e._ from
886 to 1453.
Allowing for a few flashes of expiring skill in various reigns, this may
be considered as a period of gradual but certain decline to a state
worse than death, for though the monks of Greek and Russian convents
still kept up the execution of MSS., it was only with the driest and
most lifeless adhesion to the Manual. This so-called art still exists,
but more like a magnetised corpse than a living thing.
Examples of the first period are seldom met with. We have one signal
specimen in the British Museum Add. MS. 5111, being two leaves only of a
Gospel-book, and containing part of the Eusebian canons, or
contents-tables of the Four Gospels, etc. The work is attributed to the
time of Justinian himself. It is of the kind already referred to as
probably affording the model of work to the early illuminators of France
and Ireland, and as being like the Gospel-book of Hormisdas and those
brought to England by Augustine in 596. Another example of the same
Eusebian canons is found in Roy. MS. 1 E. vi.
Of the fourth period--_i.e._ the ninth century--perhaps the most typical
example is the Menologium (a sort of compound of a calendar and lives of
the saints), now in the Vatican Library (MS. Gr. 1613). This MS. shows
that the revival under Basil the Macedonian was a return not to Roman,
but to ancient Greek art, the facial types being of the purest classical
character.
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