duban, or under his directions, were the restoration of the Galerie-du-Louvre in the painted “loge” and decorated ceiling, and at the École des Beaux-Arts, the “Loggie-di-Rafaele,” in the galleries of the first storey, and the porticoes in the Cour-du-Murier, which he decorated in the Pompeian style. Duban employed marble, enamelled pottery, terra-cotta and iron, as well as paint, for his decorative colour schemes.

Many architects and artists were very enthusiastic about this time in advocating the extended use of colour on buildings, and numerous old churches and chateaux were restored to their former colouring, but those who undertook such work were not all gifted as colourists, and consequently some mistakes and failures happened; but at the same time a considerable amount of good work was accomplished where refined excellence and harmonious expression of colour were by no means wanting. Alfred Norman and Louis Duc were successful decorators of this period. Among the works of the former was the beautifully decorated house in the Pompeian style, painted for Louis Napoleon, and the latter architect used glazed tiles in combination with painting in some successful schemes of decoration in the oriental method of colouring. The Church of Saint Germain-des-Prés, in Paris, which contains the frescoes of Hippolyte Flandrin, was admirably decorated by Denuelle under the direction of the architect, Victor Baltard. In connection with the colour revival in France, Viollet-le-Duc makes this reflection: “Why do we deprive ourselves of all these resources of art? Why does the classic school pretend that coldness and monotony are the inseparable accompaniments of beauty, when the Greeks, whom they present to us as artists par excellence, always coloured their buildings inside and out, not timidly, but by putting on colours of extreme brilliancy?”

The use of coloured terra-cotta, ceramic tiles and mosaic, rapidly spread in France about this time, for the architects and the public had become acquainted with the coloured tile decoration of Moorish palaces in Spain, the tile facings of mosques in Persia, Cairo, and of the Mohammedan palaces and mosques of India. In conjunction with this kind of decoration, mosaic work also reappeared in France. Charles Garnier, the eminent architect, designed and built the new Opera House in Paris, in the years 1871 and 1872, where he introduced mosaic on a large scale, both inside and outside this important building. He also used mosaics and enamels in the decoration of the Casino at Monte Carlo. The polychromy of the Opera House in Paris is of a refined and dignified character, which, on the exterior of the building, is obtained by marble, bronze, mosaic, enamelled earthenware and gilding, and in the interior by mosaics and the painted decorations of Paul Baudry and other artists. Garnier was an enthusiast in the colouring of architecture, and especially for the use of mosaic in the decoration of buildings. In his dream of the future of Paris, he predicts that “The grounds of the cornices will shine with eternal colours, the piers will be enriched with sparkling panels, gilded friezes will run along the buildings. The monuments will be clothed with marbles and enamels, and mosaics will make all love movement and colour.” Garnier brought over to Paris many Italian mosaic workers, and it was largely due to his influence that the Government established the French École de Mosaïque at Sèvres, which has achieved excellent results under the direction of the late M. Gerspach.

Glazed tiles, enamelled earthenware, coloured wood, bronze and mosaic were from this time forward employed as decorative materials in public and private buildings in Paris and throughout the provinces. The great International Exhibitions were in some degree decorated with these materials, and the exhibits of these coloured building materials from England, France itself, and other countries, gave a great impetus to the production of such, especially to those of the potter’s art. In France the large decorative panels in coloured tile work by M. Deck created an epoch in this kind of work.

Foremost among the many architects and artists in the advocacy of colour in buildings was the late M. Paul Sédille, whose work in the effective use of enamelled terra-cotta and glass mosaic in decoration is well known in Paris. He designed, among other work, the beautiful monumental doorway as the entrance to the Salle des Beaux-Arts in the Exposition-Universelle of 1878 at Paris, which was composed exclusively of coloured terra-cotta and glazed tiles, similar to that of the Italian “Della Robbia” variety. This enamelled doorway was modelled in relief and painted in contrasting colours of green, red, natural colours, black and white, on pale yellow and azure grounds. The wreaths, stars, palms, and other salient portions of the design were in gold. Another work of his is that of the decoration of the ceiling of the vestibule of the Magazin-du-Printemps in Paris, where he has used enamelled glass mosaic with variegated marbles in an ornamental design, enclosed with plain and gilt bronze mouldings. The colouring of this effective design is very simple but rich, the ground being gold, the foliage pale greens, and the flowers white, slightly shaded with rose colour.

