--"Decretum Gratiani,"
other collections and MSS.--Statuts du Saint-Esprit--Method of
painting--Don Silvestro--The Rationale of Durandus--Nicolas of Bologna,
etc.--Triumphs of Petrarch--Books at San Marco, Florence--The Brera
Graduals at Milan--Other Italian collections--Examples of different
localities in the British Museum--Places where the best work was
done--Fine Neapolitan MSS. in the British Museum--The white-vine style
superseded by the classical renaissance.
Considering the position occupied by the Roman Empire as the civiliser
of Europe, it is not a little curious and somewhat surprising to find
that in the twelfth century, when German and French artists were doing
such good and even admirable work, that of Italy was almost barbaric. A
MS. in the Vatican (4922) is shown as a proof of this. It is not an
obscure sort of book that might have been written by a merely devout but
untrained monk for his own use, but a work of importance executed for no
less a personage than the celebrated Countess Matilda. The scribe was
Donizo, a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Canossa. It is of the early
or pr?-Carolingian type, rather inclined to Byzantine, but with the big
hands and aimless expression of all semi-barbaric work. Yet it has a
certain delicacy and carefulness.
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