Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/43

Rh compartments of the walls which are lightly shaded in the engraving, are in the original painted yellow. Polychromy is observable in all the architectural subjects throughout the manuscript; the arches, and even the mouldings, and different parts of the columns, are painted of various hues. The colours most frequent are yellow and blue. It may perhaps be doubted how far we may depend on the strict truth of the colours employed by the early artists, for in some instances they seem to be extremely fanciful. I have met with pictures in which men's hair was painted of a bright blue; but it is not impossible that at some period it may have been the custom to stain the hair of that colour. However, be the colours true or not, these drawings appear to establish the fact, that the Anglo-Saxon buildings were painted in this variegated manner.

The figure given above contains other characteristics of importance, which frequently recur in the manuscript, especially the baluster columns. Among other instances of similar pillars, one of the most remarkable is that given in the margin (fig. 3), which occurs at folio 74, r°. Here again (as in all the cuts I have taken from this manuscript) the part shaded in the engraving is coloured in the original. These are precisely the kind of columns which are still found in some remains of buildings supposed to be of the Saxon era. They occur in the oldest parts of the church of St. Alban's, where we find also the same triangular-headed arches which occur so frequently in our manuscript. A series of the baluster columns at St. Alban's are engraved from drawings by Carter, in the plates published by the Society of Antiquaries (Muniment. Antiq., vol. i. pt. 15.), from which the example given in the present page, fig. 4, is copied. These columns are characterised by the same double and treble band mouldings, in the different parts of the column, as appear in our cut, fig. 2. I see no reason for disbelieving that the baluster columns and triangular-work are parts of a church of St. Alban's built early in the eleventh century