Part 4

The genius of Rome however was essentially military, and the stamp which she has left on the world is military also. Her camps, her walls, and her roads, _strata viaram_, which, like arteries, connected her towns one with another and with the capital, are the real peculiarities of her archæology. The treatise on Roman roads, by Bergier, occupies above 800 pages in the _Thesaurus_ of Grævius. Instead of bootlessly wandering over the width of the world on these, let us rather walk a little over those in our own country, and as we travel survey the general character of the Roman British remains, which may serve as a type of all. In the early part of this lecture, I observed that we, in common with the rest of Western Europe, find in our islands weapons which belong to the stone, bronze, and iron periods; and here also, as in other places, the last-named period doubtless connects itself with the Roman. But besides these, we have other remains, many of which may be referred to the Celtic population which Cæsar had to encounter, when he invaded our shores. These remains may in great part perhaps (for I am compelled to speak hesitatingly on a subject which I have studied but little, and of which no one, however learned, knows very much) be anterior to Roman times. Of this kind are the cromlechs at Dufferin in South Wales, in Anglesey, and in Penzance, of which there are models in the British Museum; of this kind also are, most probably, the gigantic structures at Stonehenge, about which so much has been written and disputed. The British barrows of various forms and other sepulchral remains may also be referred, I should conceive, in part at least, to the pre-Roman Celtic period. The earlier mounds contain weapons and ornaments of stone, bronze and ivory, and rude pottery; the later ones, called Roman British barrows, appear mostly not to contain stone implements, but various articles of bronze and iron and pottery; also gold ornaments and amber and bead necklaces. Other sepulchral monuments consist merely of heaps of stones covering the body which has been laid in the earth. Many researches into this class of remains have of late years been made, and by none perhaps more patiently and more successfully than by the late Mr Bateman, in Derbyshire. The archæology of Wales has also been made the special object of study by a society formed for the purpose. Some tribes of the ancient Britons were certainly acquainted with the art of die-sinking, and a great many coins, principally gold, are extant, some of which may probably be as early as the second century before Christ. They are, to speak generally, barbarous copies of the beautiful gold staters of Philip of Macedon, which circulated over the Greek world, and so might become known to our forefathers by the route of Marseilles.

With these remarks I leave the Celtic remains in Britain; all attempts to connect together the literary notices and the antiquities of the Celts and Druids, so as to make out a history from them, have been compared to attempts to “trace pictures in the clouds[18].” Still we may say to the Celtic archæologist,

Θαρσεῖν χρὴ, φίλε Βύττε, τάχ’ αὔριον ἔσσετ’ ἄμεινον.

Footnote 18:

_Pict. Hist. of England_, Vol. I. p. 59. London, 1837.

One day matters may become clearer by the help of an extended and scientific archæology.

But of the Romano-British remains it may be necessary to say something. When we look at the map in Petrie’s _Monumenta Historica Britannica_, in which the Roman roads are laid down by their actual remains, we see the principal Roman towns and stations connected together by straight lines, which are but little broken. So numerous are they that we might almost fancy that we were looking at a map in an early edition of a _Railway Guide_. In this county they abound and have been very carefully traced, and both here and in other counties are still used as actual roads. In a few instances mile-stones have also been found. In our own country, cut off, as Virgil says, from the whole world, we do not expect the splendid monuments of Roman greatness, yet even here the temple, the amphitheatre and the bath are not unknown; and in our little Pompeii at Wroxeter we have, if my memory deceive me not, some vestiges of fresco-painting, an art of which we have such beautiful Roman examples elsewhere. But everywhere we stumble upon camps and villas; everywhere

The tesselated pavements shew Where Roman lamps were wont to glow.

And of these lamps themselves we have an infinite number and variety, and on many of them representations of the games of the circus and of various other things, formed in relief; a remark which may also be made of their fine and valuable red Samian ware; fragments of which are commonly met with, but the vases are rarely entire. Of their other pottery, and of their glass and personal ornaments, and miscellaneous objects, I must hardly say any thing; but only observe that the Romans have left us a very interesting series of coins relating to Britain; Claudius records in gold the arch he raised in triumphant victory over us: in the same way Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Septimius Severus, besides building their great walls against us, have, as well as Caracalla and Geta, struck many pieces in silver and copper to commemorate our tardy subjugation. The British emperors or usurpers, Carausius and Allectus, have also left us very ample series of coins, and indeed it is by these, much more than by the monuments of letters, that their histories are known. In the fourth and fifth centuries the monetary art declined greatly in the Western Empire, and was on the whole at a very low ebb in the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, and in the middle ages, generally, throughout Europe.