The most important mosaic decoration in France is perhaps that of the apse of the Panthéon at Paris, by the artist M. E. Hébert. The subject of the composition is “Christ revealing to the Angel of France the Destinies of her People.” The figure of Christ occupies the centre of the hemispherical vault, and stands before a throne; the right hand is uplifted, and in the left is the rolled volume—the book of the future—sealed with the seven seals. On His right the Virgin presents Joan of Arc with her standard banner, and on the left the Angel of France, whose red wings are heightened with gold, and with sword in hand, presents Sainte Geneviève, of Paris. The ground of the composition is gold. The figure of Christ is clothed in a robe of purple, and has a border of gold, and that of the Virgin is white with a gold fringe. The Angel of France is robed in a rose-coloured garment, and has a bluish-green coloured mantle. St. Geneviève has a blue robe and a grey mantle. All the personages stand on a verdured meadow, which is enamelled with flowers. Elaborate borders of vine leafage and grapes, with fillets of precious stones, surround the composition, which are from the designs of M. Galland, one of the finest decorative artists of France. The composition, character and colouring of this important mosaic, as well as the technique, are based on the best traditions of the Ravenna mosaics of the fifth and sixth centuries.

In the French provinces many examples of colour decoration and mosaic work have been executed in recent years, notably the mosaic decorations of the new cathedrals at Marseilles and Lyons. The municipal buildings of Paris and of the provincial cities of France, together with churches, universities, and other public and private buildings, contain numerous examples of important wall paintings, which though of great interest individually, are rather to be regarded as isolated efforts of decorative or pictorial value than complete schemes of the colour decoration of the buildings which they adorn.

In regard to what we have just said, it will be necessary to make a very important exception in the case of at least one great French master of decorative art, namely, Puvis de Chavannes, for he was perhaps the greatest decorator that France has produced. No one understood so well as he did the laws and principles of architectural decoration and colouring. He was almost alone among the artists of France in his proper treatment of the wall surface as an architectural feature, for on looking at his work one always feels that the wall is in evidence as a solid and flat surface, and that his great pictorial decorations, as far as the design and colouring of them go, and so full of beauty and interest as they are, in no way interfere with the architectural function of the wall. A comparison of his work in the Panthéon at Paris with that of the other artists whose works occupy other wall spaces in that building clearly proves this contention, for, as a rule, the surrounding wall paintings, executed by about ten other artists, though excellent as illustrative works of art, are really out of place as wall decorations in their composition, treatment of design, and more particularly in their violent colouring. They do not harmonise with the dignity of the architecture, they are not legitimate decorations, but rather great pictures fastened to the walls, making a lively and gay picture-gallery in a solemn and dignified building, and lacking that monumental fitness in their design and colouring which is so well expressed in the work of Puvis de Chavannes.

All the painters of these wall pictures in the Panthéon, with the exception of Chavannes, seem to have been influenced by the works of Paul Veronese, Tintoretto, Titian and Rubens, who produced large, and even colossal-sized oil paintings, which were designed to fit wall and ceiling spaces as decorative pictures, and were glorious things in themselves with all their richness of colour, perspective, composition and vigour of brush-work in the execution, but none of them can be considered as suitable decoration of the spaces they occupy on ceilings and walls. The Italian Primitive School, and the great frescanti of Italy, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, understood the requirements of wall decoration much better than the later, though great, Italian and Flemish masters, who painted their pictures chiefly in the oil medium. Chavannes, however, apparently founded his style and methods on the work of the early Italians, and, though he painted in an oil and wax medium on canvas which was “marouflée,” or cemented, on to the wall, and not painted on the wall direct, as in fresco or tempera, his work shows strong decorative influences derived from the study of these early Italian masters.

