ishment of the
numerous churches which were built. For these mosaics panel paintings
began in time to be substituted; but it was long before any of the human
feeling of art was to be found in them. The influence of S. Francis of
Assisi was needed to prepare the way, and it was only towards the close
of the thirteenth century that the breath of life began to be infused
into these conventional representations, and painting became a living
art.

As it had begun in Italy, under the auspices of the Church, so it
chiefly developed in that country; at first in Florence and Siena, later
in Rome, whither its greatest masters were summoned by the Pope, and in
Venice, where, farther from the ecclesiastical influence, it flourished
more exuberantly, and so became more capable of being transplanted to
other countries. In Germany, however, and the Low Countries it had
appeared early enough to be considered almost as an independent growth,
though not till considerably later were the northern schools capable of
sustaining the reputation given them by the Van Eycks and Roger Van der
Weyden.

But for the effects of the Renaissance in Italy in the fifteenth century
it is questionable whether painting would ever have spread as it did in
the sixteenth and seventeenth to Spain and France. But by the close of
the fifteenth century such enormous progress had been made by the
Italian painters towards the realisation of human action and emotion in
pictures, that from being merely an accessory of religious
establishments, painting had become as much a part of the recognised
means of intellectual enjoyment of everyday life as music, sculpture, or
even the refinements of food and clothing.

Portraiture, in particular, had gradually advanced to a foremost place
in painting. Originally it was used exclusively for memorials of the
dead--as we have seen in the case of the paintings from the Greek
tombs--and on coins and medals. But gradually the practice arose, as
painters became more skilful in representing the appearance of the
model, of introducing the features and figures of actual personages into
religious pictures, in the character of "donors," and as these increased
in importance, the sacred personages were gradually relegated to the
background, and ultimately dispensed with altogether. At the beginning
of the sixteenth century we find Hans Holbein (as an example)
recommended by Erasmus to Sir Thomas More as a portrait painter who
wished to