At Constantinople a new school of Roman art arose, which exercised a powerful influence on medieval art in general. Soon after the foundation of Constantinople, Roman artists worked there in several departments with a skill by no means contemptible, though of a strangely conventional and grotesque character; and from them, as it would seem, the medieval artists of Central and Western Europe caught the love of the same crafts, and carried them to much higher excellence. I would allude in the first place, as being among the earliest, to ivory carvings, principally consular diptychs. From the time of the emperors it was the custom for consuls and other curule magistrates to make presents both to officials and their friends of ivory diptychs, which folded together like a pair of book-covers, on which sculptures in low relief were carved, as a mode of announcing their elevation. From the fourth and fifth centuries down to the fourteenth we find them, some of the earliest with classical subjects, as the triumph of Bacchus, probably of the fourth century; but mostly with Scriptural ones, or with representations of consuls. Some of these are enriched with jewellery. The inscriptions accompanying them are either in Greek or in Latin. In Germany they occur in the Carlovingian period, though rarely, and in France and Italy later still. Perhaps it should be mentioned that the ivory episcopal chair of St Maximian at Ravenna, a work of the sixth century, is the finest example extant of this class of antiques, and is doubly interesting as being one of the very few extant specimens of furniture during the first three centuries of the middle ages. Various casts of medieval ivories, it may be added, have been executed and circulated by the Arundel Society.

Another art learnt from Rome in her decline, or from Constantinople, is the illumination of MSS., which the calligraphers of the middle ages in all countries throughout Europe carried to a very high perfection. Perhaps the earliest example to be named is the Greek MS. of Genesis in the LXX, now preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna, probably of the fourth century. The vellum is stained purple, and the MS. is decorated with pictures executed in a quaint, but vigorous style. In these, we find (as M. Labarte[19], a great authority for medieval art, assures us) all the characters of Roman art in its decline, such as it was imported to Constantinople by the artists whom Constantine called to his new capital; and “they have served,” as he adds, “for a point of departure” in the examination which he has made of the tendencies and destinies of Byzantine art. Compare the Vatican MSS. of Terence and Virgil. I cannot be expected to enter into details about illuminations; they occur in MSS. of all sorts, more or less, in Europe, down to the sixteenth century, but especially in sacred books, such as were used in Divine service. I need only call to your remembrance the beautiful assemblage exhibited in the Fitzwilliam Museum and in the University Library, to say nothing of the treasures possessed by our different colleges.

Footnote 19:

_Histoire des Arts au moyen âge._ Album. Vol. II. pl. lxxvii. Paris, 1864.

There are many other objects of medieval art not unworthy of being enlarged upon, which I intentionally pass over lightly, lest their multiplicity should distract us; thus I will say little of its pottery, its coins, or of its sculptures and bas-reliefs in stone. With regard to the first of them, M. Labarte observes: “It is not until the beginning of the fifteenth century that we find among the European nations any pottery, but such as has been designed for the commonest domestic use, and none that art has been pleased to decorate.” These are objects which the middle ages have in common with others; and they are objects in which a comparison will not be favourable to medieval art. Still, we must take care that a love of art does not blind us to the real value of such things; they are always interesting for the _history_ of art, whatever their rudeness or whatever their ugliness; and, moreover, they are often, as the coins of various nations, of high historical interest. For examine, on our own series of barbarous Saxon coins we have not only the successions of kings handed down to us, in the several kingdoms of the so-called Heptarchy and in the united kingdom, but also on the reverses of the same coins we have mention made of a very large number of cities and towns at which they were respectively struck. For example, to take Cambridge, we find that coins were struck here by King Edward the Martyr, Ethelred the Second, Canute, Harold the First, and Edward the Confessor; also after the Conquest by William the First and William the Second. We are thus furnished with very early notices, and so in some measure able to estimate the importance of the cities and towns of our island in medieval times; though great caution is necessary here in making deductions; for no coins appear to have been struck in Cambridge after the reign of William Rufus. And this seems at first sight so much the more surprising when we bear in mind that money was struck in some of our cities, as York, Durham, Canterbury, and Bristol, quite commonly, as late as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But, in truth, from the twelfth century downwards, the number of cities and towns in which lawful money was struck became comparatively small.