It would not be difficult to point out some of the many instances where the majority of the Panthéon wall pictures fail as decoration, where violent contrasts of colour and extreme perspective effects are, as it would appear, almost aimed for, as if the object was to destroy the plane of the wall as a flat surface, by making it look as if it had holes or windows, rather than any striving for the preservation of its natural solidity.

The wall picture, “Vers La Gloire,” by the clever artist, Detaille, may be mentioned as an example of work that has reached the limits of misplaced decoration. This work, though no doubt very popular, is really a crowded and complex miniature painting enlarged and transferred to the wall. In this painting there are represented hundreds of soldiers and horses all in the most violent action, with banners flying, and a plethora of swords, spears and trumpets; the horses are madly galloping on and through the clouds, there is plenty of movement, and great cleverness is displayed in the grouping of the horsemen, but at a few yards’ distance the work appears to be a merely glittering and spotty achievement, and when examined closely represents a perfect museum of soldiers’ uniforms. Clever as this work is, it is, however, entirely out of place on the walls of the Panthéon, for, apart from the unsuitability of the subject, it cramps and destroys the amplitude, as well as the flatness and solidity of the wall, which should be the first care of the artist to preserve.

The wall paintings in this building by Puvis de Chavannes, in contrast to the works above-mentioned, are designed and executed in a truly decorative sense. Here he has painted a magnificent series of panels illustrating incidents in the life of St. Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris. The general colour of these pastoral works is a combination of grey greens, pale yellows, and pale purples, which produces an atmosphere that is silvery and tender. The compositions are dignified and impressive, and there is no crowding or complexity in the almost even distribution of the figures; the keynote is simplicity, which gives the monumental clearness of design that decorative painting demands. In this respect the work of Chavannes has much in common with the charm and naïveté of the work of the Italian Primitives.

At the Hôtel de Ville he has painted the subjects of “L’Hiver,” “L’Eté,” and “Victor Hugo offrant son Lyre à la Ville de Paris,” but perhaps his greatest achievement is his celebrated painting of the “Lettres, Arts et Muses” which decorates the hemicycle of the vast Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne at Paris. The subject was one that was entirely in harmony with the painter’s genius and powers. The composition contains forty-four life-sized figures, which are arranged in a series of cleverly designed groups, all connected with each other, and arranged symmetrically, but not with a dry symmetry, on either side of a central group of three figures—Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, seated, with boys on either side, who are evidently meant to personify Love and Fame. The other figures symbolise Literature, Art, and Poetry. The background scene is a sacred wood, where the graceful tree trunks are kept rather thin and slender, so as not to interfere with the figures, but these serried rows of trees give the requisite upright lines that steady and strengthen the composition, which is also helped immensely by a dark hedge, extending the whole length of the picture, above which a little sky is shown.

The colour scheme is a beautiful harmony of fairly strong half-tones of such colours as greens, reds, yellows, blues, orange, grey and purple, but as a whole the dominant harmony is that of green and purple, although neither of these colours appears in its full or positive hue. The general colour scheme of this work is unusually intense in comparison with the paler and more tender colouring of the other works of this painter. His figures are types or embodiments of his poetic ideas, for, like Blake and Botticelli, he used the human form in his designs, not in any realistic sense, but as a medium for the expression of his ideas and inward vision; in short, he subordinated form to his thought.

The staircase walls in the Museum at Lyons have been decorated with paintings by Puvis de Chavannes; he is also well represented in his important wall paintings in the museums of Rouen, Marseilles, and Amiens, and his latest work was the decorative paintings in the Library at Boston, in America. Some of his earliest works, and other later ones, are those that form the important wall decorations in the Picardy Museum at Amiens, and this museum affords an excellent opportunity for the student who wishes to study the art of Puvis de Chavannes, for it contains many and typical examples of his design, drawing, composition, and colour. There are some very large paintings of his which decorate the main staircase walls, and there is also here a special gallery devoted to his work, the walls of which are covered by his paintings, all of which are surrounded by richly coloured Pompeian borders and panels of ornament. The architectural mouldings and other features are also richly coloured, and this surrounding colour and ornament does not in any way interfere with the pictorial composition, but, on the other hand, unites the paintings with the architecture, the whole effect providing a fine example of colour finish to the gallery.

