missal-drawing

Updated: May 1, 2025

The archaisms of old Greece are not better than such works; and as we can trace the onward course of those ancient masters of art from the rude outlines on the vases of Etruria, to the glorious works of Phidias and Praxiteles even so, if we wish to know the true course of the revival of modern art, must we trace it in the sculpture, wall-painting, and missal-drawing, of the middle ages, until we find it assume a more definite and better-regulated style in the fifteenth century; that period of the revival of classical tastes, and bright day-spring of art in Italy, from which we ourselves still drink inspiration as from the “well undefiled.”

F. W. (Frederick William) Fairholt - Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places: Being Papers on Art, in Relation to Archaeology, Painting,: Art-Decoration, and Art-Manufacture