But I must not wander too far into numismatics. The art of enamelling, peculiarly characteristic of the later periods of the middle ages, is very fully treated of by M. Labarte, from whom I derive the following facts. The most ancient writer that mentions it is the elder Philostratus, a Greek writer of the third century, who emigrated from Athens to Rome. In his _Icones_, or _Treatise on Images_, the following passage occurs. After speaking of a harness enriched with gold, precious stones, and various colours, he adds: “It is said that the barbarians living near the ocean pour colours upon heated brass, so that these adhere and become like stone, and preserve the design represented.” It may, therefore, be considered as established that the art of enamelling upon metals had no existence in either Greece or Italy at the beginning of the third century; and, moreover, that this art was practised at least as early in the cities of Western Gaul. During the invasions and wars which desolated Europe from the fourth to the eleventh century almost all the arts languished, and some may have been entirely lost. Enamelling was all but lost; for between the third and the eleventh centuries the only two works which occur as landmarks are the ring of King Ethelwulf in the British Museum, and the ring of Alhstan, probably the bishop of Sherburne, who lived at the same time. These two little pieces, however, only serve to establish the bare existence of enamelling in the West in the ninth century. But in this same century the art was in all its splendour at Constantinople, and we possess specimens of Byzantine workmanship of even an earlier date. I cannot enter into the various modes of enamelling, which are fully described by M. Labarte; but merely mention, without comment, a few of the principal specimens, independently of the Limoges manufacture, which constituted the chief glory of that city from the eleventh century to the end of the medieval period. “This became the focus whence emanated nearly all the beautiful specimens of enamelled copper, which are so much admired and so eagerly sought after for museums and collections.” The principal earlier examples then are these; the crown and the sword of Charlemagne, of the ninth century, now in the Imperial Treasury at Vienna; the chalice of St Remigius, of the twelfth century, in the Imperial Library at Paris; the shrine of the Magi in Cologne, and the great shrine of Nôtre Dame at Aix-la-Chapelle, presented by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in the latter part of the same twelfth century. Also the full-length portrait (25 inches by 13) of Geoffrey Plantagenet, father of our Henry II., which formerly ornamented his tomb in the cathedral, but is now in the Museum at Le Mans. The British Museum likewise contains two or three fine examples; and among them an enamelled plate representing Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, and brother of King Stephen.

Very fine also are the extant products of the goldsmith’s art in the middle ages; which date principally from the eleventh century, when the art received a new impulse in the West; those of earlier date, with very few exceptions, now cease to exist. They are principally chalices, reliquaries, censers, candlesticks, croziers and statuettes.

Nor can I pass over in absolute silence the armour of the middle ages. Until the middle of the ninth century it would appear to have resembled the Roman fashion, of which it is needless to say anything; but in Carlovingian times the hilts and scabbards of dress-swords were very highly decorated; and about this period, or rather later, the description of armour used by the ancients was exchanged for the hauberk or coat of mail, which was the most usual defensive armour during the period of the Crusades. The first authentic monument where this mail-armour is represented is on the Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, representing the invasion of England by William Duke of Normandy in 1066; the most famous example of medieval tapestry in existence, though other specimens are to be seen at Berne, Nancy, La Chaise Dieu, and Coventry. The art of the _tapissier_, however, in the eleventh century, when the Bayeux tapestry was made, would appear to have been on the decline. In the beginning of the fourteenth century plate-armour began to come into use; and by and by this was decorated with Damascene work, a style of art applied to the gate of a basilica in Rome, which was sent from Constantinople, as early as the eleventh century, but which did not become general in the West till the fifteenth. To this I may just add, that sepulchral brasses, on which figures in armour are often elaborately represented by incised lines, are a purely medieval invention of the thirteenth century. Sir Roger de Trumpington’s brass at Trumpington is one of the very earliest examples. But time forbids me to say more of sepulchral brasses, a class of antiquities almost confined to our own country, of which we have some few specimens as late as the seventeenth century, or to do more than allude to the beautiful sepulchral monuments in stone of the medieval period, with which we are all more or less familiar.

