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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
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