Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/96

78 Greece, executed in the eighteenth century; but, as M. Didron observes, Christian Greece of our times is a country of the middle ages, and a monument of art there executed in the eighteenth century answers to one of the thirteenth century in western Europe. Here the aureole is circular, and supported at the four cardinal points by four cherubim. The field of this aureole is divided by symbolical squares, with concave sides, which intersect.

The Divinity has here his feet on one rainbow while he is seated on another. In fig. 9. we have the Virgin, with a plain nimbus, seated in an oval aureole, intersected by another lesser aureole of the same form, which encloses her feet. It is taken from an illuminated manuscript of the tenth century, in the Bibl. Royale at Paris.

(Fig. 9) The Virgin in an Aureole.

We have said so much on the nimbus and the aureole, that we must pass much more rapidly over the remaining, and much larger portion, of the important volume before us. In the first section, M. Didron treats of the different manners of representing the first Person of the Trinity, God the Father. The Father is properly represented as the Creator; yet in some monuments, and especially among the Greeks, the Son usurps the place of