Perhaps the most wonderful carvings on the church of St. Zeno at Verona are over the arched entrance to the crypt.  These, being chiefly grotesque animal forms, are signed by Adaminus.  Among the humourous little conceits is a couple of strutting cocks carrying between them a dead fox slung on a rod.  Ruskin has characterized the carvings at Verona, especially those on the porch, as being among the best examples of the true function of flat decorative carving in stone.  He says:  “The primary condition is that the mass shall be beautifully rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order;... sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant bossiness or roundness of surface.  The pleasantness of that bossy condition to the eye is irrespective of imitation on one side, and of structure on the other.”  The more one considers this statement, the more he is convinced of its comprehensiveness.  If the lights and shadows fall pleasantly, how little one stops to inquire, “What is the subject?  Do I consider that horse well proportioned, or do I not?  Is that woman in good drawing?” Effectiveness is almost independent of detail, except as that detail affects the law of proportion.  There are varying degrees of relief:  from flat (where the ornament is hardly more than incised, and the background planed away) to a practically solid round figure cut almost entirely free of its ground.

In Venice, until the revival in the thirteenth century, the Greek Byzantine influence was marked.  There is no more complete storehouse of the art of the East adapted to mediaeval conditions than the Church of St. Mark’s.  If space permitted, nothing could be more delightful than to examine in detail these marvellous capitals and archivolts which Ruskin has so lovingly immortalized for English readers.  Of all decorative sculpture there is none more satisfying from the ornamental point of view than the Byzantine interlace and vine forms so usual in Venice.  The only place where these may be seen to even greater advantage is Ravenna.  The pierced marble screens and capitals, with their restful combinations of interlacing bands and delicate foliate forms, are nowhere surpassed.  The use of the acanthus leaf conventionalized in a strictly primitive fashion characterizes most of the Byzantine work in Italy.  With these are combined delightful stiff peacocks, and curious bunches of grapes, rosettes, and animal forms of quaint grotesqueness.  Such work exemplifies specially what has been said regarding the use of flat thin slabs for sculptural purposes in the South of Europe.  Nearly all these carvings are executed in fine marbles and alabasters.  The chief works of this period in the round are lions and gryphons supporting columns as at Ancona and Perugia, and many other Italian cities.

In Rome there were several sculptors of the name of Peter.  One of them, Peter Amabilis, worked about 1197; and another, Peter le Orfever, went to England and worked on the tomb of Edward the Confessor at Westminster.