cornice, angels were depicted as if appearing at open or half closed windows, made by a rude sort of perspective to imitate recesses and openings. In a lower course, episodes from the lives of S. Peter and S. Paul were depicted, amongst which the martyrdom of both are fairly visible. Lower again, a series of painted arches were filled with portraits of popes, some of which are now modern. The whole of the architecture, real or feigned, was coloured in raw and startling tones. The figures were heavy and square in proportions, and large of forehead and head, the features being indicated by profile lines of angular or oblique direction. The eyes were large and round, the mouths small and expressed by three lines like half of a hexagon, the beards by three or four strokes of a brush. The outlines generally were red. Yet in all this rudeness the painters still preserved the cha racteristic traits of S. Peter and S. Paul. The technical execution was that well known method which consisted in covering the space within the outlines in verde, over which the yellow lights were laid with a red patch to mark the cheeks. If Giunta be not the author of these paintings, there can be no doubt that the artists were of the school from which he comes. Here indeed is no more trace of the Greek manner, respecting which so much has been said by the historians of Italian and chiefly of Pisan art, than is to be found in all the works of this period. Nay, in one sense the rude paintings of S. Pietro in Grado are so far different in design from such Greek works as the mosaics of Monreale and of the chapel of S. Silvestro 1 at Rome, that the figures have not an affrighted glance, but an air of comparative repose. But it is probable that even the moderns share with Vasari a certain dislike for works which are surely not to be higly prized, except by those who may contemplate in them an useful source, from which to derive a correct idea of the state of Italian art in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Besides 1 S.S, Quattro Coronati.