Generally speaking, the majority of painters who are called upon to execute wall paintings in public buildings are afraid to use colour or coloured ornament close to, or surrounding, their pictorial compositions; but the best Italian artists, and the Greeks also, invariably did surround their decorative pictures with coloured geometric patterns, and coloured the architectural mouldings as well. So when we find such a great decorator as Chavannes adopting the principle of using colour to aid the effect of his decorative picture, and thus following the practice of the old masters, we may be assured that ornamental bands, lines, and mouldings, if coloured in harmony with the pictorial compositions, will effectively assist the latter in their function of providing a true decoration of the building, and prevent them from having the isolated appearance of pictures fastened on the walls.

CHAPTER VIII

COLOUR DECORATION IN GERMANY

THERE was little, if any, art or architecture in Germany before the days of Charlemagne, except that which found expression in the various articles and objects of personal adornment, such as in brooches, rings, in the costume of the warriors and chiefs, and in some objects of general utility, where the lesser arts—die Kleinkünste—were developed and attained to high degrees of perfection, in the Romanesque period and Middle Ages. Charlemagne, who reigned from 768 to 814, was a great art-loving prince, and gave the first impulse to art in Germany when he built his stately church, which he also intended for his tomb, at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). Here he had also his chief palace, but of this, and of the many others he possessed on the banks of the Rhine, no definite traces remain but his palace-chapel, now the cathedral, or the round portion of the latter, which still exists in good preservation, and is a fitting monument to his greatness, and to his zeal for the promotion of art in Germany. This church is said to be a copy in plan of the Byzantine Church of St. Vitale at Ravenna, except that the latter is an octagon in the ground plan, and the former is a polygon of sixteen sides. This round type of building was used in Rome and the south not only for churches, but for baptisteries, and after Charlemagne’s Chapel was erected in Aachen it became the prototype of circular churches that were built in the Romanesque period and style in Germany. The church at Aix-la-Chapelle was decorated with mosaics, similar to those of St. Vitale at Ravenna, but the original mosaics have all perished, and the ones which now adorn the dome and pendentives of the church are modern works by Salviati of Venice, and were executed from a seventeenth-century copy of the old mosaic. The subject of the dome mosaic, on a gold ground, represents Christ and the twenty-four Elders of the Apocalypse. The rest of the central part of the church, ambulatory walls, etc., are adorned with mosaics within the last ten years. The choir of this interesting church is an addition, and is a Gothic building of the fifteenth century. Its walls and vaulted ceiling are richly adorned with ornamentation in colours and gold, the patterns of the ornament being similar to, or derived from, the silk tapestries of that period.

Mosaic as church decoration, except for floor pavements, was not much in use in Germany after the time of Charlemagne; in the northern countries of Europe wall painting in tempera became the characteristic method of decoration for the Romanesque churches, just as mosaic was the chief kind of decoration for churches in Italy and southern Europe in the same period.

In the Romanesque epoch in Germany, the period which is generally understood to extend from A.D. 1000 till about 1200, or a little later, no church was without its painted decoration. The subjects were similar to, and the general design and style of drawing were not unlike the mosaic decoration of churches in Italy and Sicily. Single figures, and scenes from the Old and New Testaments were enclosed in panels, having borders designed in elaborate ornamental forms, derived chiefly from conventional leafage. The figures were usually painted in flat tints, or almost so; very little shading or modelling of the forms were attempted, and the whole work was strongly outlined, so that the finished decoration appeared as an enlarged kind of illumination. The ribs or groups of mouldings of the vaulted ceilings and the soffits of the arches were decorated with conventional flowers, garlands and ribbon work. The apse usually contained a large figure of Christ, or the Madonna enthroned, surrounded with figures of the Apostles and Saints, and often on the other parts of the church, such as the triumphal arch, the ceilings and walls, there were paintings representing the visions of the Prophets, and the imaginative imagery of the Apocalypse.

