The painted or sculptured reproduction of persons and things ensured the reality of those persons and things for the benefit of the one on whose account they were executed.

Thus the Double saw himself depicted upon the walls in the act of eating and drinking, and he ate and drank.

This notion once accepted, the theologians and artists carried it out to the fullest extent.

Not content with offering mere pictured provisions, they added thereto the semblance of the domains which produced them, together with the counterfeit presentment of the herds, workmen, and slaves belonging to the same.

Was a supply of meat required to last for eternity?
It was enough, no doubt, to represent the several parts of an ox or a gazelle--the shoulder, the leg, the ribs, the breast, the heart, the liver, the head, properly prepared for the spit; but it was equally easy to retrace the whole history of the animal--its birth, its life in the pasture-lands, its slaughter, the cutting up of the carcass, and the presentation of the joints.