PAVEMENTS AND DECORATION. Meanwhile the media-val mosakists had been executing pave ments far more beautiful than any geometric floors of antiquity. The Byzantine school, as 11511a 1, took the lead, and the exquisite designs and coloring of the pavements of San Marco and the Toreello Cathedral at Venice are but repeti tions of the paN.crmults of the churches of Con Saloniki, Alount -Wm.:. Chios, and elsewhere. The Italian school, though centring at Rome. did similar work in Campania and Sicily. The small marble cubes were worked in patterns around large circular. square. long, or polygonal slabs of porphyry, serpentine, verde alnico, rosso antieo. or other rich marbles which formed the centre of each design.
It was not long before the geometric designs of the floors were transferred to the various de tails and objects in the church interiors, thus forming a perfectly harmonious whole. The altar fronts and canopies at Ferentino, the canopies at Santa Cecilia and San Paolo at Rome, the choir seats at CivitA. Casteliana and San Lorenzo at Rome, the pulpits at Alba Fu cense, San Lorenzo, Palermo, Salerno, and La velle, the choir screens at the two latter cathe drals and at Alha. the Paschal candlesticks at Anagni, Ferentino, Santa Cecilia, and Salerno, the episcopal thrones at. San Lorenzo and Fondi,
the sepulchral monuments at San Franeeseo in Viterbo, at the Cathedral of Perugia, at Orvieto, at Assisi. Rome (Santa Maria Alaggiorc. Sopra Minerva, Ara Cali, etc.), are a few among hun dreds which made the interiors of churches wonderfully rich in this part of Italy.
The gemnetrical mosaic patterns even invaded the field of architecture. The portals were sur rounded by it ; it formed the main decoration of the colonnaded porticoes, and even of the clois ters. The cloisters of San Paolo and of the Lateran at Rome would lose all their beauty if their columns and friezes were divested of the color and design given by these mosaics. Even Tuscan church architecture felt this influence to the extent of obtaining a faintly similar effeet by opus sectile with broader design—as at Pisa (baptistery) and San Miniato. near Florence.
None of the European countries besides Italy and I; recce used mosaics. .:\n occasional work is found in Oermany, France, or England: but. as at Westminster Abbey, it is the work of an Italian or a Only in Russia, as at Kiev and Novgorod, call we trace the eXistellee Of a regular branch of the art.