We have already seen that, among the barbaric chiefs who invaded the empire of the Cæsars and seated themselves on the Imperial throne of Rome, were some who, at a certain period, professed to be, if not the protectors of the Fine Arts, which had then sunk into torpor, at least the preservers of the Greek and Roman monuments belonging to the noblest epoch of Art. The statues were no longer broken down; the inscriptions and bas-reliefs ceased to be mutilated; the triumphal arches ([Fig. 274]), the palaces, and the theatres, were respected, or, rather, were left standing. But a kind of deadness had come over the artistic world, and a few sympathetic manifestations of this kind were not sufficient to reanimate its enervated spirit; it was necessary that the period of repose should be fully accomplished—a period which, in the views of Providence, was perhaps a phase of profound contemplation or preparatory development.
Nevertheless, although the art which gives life to marble and bronze—a high style of sculpture—was in a stationary or retrograde state, the lower kind, which we may call domestic, preserved some degree of activity. For instance, it was then the custom for great personages to send as presents diptychs of ivory, on the outer face of which were carved bas-reliefs recalling some memorable event. Monarchs, on their accession, were in the habit of conferring diptychs of this kind on the governors of provinces and bishops; and the latter, in order to testify to the good understanding existing between the civil and religious authorities, placed the diptych on the altar. A marriage, a baptism, or any success, gave occasion for the presentation of diptychs. For two centuries artists lived on nothing but this kind of work. It needed events of some very extraordinary character to cause the production of any monument of real sculpture.
Fig. 274.—Restoration of a Roman Triumphal Arch, with its Bas-reliefs.
In the sixth century the cathedrals of Rome, Trèves, Metz, Lyons, Rhodez, Arles, Bourges, and the abbeys of St. Médard at Soissons, St. Ouen at Rouen, and St. Martin at Tours, are mentioned as remarkable; and yet the walls of these edifices were nothing but bare stone, without either ornament or sculpture. “To become living stones,” says M. J. Duseigneur, “they had to wait for another age. The whole of the ornamentation was exclusively applied to the altar and the baptismal font. The tombs even of great personages present the most primitive simplicity.” ([Fig. 275].)
Ancient Gaul, in spite of its disasters, still retained, in certain parts of its territory, men, or rather groups of men, in whose hearts the cultivation of Art still remained a living principle. This was the case in Provence, round the archbishops of Arles; in Austrasia (Metz), near the throne of Brunehaut; in Burgundy, at the court of King Gontran. Most of the works and even the names of these artists are now lost; but history has recorded the movement, which was, as it were, a happy link destined to abbreviate the solution of continuity in artistic tradition.
Fig. 275.—A Stone Tomb, of one of the first Abbots of St. Germain-des-Prés, Paris.
At the time when Greek art, in its degenerate state, had sunk down into a department of mere goldsmith’s work, casting over Europe only a pale and feeble light; when artists, in representing sacred or profane subjects, contented themselves with simple medallions of bronze, gold, or silver, which were generally inserted in a shrine, or suspended on the walls; across the seas Byzantine art was springing into life; an art which blended Hellenic reminiscences with Christian sentiment.
In the eighth century, the epoch of the uprising of the Iconoclasts against images of all kinds, Byzantine sculpture had acquired certain well-marked characteristics: rigidness of outline, meagreness of form, elongation of the proportions, combined with great profuseness of costume; all was the expression of saddened resignation and costly grandeur. The monumental statuary of this age has, however, almost entirely disappeared, and we should be nearly destitute of any accurate record as to the state of Art for a period of several centuries, were it not for numerous diptychs which, to some extent, supply this want. Many of these sacred diptychs were exquisitely wrought. Gori, in his “Trésor des Diptyques,” written in Latin and published at Florence in 1759, divides these monuments into four classes: diptychs intended to receive the names of the newly baptised; those wherein were written the names of the benefactors of the church, sovereigns, and popes; and those destined to preserve the memory of the faithful who had died in the bosom of the church ([Fig. 276]). Their outward surface generally represented some scene taken from the Evangelists, in which Christ was especially depicted as young and beardless, his head glorified with a nimbus without a cross. The more these representations were condemned, the more they who paid respect to them endeavoured to perpetuate their use. The Greek artists, being unable to find a livelihood in their own country, made their way into Italy in such numbers that the popes Paul I., Adrian I., and Pascal I., erected monasteries to receive them. Owing to the influence of this immigration, Art, which in the West was germinating in an undecided state between a weak style of originality and an awkward mode of imitation, was compelled to assume a character of its own, and this necessarily was the Byzantine character; that is, a manner which was firm, clear, and, in general, impressed with a certain imposing nobility of style. This style attained all the more success by its being illustrated by very eminent artists, whom Charlemagne patronised as fully adequate to the magnificence of his ideas; and also because the richness of ornament which this style combined with its work was likely to render it pleasing to the populace.