Kugler’s description of these Byzantine heads is so good that I cannot refrain from giving it. He says:

“The large ill-shaped eyes stare straight forward; a deep unhappy line, in which ill-humor seems to have taken up its permanent abode, extends from brow to brow beneath the bald and heavily-wrinkled forehead. The nose has the broad ridge of the antique still left above, but is narrow and pinched below, the anxious nostrils corresponding with the deep lines on each side of them.{49}

“The mouth is small, but the somewhat protruding lower lip is in character with the melancholy of the whole picture. As long as such representations are confined to gray-headed saints and ecclesiastics they may be tolerated, but when the introduction of a kind of smirk is intended to convey the idea of a youthful countenance this type becomes intolerable. Even the Madonna, to whose countenance the meagreness of asceticism was hardly applicable, here assumes a thoroughly peevish expression, and was certainly never represented under so unattractive an aspect.”

I have given you this quotation from Kugler, in order to show you the opinion of a learned and liberal-minded writer, who certainly cannot be called a severe critic.

He goes on to compare Byzantine with Chinese art, which is, I think, rather hard upon the poor Celestials.

Both styles of figure-painting are equally conventional, and equally untrue to nature, but Chinese figures are far more cheerful and decorative than the unhappy Byzantine.

A room decorated by a Chinese artist would be a pleasant place to live in; but who except a long-distance walker, a forty days’ faster, or one of our modern votaries of self-inflicted martyrdom, would