It was usual in all such volumes to prefix to the text a series of
subjects from the Old and New Testaments and the Lives of the Saints.
Here we have them from the Life of the Virgin and from the Life of
David, by no means unworthy samples of the school. One represents the
Virgin and Child seated on a seat of the Germano-Byzantine type beneath
an arch and within a square frame-border. The border seems first to have
been flatly painted in two colours, pale blue and pale red ochre, and on
this a foliage scroll of recurring forms in a bold dull red outline
finely relieved with white. This is more or less repeated as the form of
border to the other illuminations. Outside the whole is a characteristic
slender frame of bright green in two tints. The arch overhead has two
bands of vermilion, with white edge-reliefs and a central band of blue,
again in two tints, with pairs of black cross-bars every half-inch or so
resting on the capitals of the two pillars which form the sides of the
scene. These pillars have each a green abacus at the top of each capital
and scarlet bead below. Each pillar is of dappled red, marble-like
porphyry, with plinths of scarlet and blue. Tiers of differently
coloured steps separated by bands of scarlet, green, etc.
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