MEMOIRS OF THE EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS. GIOVANNI CIMABUE. BORN AT FLORENCE 1240, DIED ABOUT 1302. To Cimabue for three centuries had been awarded the lofty title of "Father of Modern Painting;" and to him, on the authority of Vasari, had been ascribed the merit, or rather the miracle, of having revived the art of painting when utterly lost, dead, and buried-of having by his single genius brought light out of darkness, form and beauty out of chaos. The error or gross exaggeration of Vasari in making these claims for his countryman has been pointed out by later authors: some have even denied to Cimabue any share whatever in the regeneration of art; and at all events it seems clear that his claims have been much over-stated; that, so far from painting being a lost art in the thirteenth century, and the race of artists annihilated, as Vasari would lead us to believe, several contemporary painters were living and working in the cities and churches of Italy previous to 1240; and it is possible to trace back an uninterrupted series of pictorial remains and names of painters B even to the fourth century. But in depriving Cimabue of his false glories, enough remains to interest and fix attention on the period at which he lived: his name has stood too long, too conspicuously, too justly, as a landmark in the history of art to be now thrust back under the waves of oblivion: A rapid glance over the progress of painting before his time will enable us to judge of his true claims, and place him in his true position relative to those who preceded and those who followed him. The early Christians had confounded in their horror of heathen idolatry all imitative art and all artists; they regarded with decided hostility all images, and those who wrought them as bound to the service of Satan and heathenism; and we find all visible representations of sacred personages and actions confined to mystic emblems. Thus the Cross signified Redemption; the Fish, Baptism; the Ship represented the Church; the Serpent, Sin or the Spirit of Evil. When, in the fourth century, the struggle between paganism and Christianity ended in the triumph and recognition of the latter, and art revived, it was, if not in a new form, in a new spirit, by which the old forms were to be gradually moulded and modified. The Christians found the shell of ancient art remaining; the traditionary handicraft still existed; certain models of figure and drapery, &c., handed down from antiquity, though degenerated and distorted, remained in use, and were applied to illustrate, by direct or symbolical representations, the tenets of a purer faith. From the beginning, the figures selected to typify our redemption were those of the Saviour and the Blessed Virgin, first separately, and then conjointly as the Mother and Infant. The earliest monuments of Christian art are to be found, nearly effaced, on the walls and ceilings of the catacombs at Rome, to which the persecuted martyrs of the faith had fled for refuge. The first recorded representation of the Saviour is in the character of the Good Shepherd, and the attributes of Orpheus and Apollo were borrowed to express the character of him who "redeemed souls from hell," and "gathered his people like sheep." In the cemetery of St. Calixtus at Rome a head of Christ was discovered, the most ancient of which any copy has come down to us: the figure is colossal; the face a long oval; the countenance mild, grave, melancholy; the long hair, parted on the brow, falling in two masses on either shoulder; the beard not thick, but short and divided. Here then, obviously imitated from some traditional description (probably the letter of Lentulus to the Roman Senate, supposed to be a fabrication of the third century), we have the type, the generic character since adhered to in the representations of the Redeemer. A controversy arose afterwards in the early Christian Church which had a most important influence on art as subsequently developed. One party, with St. Cyril at their head, maintained that, the form of the Saviour having been described by the Prophet as without any outward comeliness, he ought to be represented in painting as utterly hideous and repulsive. Happily the most eloquent and influential among the fathers of the Church, St. Jerome, St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, and St. Bernard, took up the other side of the question; the pope, Adrian I., threw his infallibility into the scale; and from the 8th century we find it decided, and afterwards confirmed by a papal bull, that the Redeemer should be represented with all the attributes of divine beauty which art in its then rude state could lend him. Since that time the accepted and traditional type for the person of our Lord has been strictly attended to by the most conscientious artists and in the best schools of art-a tall, slender figure; a face of a long oval; a broad, serene, elevated brow; a countenance mild, melancholy, majestic; the hair (" of the colour of wine or wine lees "--which may mean either a dark rich brown or a golden yellow-both have been adopted) parted in the front, and flowing down on each side; the beard parted. The resemblance to His mother-His only earthly parent-was strongly insisted upon by the early ecclesiastical writers and attended to by the earliest painters, which has given something peculiarly refined and even feminine to the most ancient heads of our Saviour. The most ancient representations of the Virgin Mary now remaining are the sculptures on the ancient Christian sarcophagi, about the 3rd and 4th centuries, and a mosaic in the chapel of San Venanzio at Rome, referred by antiquarians to the 7th century. Here she is represented as a colossal figure majestically draped, standing with the arms outspread (the ancient attitude of prayer), and her eyes raised to heaven; then, after the 7th century, succeeded her image in her maternal character, seated on a throne with the infant Saviour in her arms. We must bear in mind, once for |