(_αα_) The first position which the art of painting is able to secure still betrays its origin from sculpture and architecture: in the _entire mode_ of its conception it is still in close association with these arts. And this will pre-eminently be the case where the artist restricts himself to individual figures, which he does not place before us in the vital connections of an essentially concrete situation, but in the simple independence of its self-repose. Out of the many sources of content which I have indicated as adapted to painting, we shall find religious subjects, Christ, his apostles, and the like are exceptionally suited to such abstract treatment. Such figures as these must necessarily be assumed to possess sufficient significance in their isolation, to be complete in themselves, and to unfold an object sufficiently substantive of adoration and love. Belonging to this type, particularly in early art, we meet with examples of Christ or his saints isolated without definite situation and environment. If we do find the latter it mainly consists in architectural embellishments, particularly Gothic; this is frequently the case in early Flemish or upper German art[311]. In this relation to architecture, among the columns and arches of which such figures as the twelve apostles and others are frequently composed, painting does not as yet attain to the life-like actuality of its later development, and we find that even the figures still retain in some measure a character which inclines to the statuesque, or to some extent do not move beyond such a general type as we find indicated in its fundamentals by Byzantine painting. For isolated figures of this character, devoid of any background or only retaining a purely architectonic outline, a more severe simplicity of colour, and a more emphatic brilliancy, is as it should be. The oldest school of painters have consequently employed a single-tinted ground of gold instead of a rich natural landscape, a ground which the colours of drapery have to confront, and to which they are compelled to adapt themselves; these are consequently more decisive and glaring than the colours employed in the periods of Art's finest bloom, just as we find as a rule that simple vivid colours such as red, blue, and the rest are most pleasing to uncultivated people. To this earliest type of conception it is that for the most part the miracle-working pictures belong. To such as to something stupendous man is merely placed in a relation of stupidity, from which the aspect of their artistic merit vanishes, so that they are not brought nearer to his conscious life in friendly guise in accordance with their vital humanity and beauty, and the very pictures which are most revered in a religious sense are from an artistic standpoint the most execrable.