Paintings of birds and hunting scenes embellish its pages. The
art is not specially high class, and though in courtesy it may be called
German, seeing that he was the German Emperor, and in some respects is
like the Imperial MSS. of the Saxon period, in point of fact it is
Italian or Sicilian.[46] This Sicilian school is peculiar, and exhibits
very slight traits of relationship with the rest of Italy. After the
Arab conquest of the island in 827, whilst new ideas were imported,
still the old Greek cities kept their ancient traditions and methods in
art, especially in those branches we term industrial, and just as both
Greek and Arabic tongues existed as vernaculars beside the Latin, so the
arts and industries bore the features of three artistic tastes.
[46] (Bibl. Vatican, Palatina, No. 1071). Notice in Kobell, _Kunstv.
Miniaturen_, p. 44.
The silk-weaving of the Greek craftsmen was embellished with the designs
of embroidery from Damascus, and these were mingled with patterns in
which the foliages of Carolingian and German origin are distinctly
traceable. Examples of the kind of manufacture here referred to may be
seen in the robes of the Emperor Henry II., still preserved in the
Cathedral Treasury at Bamberg. Also the coronation mantle of St.
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