Literature
in
and Art.
67
worfhipper of the Virgin, and, as he was falling from the bridge into the
river, {he Repped forward to proteet him from his perfecutors, and taking
hold of him with her hand, faved him from death. One of the compart-
ments ofthe rather early wall-paintings in VVinchePcer Cathedral reprefents
the fcene according to this verfion of the fiory, and is copied in our cut
No. 38. The Bends here take more fantaiiic {hapes than we have
gw-R1
.3! 7 K X
ml" X9 ii" "M X
v' Y X '5 T"
of u_ {V Xx. rjsrx
55? "R if D
X K53: I E
(Aw:
N0. -I
33. Ylze Demons Dffafpm-med.
previoully feen given to them. They remind us already of the infinitely
varied grotefque forms which the painters of the age of the RenaiH'ance
crowded together in fuch fubjeets as " The Temptation of St. Anthony."
In faet these ftrange notions of the forms of the demons were not only
preferved through the whole period of the middle ages, but are {till
hardly extinet. They appear in almoit exaggerated forms in the illultrations
to books of a popular religious charaeter which appeared in the tirit ages
of printing. I may quote, as an example, one of the cuts of an early and
very rare block-book, entitled the Ars Morimdi, or "Art of Dying," or,
in a fecond title, De Tentationilms Morientium, on the temptations to
which dying men are expofed. The fcene, of which a part is given in
the
LL