The Romanesque churches of the Rhineland afford many examples of interior colour decoration, for it was in the region watered by the Rhine that German art was cradled, where it was carefully nursed, and where it developed to an early maturity. Mural painting as a handmaid, or as an auxiliary to Romanesque architecture, can still be studied in many of the old churches in the valley of the Rhine, where it was an important art as early as the eleventh century. The secular buildings also, such as the castles, guild-houses, town-halls, chateaux and private houses were all at this time decorated in colour, but nearly all of their colour decorations and paintings have been destroyed in the course of time, except some remaining fragments which have been removed to local museums. There are, however, a few churches of the Romanesque period that still have a considerable amount of the eleventh and twelfth century paintings on their walls, and though much of this work is greatly faded and has now very little of its former colour and beauty, yet the composition and outlines are still in evidence, and although we cannot well judge of their original colouring there are still much quaintness and charm attached to those examples which have not yet been restored.

There are four Romanesque churches of the Rhine valley which still have their wall paintings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, namely, the double church at Schwarz Rheindorf, near Bonn, with paintings that were originally executed about 1150, the chapter-house of the Abbey-church at Brauweiler, near Cologne, and the crypt of St. Maria im Capitol at Cologne. The baptistery of the Church of St. Gereon has some wall paintings of the thirteenth century, and still older work in the crypt.

Perhaps the most important and most interesting of these old wall-paintings are those that adorn the lower church at Schwarz Rheindorf, although they have been completely repainted recently, but it must be admitted the present colouring of them is characteristic of the Romanesque colour, and can hardly be very far wrong. The subjects appear to be highly imaginative and poetical conceptions of Biblical scenes, and there are large figures of the Apostles and Hebrew prophets. The treatment is in the usual flat method of colouring with strong outlines. The original paintings were discovered under coats of whitewash in 1853. The Chapter-house at Brauweiler has some examples of wall-paintings, dating from the end of the twelfth century, the subjects being scenes from the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the apse of the church there are other paintings of the later Gothic period.

In the crypt of the Church of St. Maria im Capitol, at Cologne, there are some interesting wall paintings of the twelfth century, but they are in a faded state. This church, however, is remarkable for its rich modern colouring, and furnishes one of the best examples of the revival of Romanesque decoration in Germany. It may be said that every inch of the surfaces of the interior is covered with richly-coloured ornamentation and figure-paintings, which includes the columns and piers. The east end is in plan trefoil-like, having three semicircles with their diameters touching, and the three semi-domes above have figure subjects that were designed, and the painting begun, by Steinle, but finished by other artists.

In the crypt of the Church of St. Gereon at Cologne there is a very interesting series of wall paintings, consisting of single figures of a colossal size, each painted in curved recesses in the walls. The figures are noble in design, but the colouring is much faded. They date from about the twelfth century, and appear to be examples of the original work, that have not been restored. It may be mentioned here that the floor of the crypt is a mosaic pavement of the eleventh century. It is Roman in character, though of German workmanship. The design consists of figure subjects, where David, Samson, and Delilah are represented, and also the signs of the Zodiac. These mosaic pavements were discontinued after the eleventh century, when encaustic and glazed tiles of brown, red or green colours were used instead of mosaic for floor pavements. The walls of the baptistery of this church are decorated with painted figures, of thirteenth-century work. Full length figures of saints and warriors are arranged in pairs, two of them occupying the upper half of each arched bay between engaged pillars, and between each two figures is a small painted column. The lower halves of the bays have each an ornamental border immediately under each pair of figures, and the rest of the space below the border is painted in imitation of suspended tapestries. Altogether this makes a very satisfactory and interesting scheme of decoration. Such schemes were very common in the decoration of the Gothic period in Germany and other countries. The rest of the interior of this church, like that of St. Maria im Capitol, is lavishly decorated in richly-coloured and gold ornamentation being a modern revival of Romanesque colouring. The profuse surface decoration used so much in the Romanesque period was of Byzantine origin, and consisted of an almost endless variety of forms and motives, such as conventional vine leafage, fruit and tendrils, flowers of various kinds, scale patterns, interlacings, frets, geometrical combinations, chevrons, zigzag patterns, ribbons, garlands, and various representations of carved Byzantine ornament, and other architectural features, such as arcading, all treated flatly in colour.

