decoration. The vault, an octagonal dome in form, over the central area of the palace chapel at Aix-la-Chapelle was covered by a simple but splendid design of the sort which modern designers find it so hard to imitate. The first rapture of all these things can never be recovered. On a starry ground was set a great Figure of the throned Majesty, and beneath were the twenty-four elders forming a band around the base of the dome. The ancient church of St Germigny in France still has in its apse a mosaic of rather crude workmanship but similar in ability of design. Here two colossal cherubim with expanded wings guard the ark of the New Covenant, and above in the centre is the Right Hand of God. The floor of the chapel at Aix was also covered with coarse mosaic, and mosaic floors were common in the Romanesque churches of Germany, Lombardy and France. The mosaics of both walls and floors in Italy are too many and too well known to require mention. In France one or two floor mosaics still remain. The most perfect one is in the church of Lescar in the south. This was laid down in 1115. Two panels are preserved in the Cluny Museum of the beautiful mosaic floor of the abbey church of St Denis (c. 1150).
The internal walls and ceilings of Romanesque churches were (by custom) painted entirely with scriptural pictures and large single figures of saints, all set out according to traditional modes of arrangement and with schemes of teaching. In Germany several large churches retain, in a more or less restored condition, an almost complete series of such paintings. One of the most notable is the basilican church at Brunswick. But the most striking of all is, probably, the church at Hildesheim, where the flat boarded ceiling is entirely occupied by an enormous Jesse-tree, the ramifying branches of which spread over the whole nave. In Italy many painted churches of Romanesque date still exist, as, for instance, the church of San Pietro a Grado near Pisa. In France the church of St Savin has preserved its paintings most completely. Here, and in the many traces of paintings in a Byzantine tradition which are to be found on the walls and vaults of the cathedral of Le Puy, may be seen sufficient evidence to suggest what the idea of interior architectural painting was during the Romanesque epoch. A Romanesque church was intended to be as fully adorned with paintings as was a Byzantine church, and, indeed, the traditions of the two schools flowed very much in a common stream from one source. It was the same in England, as is shewn by fragments at Pickering, St Albans, Norwich, Ely, Romsey, Canterbury, and other places. We probably think of our "Norman" churches as rude and melancholy, but if we picture for ourselves all the colour suggested by the fragmentary evidences which exist and furnish again by imagination the vistas of the interior with their great coronae of lights, the gilded roods, and embossed altar-pieces, the astonishing nature of these vast and splendid works will fill our minds with somewhat saddening reflections. Archaeology is no minister to pride.
