things as well as with the large, and, not least, with architecture,
which is just as much an expression of aesthetic thought and
feeling as are the works that have apparently a far less functional
purpose. This is particularly the case in the early mediaeval
world, where buildings and their decoration constituted a very
definite unity, and where the minor arts, ivory carvings, metal-
work, textiles, enamels and pottery, had a significance that has
now been forgotten in the West. But for the sake of convenience,
and to keep books within bounds, architecture usually tends to
be treated apart, and that practice has been followed here.
Indeed, a very admirable general survey of that art already
exists in Lethaby Mediaeval Art. In addition, the reader is also
referred for the early period to J. G. Davies, The Origin and
Development of Early Christian Church Architecture, for the
Byzantine world to J. A. Hamilton, Byzantine Architecture and
Decoration, and for the West to A. W. Clapham Romanesque
Architecture.

The period covered in this book is that from the very begin-
nings of Christianity till the time when a new outlook began to
replace the early mediaeval one. In the West, north of the Alps,
the change to this new way of thought began about the year
1100 and was completed by the change from the Romanesque
to the Gothic style. In Italy the Romanesque style was never
as important or as distinctive as it was in France, and it was
separated by a much less definite barrier from what went before.
The new age there thus hardly dawned as an independent one
till towards the end of the thirteenth century, when Giotto
began to develop what was eventually to become a new phase
in the story of art. In the Byzantine world changes were, on the
other hand, rather more rapid in early times, but later the pace
was slower, and the old ideas continued to hold sway very much
longer than in the West. In Greece and the Balkans, indeed, the
old style survived almost intact even after the Turkish conquests
of the fifteenth century, and good, though perhaps not great,
works were still done in the old manner as late as the seven-
teenth century. In Russia, too, the old style reigned until it was
displaced by the westernising reforms of Peter the Great in the
early eighteenth century. But the story of Russian art is an
independent one, and it has been dealt with here briefly and
with regard only to the earliest phases.

Most of the problems considered in this book have been

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