Walter, dared to launch his satire against doctrine itself, and to ridicule transubstantiation by representing a pope shovelling four evangelists into a mill, from which come forth a number of wafers; these a bishop is receiving into a cup in order to distribute them to the wondering people. Any edification of the masses by the powerful effect of transparent images placed, so to speak, between the earth and heaven, soon ceased to be possible, and glass-painting, henceforth alienated from the special aim of its origin, was destined also to disappear.”
Fig. 238.—Temptation of St. Mars, a Hermit of Auvergne, by the Devil disguised as a Woman. Fragment of a Window of the Sainte-Chapelle of Riom. Fifteenth Century. (From “Histoire de la Peinture sur Verre,” by M. F. de Lasteyrie.)
FRESCO-PAINTING.
The Nature of Fresco.—Employed by the Ancients.—Paintings at Pompeii.—Greek and Roman Schools.—Mural Paintings destroyed by the Iconoclasts and Barbarians.—Revival of Fresco, in the Ninth Century, in Italy.—Fresco-Painters since Guido of Siena.—Principal Works of these Painters.—Successors of Raphael and Michael Angelo.—Fresco in Sgraffito.—Mural Paintings in France from the Twelfth Century.—Gothic Frescoes of Spain.—Mural Paintings in the Low Countries, Germany, and Switzerland.
Whatever may be the common acceptation of the word, we must, in order to keep within the limits of our subject, here only take into consideration real frescoes, or in other words, works of art executed upon a bare wall, properly prepared for the purpose, with which they are as it were incorporated; for in the roll of art all are excluded from the catalogue of mural paintings, rightly so called, which, although applied to walls either directly or by the aid of panels or fixed canvas, are produced otherwise than with water-colours, and used in such a manner as to penetrate the special kind of plaster with which the wall had been previously covered. We will mention as a striking example of this the famous “Lord’s Supper” of Leonardo da Vinci, which has many times been called a fresco (it is well known to have been painted upon the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria della Gratia, at Milan), but is nothing but a painting in distemper[32] on a dry partition—a circumstance, by-the-bye, which has not a little contributed to the deterioration of this magnificent work.