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x] BYZANTINE PAINTINQ 346 Crusaders captured the Capital in 1204. Up to the eve of that destruction Constantinople was incom- parably the most splendid city of Europe, a city mar- vellous, incredible, in art and splendor greater than all other cities, according to Villehardouin, who par- ticipated in its destruction.^ Before then its art had done its work of instruction in Italy and the West, carrying its suggestions of technique and skill, and offering as models its conventional and stately, its beautifying and somewhat lifeless compositions.* In Italy, as already noticed, in the seventh and eighth centuries, when Byzantine influences are weak- est, art touches its lowest level. Yet traces of Byzan- tine work or suggestion at no time entirely disappear. With the eighth century, especially in northern Italy, special barbaric (Lombard) elements enter, which do not represent mere barbarization of the existing styles, but the beginnings of new styles. For example, the Baptistry at Cividale in Friuli (cir. 750) is one of the first instances of animal carving which was to character- ize Romanesque sculpture ; and in the eleventh century the vaulted Lombard architecture takes its beginning under the influence of the Italo-Byzantine style.' Magna Grsecia of old had included Apulia, the 1 See Conquete de Constantinople, § 128; in one of the confla- gratioDB of the siege more houses were burnt than there were in the three largest cities in France; ib., $ 247. 3 " Dans I'histoire de la ci<11i8ation au moyen ftge avant le XI* ni^cle, Byzance a eu un role analogue & celui d'Atb^nes et de Rome dans I'antiquit^, k celui de Paris dans les temps modemes. Elle a rayonnd sur le monde entier; elle a 6i4 la Ville par excellence." Bayet, in Lavisse et Rambaud's Ilistoire GtniraUt Vol. I. p. r>82. « Cf. Cattaneo, V archilettura in Italia, Chaps. I, II, and III. Rivoira, Le origini della archUettura lombarda.