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ART 489
they were found in 1827. The ornament includes acanthus
sprays and standing figures ofprophets and saints; the shape of
the bodies under the is
draperies outlined with curving folds;
they are the product of a developed Romanesque style, where
classical and Byzantine models have been fully understood
and their meaning absorbed into the artist's own range of ex/
pression (PL 93 *)
The second half ofthe century saw a great monastic revival
in England. Aesthetically its most satisfying surviving product
is the group of manuscripts ofthe so-called Winchester School,
a misleading title, for Canterbury and the monasteries of the
fenland certainly counted for much in the development of the
style. The name, however, is a not unfitting tribute to St.
^Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, the presiding figure, with
St. Dunstan, in these monastic reforms. Here again there were
close continental contacts, particularly with the abbey of
Fleury. In a Psalter (B.M. MS. Harley 2904), probably written
at Ramsey, the Crucifixion page is a famous masterpiece, and
the same artist or a colleague who had closely absorbed his style
illustrated a Fleury book, St *s Gregory Homilies on Ezekiel,
which is now MS. 175 in the BibHotheque Municipale of
Orleans. The Harley Crucifixion, a work ofthe last quarter of
the is century, a tinted outline drawing (PL 93 ), and it is for its
drawings, executed with light, broken, impressionistic strokes,
that the School today is particularly admired. To contempox
raries the magnificent fully painted pages ofthe Benedictional
of St. ^Ethelwold (now at Chatsworth) were probably more
prized. The Benedictional is indeed a memorable book. The
heavy bars ofthe frames, the fleshy acanthus leaves, the stolid,
somewhat flaccid figures, fall short ofthe monumental and are
a not always happy reflection of Carolingian models of the
*Ada* group, but the relation of the figure scenes to the wide
ornamental borders is altogether excellent, and the gay colours,
gold, pinkish red, blue, purple, green, picked out here and
there with opaque white, relieve the heaviness of some of the
figure drawing. In the scene of the Marys at the Tomb the
drapery ofthewomen flutters away to merge with theornaments