There are other numerous examples of Romanesque painting, colouring and ornamental decoration still found in other parts of Germany, besides the examples we have just noticed. The walls and ceilings of the choir and transepts of Brunswick Cathedral have a complete series of Romanesque wall paintings of the twelfth century. The finest example of this style of painting in Germany is the magnificent ceiling of the great nave of St. Michael’s Church in Hildesheim. It is a flat ceiling of wooden construction. Running the whole length of the central portion of the ceiling the space is subdivided into a series of square panels; on each side of this central space the bands are divided into a great many small oblong panels, and outside these is a broad enclosing border of scroll-work containing in circular spaces in this border half-length figures of saints. The adjoining border has its oblong panels filled with small full-length figures of Apostles and Prophets. The larger square panels of the central part have lozenges and quatrefoil forms inside each square, in alternation. The latter forms contain the seated figures of kings and other personages that illustrate the genealogy of Christ, or the Root of Jesse. The Fall is also represented, and the corner spaces outside the lozenges and quatrefoils are filled with ornament and small medallions that add great richness to the design without giving to it any appearance of confusion. The colour is very strong and rich, and the whole of the decoration is painted on a blue ground.

The small stained-glass windows of the Romanesque period add a further note of colour to the interiors, although coloured glass was quite secondary to the painted decoration of this time. The only figure-work attempted in the glass was that in the small circular medallions and lozenge-shaped panels, containing scriptural subjects, which were placed at intervals amidst a rich setting of leaf patterns and other ornamental forms.

In the Gothic period, from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, when the walls of churches became less in extent and area, and the windows became larger and more numerous, glass painting gradually became the chief factor in providing the colour of church interiors, and consequently the art and craft of the glass painter or “glazier,” as he was called in the old documents, became a more important one than that of the painter and decorator. When the Gothic builders perfected the rib vaulting system, their greatest discovery, and the keynote of the style, they found that walls were not necessary as active agents of the construction, but of use only in filling up the spaces between the voids, and were therefore more or less inert masses. They found that they had no use for walls except to close in the building from the weather, and so we find that walls began to disappear in Gothic buildings, and the windows being more numerous and larger, the Gothic churches were becoming great glasshouses. To prevent this look it was necessary to fill the windows with coloured glass, which subdued the otherwise great glare of white light that would come through clear glass, and would give the interiors a more comfortable appearance, at the same time adding colour decoration to the buildings. Many Gothic churches have more area of glass than of walls; the clerestory of the choir in Amiens Cathedral, for example, has forty times more area of the void or window space than of the solid stone, and in some cases there are no walls, as in the highly scientific construction of the upper portion of the choir in the Cathedral of Prague, where all is glass set in the stone vaulting shafts. Other large churches or cathedrals built in the Gothic style might be given as illustrations where the proportion of void to solid is very great and consequently the windows are very large, such as Chartres, Cologne, Canterbury, Lincoln and York. In the smaller Gothic churches of England, or on the Continent, this proportion of void to solid was generally reversed, and owing to this, and also to the greater use of wood in the roofs and screens, the smaller churches everywhere were at this time more richly treated in colour than the larger ones. The painter and decorator also found more employment in the treatment of secular buildings with coloured decoration in the Gothic period than he did on the cathedrals. It was only in rare instances that important wall paintings have been found in churches of this period; the colour and decoration, apart from the stained glass, was, especially in the case of the cathedrals, confined to mouldings, vault ribs, capitals, piers; and sometimes the webs, or ceilings of the vaults, were wholly filled with arabesque decoration, but often only partially so, around the bosses that marked the intersection of