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Chap. II. EARLY ART IN SOUTH ITALY. 63 paintings removed from S. Agnese of Rome and now in the Museum of S. Giovanni Laterano, the oldest of which are scenes from the lives of S. Catherine and S. Agatha. Here the proportions of the figures are similar to those in S. Urbano but perhaps a little more slender. The small round eyes, thin noses, mouths and necks are not more disagreable than the wiry red outlines, the yellow flesh tone, painted with full body colour over a prepara tion of verde, and the rouged cheeks. In continuation of these one may further notice in the same Museum eleven scenes of the life of S. Benedict of similar system and style. 1 Whilst painters thus continued to exist at Rome and handed down to each other mere traditions of form, art was recruited in the South of Italy from the workshops of the East; and Leo of Ostia relates that in 1070 De- siderius abbot of Montecassino sent for Greek mosaists to adorn the apsis above the high altar, and ordered the no vices of his order (he was a Benedictine) to learn the art of mosaic “which since the invasion of the Lombards had been lost in Italy”. 2 That Leo of Ostia was rash in the latter assertion needs no better proof than the narrative in the foregoing pages. 3 A question of more real interest is, whether the Byzantine Greeks imported by the abbot of Montecassino were better artists than their cotempora ries at Rome. It is a question, however, which must re main unanswered, because the mosaics of Montecassino have disappeared. Yet it may be sufficient to recollect, that in the ninth century the mosaics of S. Ambrogio of Milan were no better than those of the same period at Rome. In the absence of mosaics, it is gratifying to be able to point out a series of paintings of the same time executed for the Benedictines of S. Angelo in Formis at 'Other fragments of frescos in this Museum, for instance a head of a bishop and a figure of a saint (aged), are more modern and probably of the 14 lh century. 2 Leo of Ostia ap. Mura- tori Rer. Ital. Scriptores IV p. 442. 3 He may have meant that the art of mosaics had been lost in