Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/311

XI. British Sculpture. Two heads of bronze statues — a Minerva and a Diana — found at Bath, are among the very few known examples of British sculpture in the round, in the Roman period. A cast of the head of Diana is in the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The few Roman altars and sepulchral tablets found in Britain, carved in native stone, are very- rough, and only of value for their great antiquity. Amongst the earliest sculptures of Great Britain must be mentioned the strangely carved stones which abound in the Isle of Man, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. They date from the first centuries of Christianity, and on some of them pagan and Christian symbols are combined. The most interesting specimens are in Strathmore ; on some of those of a comparatively late date, centaurs, lions, leopards, deer, and other animals, with processions of men and oxen, etc., are carved in a spirited style, and afford valuable information on the manners and costumes of the period of their erection. But few specimens of Anglo-Saxon sculpture have been preserved. The shrine of St. Amphibalus, lately found at St. Alban's Abbey, is among the most remarkable. It is finely conceived, and very beautifully carved. No sepulchral statue has been found in England older than the time of William the Conqueror ; two nearly destroyed effigies, in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey — one of Vitalis (died 1087), the other of Crispinus (died 1117) — and those of St. Oswald (of uncertain date) and Bishop Wolstan (about the end of the eleventh century),