Another _urceus_ in the Hermitage Museum at St. Petersburg is of the same bucket shape, but ornamented with two tiers of arcades containing complicated scenes from the Passion. The Cathedral Treasury at Aix-la-Chapelle contains two of these _urcei_ one of an octagon shape, each panel having two figures. The style of carving is like that of the school of ivory carvers founded by Bernward at Hildesheim in the eleventh century.
[16] _L’Archittetura in Italia, VI.-XI. cent._ Venice, 1890.
[17] See Marcel Reymond, _La Sculpture Toscane_. Florence, 1897.
[19] Dr. Paul Weber, _Geistliche Schauspiel und Kirchliche Kunst_.
[20] See a plaque in the British Museum with the Nativity, and notably the Salutation.
[21] See article by Dr. W. Vöge in the _Jahrbuch der kgl. preuss. Kunst-samml._, 1899.
Romanesque Art grew up north of the Alps in the valley of the Lower Rhone and South France, and is especially the work of the French people. The Italians led the way in the first centuries A.D., and were followed by the Greeks of Byzantium, and then by the Carlovingian Germanic peoples in the great art development of Europe; but from the eleventh century France entirely fills the stage, and this pre-eminence was kept up till the early Renaissance, when Italy again takes a leading part.
The Romanesque style was transitional, and turned for re-inspiration to the Gallo-Roman monuments, but it is deeply influenced by that northern spirit which later on triumphed in the full perfection of the Gothic Art.
There was a great revival of monumental sculpture with the growth of the Romanesque spirit, and sculptured figures, from being introduced tentatively in the capitals and other parts connected with the structure, later, entirely filled the great _tympana_ or arches surmounting the doors of the churches, and from thence spread to every nook and cranny till in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they were numbered by thousands.
Carved ivories are not so numerous in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as in the years before, and when they became popular again, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the division between the sculptors in stone and the ivory workers had taken place, beautiful and clever imitations of the sculptures were turned out by the dozen, but it is exceedingly rare to find the work of a real artist.
