fluctuated with the advance or decline of taste. But whether traced upon the tablets of ivory diptychs, or blazoned in the pages of illuminated missals; whether depicted on perishable ceilings, or fixed in unfading mosaics; whether degraded by the unskilful daubing and spiritless mechanism of Byzantine artists,[*104] or refined by the holier feeling and improved handling of the Sienese and Umbrian schools,--the original types might still be traced. Indeed, those traditionary forms were as little subjected to modification by painters as the dogmas of faith were open to the doubts of commentators. Heterodoxy on either point was liable to severe denunciation, and pictorial novelties were interdicted by the Church, not as absolutely wrong, but as liable to abuse from the eccentricities of human fancy.[105] It was in Spain, the land of suspicion and priestcraft, that such jealousy was chiefly entertained, and the censorship of the fine arts there became in the sixteenth century a special duty of the Holy Office. [Footnote *102: I have not deleted these pages partly because it has been thought better to give the whole text as nearly as possible as Dennistoun wrote it, and partly too because they serve to show that Dennistoun was in advance of the general taste of his day in England. But, of course, the whole of our knowledge about Italian art has been revolutionized since he wrote. It is almost hopeless to try to annotate these pages. To begin with, the author is dealing with a subject of which even to-day we know very little. And then Urbino seems to have had almost nothing to do with the rise of the Umbrian school of painting. The reader must therefore accept with care every statement which follows.] [Footnote *103: This is true in a sense, but the work in the catacombs and the mosaics (III. cent.) in S. Maria Maggiore, for instance, are based on classic models, and are often very excellent and beautiful.] [Footnote *104: The Byzantine work was not always "unskilful," only its intention seems to have been rather decorative than realistic, yet in _S. Maria Antigua_, for instance, we can see the models were classical.]