1.  The four great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, in their usual place in the four pendentives of the dome. (v.  The Introduction.)

2.  Two large frescoes.  In the first, the Vision of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus,[1] and Heretics bitten by Serpents.  In the second, St. John Damascene and St. Ildefonso miraculously rewarded for defending the Majesty of the Virgin. (Sacred and Legendary Art.)

[Footnote 1:  St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Bishop of Pontus in the third century, was favoured by a vision of the Trinity, which enabled him to confute and utterly subdue the Sabellian heretics—­the Unitarians of his time.]

3.  A large fresco, representing the four Doctors of the Church who had especially written in honour of the Virgin:  viz.  Ireneus and Cyprian, Ignatius and Theophilus, grouped two and two.

4.  St. Luke, who painted the Virgin, and whose gospel contains the best account of her.

5.  As spiritual conquerors in the name of the Virgin, St. Dominic and St. Francis, each attended by two companions of his Order.

6.  As military conquerors in the name of the Virgin, the Emperor Heraclius, and Narses, the general against the Arians.

7.  A group of three female figures, representing the three famous saintly princesses who in marriage preserved their virginity, Pulcheria, Edeltruda (our famous queen Ethelreda), and Cunegunda. (For the legends of Cunegunda and Ethelreda, see Legends of the Monastic Orders.)

8.  A group of three learned Bishops, who had especially defended the immaculate purity of the Virgin, St. Cyril, St. Anselm, and St. Denis (?).

9.  The miserable ends of those who were opposed to the honour of the Virgin. 1.  The death of Julian the Apostate, very oddly represented; he lies on an altar, transfixed by an arrow, as a victim; St. Mercurius in the air. (For this legend see Sacred and Legendary Art.) 2.  The death of Leo IV., who destroyed the effigies of the Virgin. 3.  The death of Constantine IV., also a famous iconoclast.

The statues which are placed in niches are—­

1, 2.  St. Joseph, as the nominal husband, and St. John the Evangelist, as the nominal son of the Virgin; the latter, also, as prophet and poet, with reference to the passage in the Revelation, c. xii. 1.

3, 4.  Aaron, as priestly ancestor (because his wand blossomed), and David, as kingly ancestor of the Virgin.

5, 6.  St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who was present at the death of the Virgin, and St. Bernard, who composed the famous “Salve Regina” in her honour.

Such is this grand systematic scheme of decoration, which, to those who regard it cursorily, is merely a sumptuous confusion of colours and forms, or at best, “a fine example of the Guido school and Bernino.”  It is altogether a very complete and magnificent specimen of the prevalent style of art, and a very comprehensive and suggestive expression of the prevalent tendency of thought, in the Roman Catholic Church from the beginning of the seventeenth century.  In no description of this chapel have I ever seen the names and subjects accurately given:  the style of art belongs to the decadence, and the taste being worse than, questionable, the pervading doctrinal idea has been neglected, or never understood.