The Book of Art for Young People | Page 7

were remotely akin to the Angles and Saxons, overwhelmed
Roman culture. But next to Constantinople, Rome had the best
continuous tradition of art, for the fine monuments of the great imperial
days still existed in the city. In Byzantium the original Greek
population struggled on, and continued to paint, and make mosaics, and
erect fine buildings, till the Turks conquered them in 1453. The
Byzantines were wealthy and made exquisite objects in gold, precious
stones, and ivory. While they were painting better than any other
people in Europe, they too reproduced the same subjects and the same
figures over and over again, only the figures were more graceful than
those of the local Italian, English, and French artists, who in varying
degrees at different times tried to paint like the Byzantine or Greek
artists, but without quite the same success. So long as there was no
need for an artist to paint anything but the old well-established subjects,
and so long as people desired them to be painted in the old
conventional manner, there was little reason why any painter should try
to be original and paint what was not wanted. But in the thirteenth
century a great change took place.
Let us here refresh our memories of what we may have read of that
delightful saint, Francis of Assisi. He was born in 1182, the son of a
well-to-do nobleman, in the little town of Assisi in Umbria, and as a lad
became inflamed with the ideal of the religious life. But instead of
entering one of the existing monastic orders, where he would have been
protected, he gave away every possession he had in the world and
adopted 'poverty' as his watchword. Clad in an old brown habit, he
walked from place to place preaching charity, obedience, and
renunciation of all worldly goods. He lived on what was given to him
to eat from day to day; he nursed the lepers and the sick. Ever described
as a most lovable person, he won by his preaching the hearts of people
of all classes, from the King of France to the humblest peasant. He
wrote beautiful hymns in praise of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and
had a great love for every living thing. The birds were said to have

flocked around him because they loved him, and we read that he talked
to them and called them his 'little sisters.' An old writer tells this story
in good faith:
When St. Francis spake words to them, the birds began all of them to
open their beaks and spread their wings and reverently bend their heads
down to the ground, and by their acts and by their songs did show that
the holy Father gave them joy exceeding great.
Wherever he preached he made converts who 'married Holy Poverty,'
as St. Francis expressed it, gave up everything they had, and lived his
preaching and roaming life. St. Francis himself had no idea of forming
a monastic order. He wished to live a holy life in the world and show
others how to do the same, and for years he and his companions
worked among the poor, earning their daily bread when they could, and
when they could not, begging for it. Gradually, however, ambition
stirred in the hearts of some of the followers of Francis, and against the
will of their leader they made themselves into the Order of Franciscan
Friars, collected gifts of money, and began to build churches and
monastic buildings. At first the buildings were said to belong to the
Pope, who allowed the Franciscans to use them, since they might not
own property; but after the death of St. Francis, the Order built
churches throughout the length and breadth of Italy, not of marble and
mosaic but of brick, since brick was cheaper; but the brick walls were
plastered, and upon the wet plaster there were painted scenes from the
life of St. Francis, side by side with the old Christian and saintly
legends. This sudden demand for painted churches with paintings of
new subjects, stirred the painters of the day to alter their old style.
When an artist was asked to paint a large picture of St. Francis
preaching to the birds, he had to look at real birds and he had to study a
real man in the attitude of preaching. There was no scene that had ever
been painted from the life of Christ or of any saint in which a man
preached to a bird, so that the artist was driven to paint from nature
instead of copying former pictures.
Let us now read what a painter who lived in the sixteenth century,
Vasari by name, wrote about the rise of painting in his native city.

Some learned people nowadays say