DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51584#0014
10
EAKLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
vided. Here then, obviously imitated from some
traditional description (probably the letter of Len-
tulus to the Boman Senate, supposed to be a fabri-
cation of the third century), we have the type, the
generic character since adhered to in the represen-
tations of the Redeemer. In the same manner
traditional heads of St. Peter and St. Paul, rudely
sketched, became in after-times the groundwork
of the highest dignity and beauty, still retaining
that peculiarity of form and character which time
and long custom had consecrated in the eyes of the
devout.
A controversy arose afterwards in the early
Christian Church which had a most important in-
fluence on art as subsequently developed. One
party, with St. Cyril at their head, maintained that
the form of the Saviour having been described by
the Prophet as without any outward comeliness, he
ought to be represented in painting as utterly hide-
ous and repulsive. Happily the most eloquent and
influential among the fathers of the church, St.
Jerome, St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, and St. Ber-
nard, took up the other side of the question; the
pope, Adrian I., threw his infallibility into the
scale ; and from the eighth century we find it irre-
vocably decided, and confirmed by a papal bull,
that the Redeemer should be represented with all
the attributes of divine beauty which art in its
then rude state could lend him.
EAKLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
vided. Here then, obviously imitated from some
traditional description (probably the letter of Len-
tulus to the Boman Senate, supposed to be a fabri-
cation of the third century), we have the type, the
generic character since adhered to in the represen-
tations of the Redeemer. In the same manner
traditional heads of St. Peter and St. Paul, rudely
sketched, became in after-times the groundwork
of the highest dignity and beauty, still retaining
that peculiarity of form and character which time
and long custom had consecrated in the eyes of the
devout.
A controversy arose afterwards in the early
Christian Church which had a most important in-
fluence on art as subsequently developed. One
party, with St. Cyril at their head, maintained that
the form of the Saviour having been described by
the Prophet as without any outward comeliness, he
ought to be represented in painting as utterly hide-
ous and repulsive. Happily the most eloquent and
influential among the fathers of the church, St.
Jerome, St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, and St. Ber-
nard, took up the other side of the question; the
pope, Adrian I., threw his infallibility into the
scale ; and from the eighth century we find it irre-
vocably decided, and confirmed by a papal bull,
that the Redeemer should be represented with all
the attributes of divine beauty which art in its
then rude state could lend him.