As a means of conveying thoughts, ideas, and information, not then, as now, acquired through literature, it continued to subserve a useful purpose even after the invention of printing. Hence the early masters, laboring for the edification of men in general, and not for the gratification of individuals-or, to adopt the language of the ancient fraternity of the painters of Siena, being teachers to ignorant men, who know not how to read, of the miracles performed by virtue and in virtue of the holy faith "-rarely painted easel pictures, but lavished all their genius and thought upon mural decoration or fresco painting. As late as the latter half of the 16th century Vasari declares it to be more masterly, noble, manly, secure, resolute, and durable than any other kind of painting;" and he records the opinion of Michel Angelo that fresco was fit for men, oil painting only for women, and the luxurious and idle. The abbey church of St. Francis in Assisi, near Perugia, witnessed the earliest development of fresco painting in modern times. About the middle of the 13th century Giunta of Pisa commenced a series of paintings on its walls, and during the next century and a half Cimabue, Giotto, Giottino, the Gaddi, Simone di Martino, and other painters of note were invited to add to its adornment.

Neglect and exposure have injured these works, but as the earliest specimens of modern Christian art they are of surpassing value and interest. Next in date, and of even greater importance, are the decorations of the Campo Santo in Pisa, a burial ground begun toward the close of the 13th century, the walls of which employed some of the chief masters of fresco in the 14th and 15th. The early paintings, erroneously attributed to Buffalmacco and Giotto, have nearly disappeared, and time, neglect, and damp have seriously impaired the effect of the others; and such is the character of the walls on which the plaster is laid that it is considered hopeless to attempt to restore them, or to arrest the progress of decay. A series painted by Orca-gna, or according to the most recent authorities by the Sienese brothers the Lorenzetti, about 1335, representing the last judgment, hell, and the triumph of death, are considered among the grandest specimens of early art. To these succeeded Simone di Martino, Taddeo Gaddi, Francesco da Volterra, Antonio Veneziano, Pietro d'Orvieto, and others, whose labors extended to the close of the century.

Pietro d'Orvieto's designs, representing subjects from Genesis, were probably the earliest works in buon fresco, the joinings of the plaster being so frequent, as compared with earlier wall paintings, that the amount of work in each portion must have been finished at once. The wars and internal dissensions which distracted Pisa interrupted the decoration of the Campo Santo for many years; but tranquillity having been restored, Benozzo Gozzoli was invited in 1468 to complete the work. The whole of the north wall, upward of 400 ft. long, was assigned to him, and in the next 16 years he covered this immense space with a series of frescoes representing the principal events in the Old Testament, described by Vasari as un' opera terribilissima. Besides the works enumerated as belonging to the 14th century, we may mention Giotto's celebrated series in the Arena chapel at Padua, representing scenes from the life of the. Virgin, and the same master's recently discovered portraits of Dante and other Florentine citizens in the chapel of the Bargello at Florence; the series by Taddeo Gaddi and Simone di Martino in the Spanish chapel in the church of Sta. Maria Novella, Florence, representing the Triumph of the Church;" Spinello's Overthrow of the Rebel Angels in the convent of S. Agnolo, at Arez-zo; and the series representing the "Fruits of Good Government and the Triumph of Peace," painted by Ambrosio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Publico of Siena. In the 15th century, to the .latter half of which belongs the so-called renaissance or new birth, when the study of the remains of ancient sculpture infused a new life into art, increased wealth and intelligence caused an increased demand for easel pictures, the value of which was greatly enhanced by the introduction of oil as a medium for mixing colors; but fresco painting still maintained its supremacy, and claimed for its function the religious and moral teaching of the people, by the representation of sacred history.

The noblest achievements in art are therefore still those of the fresco painters. The great names of the century are Pietro della Francesca, whose frescoes in the church of S. Francesco in Arez-so, Vasari says, might be called too beautiful and excellent for the time in which they were painted;" Masolino; Filippo Lippi, who painted the frescoes in the duomo at Prato; Fra Angelico da Fiesole; Masaccio, whose series of the life of St. Peter in the Brancacci chapel in the church of Sta. Maria del Carmine, in Florence, to which additions were afterward made by Filippino Lippi, formed an epoch in art; and Ghirlandaio, the master of Michel Angelo, whose frescoes representing the histories of John the Baptist and the Virgin afforded models for Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michel Angelo. Luca Signorelli, Andrea Mantegna, the great founder of the Mantuan school, Francesco Francia, who decorated the church of St. Cecilia in Bologna, Perugino, the master of Raphael, Fra Bartolommeo, and some others, belong partly to this century and partly to the next, which witnessedat once the culmination of the art of fresco painting, and its corruption and decline.

The three most illustrious painters of this latter era, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michel Angelo, embodied their loftiest conceptions on the walls and ceilings of churches and palaces, and their numerous disciples filled Italy with imitations, degenerating toward the close of the century into lifeless mannerisms. Leonardo's chief work is the well known "Last Supper," executed for the refectory of the convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie at Milan, of which only the mouldering remains are now visible. It has been called the most perfect work executed since the revival of painting. Of Michel Angelo's frescoes, the most famous are the series on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, representing the "Creation" and the "Fall of Man," with the noble figures of the prophets and sibyls; and the "Last Judgment," on the end wall of the chapel-the whole combining to a degree never since equalled grandeur of form and sublimity of expression. Raphael's frescoes exhibit perhaps, in the aggregate, the highest development of Christian art.