a picture of 1430 on a gold
ground in the original frame, restored at the emperor's expense. In the
centre is the Madonna with the Child and little angels; on one side are
SS. Jerome, Simeon, and James; on the other, SS. Peter Martyr, Nicholas,
and Francis. A predella shows the twelve Apostles, with Christ in the
centre. Above, in the centre, is Christ half-length, flanked by smaller
nearly full-lengths of the Virgin and S. John; at each side three
half-lengths of saints--left, SS, Martin, Stephen, and John the Baptist;
right, a warrior, a bishop, and a man with green robe, and hat turned up
in four pieces. The frame is fine, a blue ground and gilded arabesques.
The church possesses four chalices of silver-gilt of the fourteenth or
early fifteenth century. Two of them have elaborate knops with crocketed
niches with figures, and one has the symbols of the Evangelists in high
relief on the foot, with leaf-scrolls and big stars, the plan being
octofoil. The finest has a sexfoil foot, and there are angular
projections in both between the foils, and a pierced perpendicular band
below. Upon the foot are six roundels, with Christ and saints in low
relief, as if for _basse-taille_ enamel. The third has a knop with
window tracery, pinnacles, and flying buttresses; on the foot, of a
later date, are graceful leaf-arabesques, rather like the work of
Aldegrever. The fourth is smaller and less elaborate. There are also
some fifteenth-century psalters and antiphonaries. One of the three
bells in the modern campanile is the oldest in Zara, dated 1328, and
signed "Magister Beloa Viccentius." The tradition runs that S. Francis,
going to or returning from the Holy Land in 1212, visited Dalmatia, and
founded this monastery among others.

The church of S. Domenico (anciently S. Michele) has a pointed Venetian
door, with a relief in the tympanum of S. Michael weighing souls, with
the Devil pulling the scale down, an armed angel at one side, and a
woman with a lighted taper at the other. On the lintel are a Virgin and
Child, and several saints in little panels also spreading beyond on to
the wall.

The Greek church, S. Elia, which the Servian orthodox Christians have
had since the French invasion, is nearly opposite the cathedral. One
year we were at Zara at the time when they were preparing to keep
Easter. In front of the iconostasis was an "Entombment," surrounded with
young grass amid which little lamps shone. The whole was covered with a