In the chapel of San Zeno (Rome), the Virgin is enthroned; the Child is seated on her knee.  He holds a scroll, on which are the words Ego sum lux mundi, “I am the light of the world;” the right hand is raised in benediction.  Above is the monogram [Greek:  M-R ThU], MARIA MATER DEI.  In the mosaics, from the eighth to the eleventh century, we find Art at a very low ebb.  The background is flat gold, not a blue heaves with its golden stars, as in the early mosaics of the fifth and sixth centuries.  The figures are ill-proportioned; the faces consist of lines without any attempt at form or expression.  The draperies, however, have a certain amplitude; “and the character of a few accessories, for example, the crown on the Virgin’s heads instead of the invariable Byzantine veil, betrays,” says Kugler, “a northern and probably a Frankish influence.”  The attendant saints, generally St. Peter and St. Paul, stand, stiff and upright on each side.

But with all their faults, these grand, formal, significant groups—­or rather not groups, for there was as yet no attempt either at grouping or variety of action, for that would have been considered irreverent—­but these rows of figures, were the models of the early Italian painters and mosaic-workers in their large architectural mosaics and altar-pieces set up in the churches during the revival of Art, from the period of Cimabue and Andrea Tafi down to the latter half of the thirteenth century:  all partook of this lifeless, motionless character, and were, at the same time, touched with the same solemn religious feeling.  And long afterwards, when the arrangement became less formal and conventional, their influence may still be traced in those noble enthroned Madonnas, which represent the Virgin as queen of heaven and of angels, either alone, or with attendant saints, and martyrs, and venerable confessors waiting round her state.

The general disposition of the two figures varies but little in the earliest examples which exist for us in painting, and which are, in fact, very much alike.  The Madonna seated on a throne, wearing a red tunic and a blue mantle, part of which is drawn as a veil over her head, holds the infant Christ, clothed in a red or blue tunic.  She looks straight out of the picture with her head a little declined to one side.  Christ has the right hand raised in benediction, and the other extended.  Such were the simple, majestic, and decorous effigies, the legitimate successors of the old architectural mosaics, and usually placed over the high altar of a church or chapel.  The earliest examples which have been preserved are for that reason celebrated in the history of Art.

The first is the enthroned Virgin of Guido da Siena, who preceded Cimabue by twenty or thirty years.  In this picture, the Byzantine conception and style of execution are adhered to, yet with a softened sentiment, a touch of more natural, life-like feeling, particularly in the head of the Child.  The expression in the face of the Virgin struck me as very gentle and attractive; but it has been, I am afraid, retouched, so that we cannot be quite sure that we have the original features.  Fortunately Guido has placed a date on his work, MCCXXI., and also inscribed on it a distich, which shows that he felt, with some consciousness and self-complacency, his superiority to his Byzantine models;—­