We see the first efforts of portraiture in Christian art, in the representations--sculptured and painted--of saints in the early ages of the faith. Some examples of these will be found in the Byzantine and Mediæval Courts. A certain conventional form was adhered to in all these works, in which we remark especially a general elongation of the face and features, as if the aim had been to impress upon them the natural effects of emaciation from penance and fasting, the body and limbs being also subjected to the same treatment. The eyes are always almond-shaped, half closed, and sloping upwards from the nose. The portraits of Justinian, Theodora, Nicephorus, and Charles the Bald, on the façade of the Byzantine Court, bear evidence of their authenticity. In forming our idea of an individual portrait painted in the early Christian period, we must never forget to allow for the formalities by which an artist of that time was inexorably directed. Statues and pictures were then produced (as indeed they are to this day by the monks of Mount Athos,) in accordance with rule and system--a sort of holy heraldry. At the time of which we now speak, we trace no general and popular use of portraits, such as we observed amongst the ancients, although they were still to be found in the hands of the most wealthy and cultivated. These were of an expensive kind, in mosaic and in miniature painting, the latter style being frequently employed when a valuable manuscript or missal was copied for presentation, and a portrait of the author or donor was usually painted upon it. Mediæval portraiture shows a considerable advance upon the Byzantine, but is still inferior to the antique and to the portraiture of our own time. It was confined, almost exclusively, to monumental effigies, in which the artist was constrained to present the lifeless form, in the stiffness of very death--whether sleeping the sleep of eternal peace, or kneeling in the attitude of prayer. Some of the finest examples are to be seen in the Mediæval Court: of these more than one are doubtless portrait-statues of the time. The same may be said of some of the effigies of the Knights Templar, which exhibit great individuality, having been executed in a very hard kind of marble, that has well retained the features originally carved out of it. Busts of this period are exceedingly rare; inasmuch as portraiture of the kind was not in accordance with the religious feeling of the age. We must be content to take the effigies of mediæval art as portraits of the time; treated, of course, after certain conventionalities, but nevertheless truthful and most interesting.