The learned and most eloquent author of the "Poésie Chrétienne," M. Rio (from whom it was my privilege, while yet a youthful student, to receive many a valuable lesson), in noting this "total eclipse," remarks that "two rolls of parchment, one of which is preserved in the library of the Barbarini Palace, the other in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Pisa, are ornamented with miniatures which may serve to give us an idea of the state into which the arts of design had fallen in Italy in the 11th century. Those which were executed rather later, in the manuscript of a poem on the Countess Matilda (written by a certain 'Donizo,' in 1125), which is preserved in the Vatican, display no trace either of chiaroscuro or of correct imitation of form.
"The Romano-Christian school ceased from this time to exist, after having fulfilled the whole of its mission, which had been to form the connecting link between the primitive inspirations of Christian art and the new schools which were destined to reap the harvest of this rich inheritance, and turn it to good account.
"As for the Germano-Christian school, it may be compared to a vigorous shoot severed from a dying trunk, to revive and flourish in a better soil."
The "Menologion" of the Vatican, a magnificent volume, containing no less than 430 miniatures of remarkable interest and excellence, is the standing illustration of this assertion. The work was engraved and published at Urbino, in three folio volumes, in 1727, under the auspices of three pontiffs, Clement XI., Innocent XIII., and Benedict XIII.
It would be difficult to find in the production of the best Roman age anything nobler than several of the compositions in the Paris "Psalter," with commentaries (Imperial Library, Gr. No. 139), a Greek manuscript of the 10th century. One of the finest of the figures contained in it, that of "Night," I caused to be enlarged, and painted on the exterior of the Byzantine Court at Sydenham, as giving a more favourable impression of Greek art than any other pictorial representation I could meet with. A replica of this subject occurs in the Vatican "Prophecies of Isaiah." The two may be compared from the works of D'Agincourt and Seré. Most noteworthy also among the best of this class of Byzantine manuscripts, are the Paris "Commentaries of Gregory Nazianzen," the British Museum Psalter (Egerton, No. 1.139) of early 12th century work, and the Bodleian "Codex Ebnerianus."
Of this ornamental style the most remarkable specimens are the Vatican "Acts of the Apostles," and a beautiful volume in the library of the Duke of Hamilton. From the former, I have given some facsimiles in "The Geometrical Mosaics of the Middle Ages" (plate 20), in order to show the similarity of design between the gold ground mosaics of the Greeks and early Italians, and the embellishments of the illuminated manuscripts of the former.