The method
however had certain great disadvantages. Very often the
plaster came off the walls after only a few years, or dampness
spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will spoil the pattern
of our wall paper. People tried every imaginable expedient
to get away from this plaster background. They tried to mix
their colours with wine and vinegar and with honey and with
the sticky white of egg, but none of these methods were satisfactory.
For more than a thousand years these experiments
continued. In painting pictures upon the parchment leaves
of manuscripts the mediaeval artists were very successful. But
when it came to covering large spaces of wood or stone with
paint which would stick, they did not succeed very well.
At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the
problem was solved in the southern Netherlands by Jan and
Hubert van Eyck. The famous Flemish brothers mixed their
paint with specially prepared oils and this allowed them to use
wood and canvas or stone or anything else as a background for
their pictures.
But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle
Ages was a thing of the past. The rich burghers of the cities
were succeeding the bishops as patrons of the arts. And as
art invariably follows the full dinner-pail, the artists now began
to work for these worldly employers and painted pictures for
kings, for grand-dukes and for rich bankers.
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