2-750-464 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ornamental frieze from the Basilica of St. Clement, Rome, Italy, (1928). 'About 1100..."The frieze and plinth paintings belong to the most beautiful mediaeval pieces of decoration...the rosettes...are enclosed by elegantly curved tendrils and alternate with foliage ornament. The plinth is divided into lozenge-shaped compartments by means of bands inter-secting at right angles...The compartments contain cut twigs with red and yellow apples. In four of them there are also golden pheasants, and in the central one a vase filled with fruit. The intersecting bands are undulating with rosettes, bunches of pointed leaves and star-flowers." After J. Wilpert. Plate LIII, fig 118, from "An Encyclopaedia of Colour Decoration from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the XIXth Century" with explanatory text by Helmuth Bossert. [Ernst Wasmuth Ltd., Berlin, 1928]