The most remarkable art to which the middle age gave birth was oil-painting, the very queen of all the fine arts, though it was to the age of the Medici that its immense development was due. Previously painting had been subordinated to architecture; but now, while mosaics, frescoes, and painted glass remained still subservient to her, the art of painting occupies a distinct and prominent rank of its own. It used commonly to be said that the invention of painting on prepared panel was due to Margaritone of Arezzo, who died about 1290, and in like manner that John van Eyck invented oil-painting in 1410. Both these errors have been propagated by the authority of Vasari. But it is now well known, and has been conclusively proved, both by M. Labarte and by Sir C. Eastlake, that these modes of painting are mentioned by authors who lived more than a century before Margaritone, in particular by the monk Theophilus, who in the twelfth century composed a work entitled _Diversarum artium schedula_. Paintings in oil either are or lately were in existence anterior to John van Eyck; for example one at Naples, executed by Filippo Tesauro, and dated 1309. We must ascend to much earlier times to discover the true origin of portable paintings, and we shall find it in the Byzantine Empire. The Greeks, about the time that the controversy respecting images was rife, multiplied little pictures of saints; these were afterwards brought over in abundance by the priests and monks who followed the crusades, and from the study of them, schools of painting in tempera arose in Italy, in the twelfth century, at Pisa, Florence and other places. The Byzantine school, M. Labarte tells us, reigned paramount in Italy until the time of Giotto, _i.e._ the beginning of the fourteenth century, and also in the schools of Bohemia and Cologne, the most ancient in northern Europe, until towards the end of the fourteenth century. In this country we have two very early paintings, one of the beginning and the other of the end of the same fourteenth century, in Westminster Abbey. The former, probably a decoration of the high altar, is on wood; it represents the Adoration of the Magi and other Scriptural subjects, and is declared by Sir C. Eastlake to be worthy of a good Italian artist of the fourteenth century, though he thinks that it was executed in England. The latter is the canopy of the tomb of Richard II. and Anne, his first wife, representing the Saviour and the Virgin and other figures. The action and expression are declared by Sir C. Eastlake to indicate the hand of a skilful painter. In 1396, £20 was paid by the sacrist for the execution of the work. These remarks must suffice for a notice of medieval painting; the glorious period of its history belongs rather to the Renaissance, or post-medieval age.

The only archæological monuments of great importance which remain to be mentioned are those of architecture, in connection with the accessories of mosaics, frescoes, and painted glass. The two former descended from classical times, the last is the creation of the middle age. Mosaics having been originally used only in pavements, at length were employed as embellishments for the walls of basilicas, and, by a natural transition, of churches. Constantine and his successors decorated many churches in this manner, and in the East a ground of gold or silver was introduced below the glass cubes of the mosaics, and a lustre was by this means spread over the work which in earlier times was altogether unknown. Thus the tympanum above the principal door of the narthex of the Church of St Sophia, built by the Emperor Justinian at Constantinople, is adorned with a mosaic picture of the Saviour seated, the cubes of the mosaics being of silvered glass; it is accompanied by Greek texts. This and other later mosaics are figured by M. Labarte, in his last and most splendid work, entitled _Histoire des Arts au moyen âge_; among the rest a Transfiguration of the tenth century. The Byzantine art, with its stiff conventionality, prevailed every where till Cimabue, G. Gaddi, and Giotto imparted to its rudeness a grace and nobleness which marked a new era. In the vestibule of St Peter is a noble mosaic, partly after the design of Giotto, representing Christ walking on the water, and the apostles in the ship. But the very masters who raised the art to its perfection brought about its destruction. Painting, restored by these same great men, was too powerful a rival; and after the sixteenth century, when it still flourished in Venice under the encouragement of Titian, we hear little more of mosaics on any great scale.

Passing over frescoes, which were much encouraged by Charlemagne, and by various sovereigns and popes during the middle ages, because the ravages of time have either destroyed them altogether or left them in a deplorable condition, as for example in some parish-churches in England, I will make a few remarks on painted glass, so extensively used in the decoration of the later churches.