Painting Popularly Explained, by T J Gullick and J Timbs

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 79 lan'u ] mting. iEW persons who have not seen any of the great mosaic works in the ancient churches of Italy could imagine the sumptuous effect produced by immense walls covered with figures, often of colossal proportions, coloured in variegated hues of crystalline brilliancy, set in backgrounds of gold...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 79 lan'u ] mting. iEW persons who have not seen any of the great mosaic works in the ancient churches of Italy could imagine the sumptuous effect produced by immense walls covered with figures, often of colossal proportions, coloured in variegated hues of crystalline brilliancy, set in backgrounds of gold and purple and azure, and surrounded with many-coloured marbles. If the intention of Sir Christopher Wren had been carried out, and the inside of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral had been filled with rich and durable mosaic, like the cupola of St. Peter's at Rome, we should have had a higher idea of the capabilities of the art than can be formed from the inspection of snuff-boxes, or, at most, a few cabinet pieces. Mosaic, called opus musivum, musaicum, mosaicum (from muson, musiceon, polished, elegant, or well-wrought), and of which there are various kinds, is, in the widest sense of the word, any work which produces a design, with or without colour, on a surface by the joining together of hard bodies. Though, seemingly, too mechanical to rank as a style of painting, yet it is generally and justly considered entitled to the distinction. For, it must be remembered, whatever may be thought of the means, that the principle of painting is involved, and it is as necessary to prepare a cartoon for an original composition in mosaic as for a fresco, or the most elaborate picture?in fact, it is not merely as necessary, but also, in this instance, quite indispensable. At the present day in Italy the most celebrated pictures are copied with perfect accuracy. And even this copying must require a very considerable knowledge of art, and a correct appreciation of tlie different schools, to do justice to works thus invested as it were with immortality. There is a studio expres...