The central figure of Christ on the Vatican panel has a wide smooth face (without a beard), as in the sixth century sculptures. The Virgin’s face is much narrower and more of the Byzantine type, and the robes are treated with a wonderful complexity of folds. Both these panels are divided like the five-piece diptych (Fig. 10, with a single figure on each side), and have a similar pair of flying angels above, and long narrow scene beneath. Westwood has attributed them to Italy in the sixth to eighth centuries, but that is impossible, as the actual technique is far more delicate than anything that could have been accomplished even in the sixth century. Molinier thinks it probable that the Vatican panel is an original from the finest period of Byzantine Art, and the English panel is an imitation by an almost contemporary German craftsman. The extraordinary similarity of technique, even down to such small details as the folds of drapery on the thighs of the standing figures, seems to point that the two panels came from the same atelier, even if they were not made for the same book cover, the latter seeming to be disproved owing to the slight variation in size and shape of some of the panels. The book cover in the Bodleian Library at Oxford is a variant of the panel in the Vatican.
[Illustration: [BRITISH MUSEUM 26. CEREMONIAL COMB English, eleventh century]
Most of the small objects connected with ecclesiastical ceremonial are of this period, for instance the liturgic combs used by the bishop or officiating priest before celebrating high mass; the comb was a special feature in Anglo-Saxon ritual, and several have been found in Great Britain. The strange large comb in the British Museum is said to have been found in Wales, and is probably about the eleventh century (Fig. 26). It shows the later forms of the Anglo-Saxon scroll-work and has much in connection with Romanesque decoration. The comb of St. Gauzelin, Bishop of Toul is still preserved in the cathedral at Nancy, and the comb of St. Loup in the cathedral at Sens; both betray strong Byzantine and oriental influence, and both date from the tenth century. These combs all have the more general arrangement of a double row of teeth, in two sizes; but that attributed to St. Heribert (in Cologne Museum), has only one row, and is probably more ancient, as the grouping of the Crucifixion is like that on the Carlovingian plaques of the ninth century (Fig. 24). The _urcei_, or holy water stoups are usually of German origin. A magnificent example in Milan Cathedral bears the inscription of Gotfredus, Archbishop of Milan, 973-978. It is very handsome in design, being surrounded by an arcade, above which rise the towers of the new Jerusalem. Underneath are seated the Virgin and Child and the Four Evangelists, modelled in the rather heavy German style of the tenth century.