ng suitable to
appear in some special place. The most striking difference between
mediaeval and later sculpture is that the latter is designed as
a thing apart, an object to be stood anywhere to be admired for
its intrinsic merit, instead of being a functional component
in a general scheme for beautifying a given building.

The use of the interlace in all primitive arts is very interesting.
It undoubtedly began in an unconscious imitation of local architecture.
For instance, in the British Isles, the building in earliest times
was with wattles: practically walls of basket work. William of
Malmsbury says that Glastonbury was "a mean structure of wattle
work," while of the Monastery of Iona, it is related that in 563,
Columba "sent forth his monks to gather twigs to build his hospice."
British baskets were famous even so far away as Rome. So the first
idea of ornament was to copy the interlacing forms. The same idea
was worked out synchronously in metal work, and in illuminated
books. Carving in stone, wood, and ivory, show the same influence.

Debased Roman sculptural forms were used in Italy during the fourth
and fifth centuries. Then Justinian introduced the Byzantine which
was grafted upon the Roman, producing a characteristic and fascinating
though barbaric combination. This was the Romanesque, or
Romano-Byzantine, in the North of Italy generally being recognized
as the Lombard style. The sculptures of this period, from the fifth
to the thirteenth century, are blunt and heavy, but full of quaint
expression due to the elemental and immature conditions of the
art. Many of the old Byzantine carvings are to be seen in Italy.

The Lombards, when invading Northern Italy,
brought with them a mighty smith, Paul the Deacon, who had much
skill with the hammer. When these rude Norsemen found themselves
among the aesthetic treasures of Byzantium, and saw the fair Italian
marbles, and the stately work of Theodoric and Justinian, they were
inflamed with zeal for artistic expression, and began to hew and
carve rough but spirited forms out of the Pisan and Carrara stones.
The animals which they sculptured were, as Ruskin has said, "all alive:
hungry and fierce, wild, with a life-like spring." The Byzantine
work was quiescent: the designs formal, decent, and monumental. But
the Lombards threw into their work their own restless energy, and
some of their cruelty and relentlessness. Queen Theodolinda, in
her palace at Monza, encoura