The Book of Art for Young People | Page 5

and the people about him thought that in a hole in the rock under one of the cellars a basilisk lived--a very terrible dragon--and they all went in fear of it. So the Count paid a brave mason a large sum of money (and the payment is solemnly set down in his account book) to break a way into this hole and turn the basilisk out; and I have no doubt that he and his people were greatly pleased when the hole was made and no basilisk was found. Folks who believed in dragons as sincerely as that, must have gone in terror in many places where we should go with no particular emotion. A picture of a dragon to them would mean much more than it would to us. So if we are really to understand old pictures, we must begin by understanding the fancies of the artists who painted them, and of the people they were painted for. You see how much study that means for any one who wants to understand all the art of all the world.
We shall not pretend to lead you on any such great quest as that, but ask you to look at just a few old pictures that have been found charming by a great many people of several generations, and to try and see whether they do not charm you as well. You must never, of course, pretend to like what you don't like--that is too silly. We can't all like the same things. Still there are certain pictures that most nice people like. A few of these we have selected to be reproduced in this book for you to look at. And to help you realize who painted them and the kind of people they were painted for, my daughter has written the chapters that follow. I hope you will find them entertaining, and still more that you will like the pictures, and so learn to enjoy the many others that have come down to us from the past, and are among the world's most precious possessions to-day.


CHAPTER II
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY IN EUROPE
Before we give our whole attention to the first picture, of which the original was painted in England in 1377, let us imagine ourselves in the year 1200 making a rapid tour through the chief countries of Europe to see for ourselves how the people lived. The first thing that will strike us on our journey is the contrast between the grandeur of the churches and public buildings and the insignificance of most of the houses. Some of the finest churches in England, built in the style of architecture called 'Norman,' one or more of which you may have seen, date before the year 1200, as for example, Durham Cathedral, and the naves of Norwich, Ely, and Peterborough Cathedrals. The great churches abroad were also beautiful and more elaborately decorated, in the North with sculpture and painting, in the South with marble and mosaic. The towns competed one with another in erecting them finer and larger, and in decorating them as magnificently as they could. This was done because the church was a place which the people used for many other purposes besides Sunday services. In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the parish church, on week-days as well as on Sundays, was a very useful and agreeable place to most of the parishioners. The 'holy' days, or saints' days, 'holidays' indeed, were times of rejoicing and festivity, and the Church processions and services were pleasant events in the lives of many who had few entertainments, and who for the most part could neither read nor write. Printing was not yet invented, at least not in Europe, and as every book had to be written out by hand, copies of books were rare and only owned by the few who could read them, so that stories were mostly handed down by word of mouth, the same being told by mother to child for many generations.
The favourites were stories of the saints and martyrs of the Catholic Church, for of course we are speaking now of times long before the Reformation. The Old Testament stories and all the stories of the life of Christ and His Apostles were well known too, and just as we never tire of reading our favourite books over and over again, our forefathers of 1200 wanted to see on the walls of their churches representations of the stories which they could not read. Their daily thoughts were more occupied with the Infant Christ, the saints, and the angels, than ours generally are. They thought of themselves as under the protection of some saint, who would plead with God the Father for them if they asked him, for God Himself seemed too high or remote