our interiors, and you see at a glance the whole of the church.

In Sta. Anastasia the apses on each side of the choir have an even number of sides, as has also the sacristy, which is a room on a magnificent scale, to the north of the church. This is a peculiar feature, producing as it does an angle in the centre of the apse, which we shall see again at Venice and Vicenza, and which is seldom seen out of Italy.'1

The whole is so simple in design and construction that it depends for its rich effect on the painting which covers almost every part of it, and which harmonizes well with the architectural lines. The decorations appear to have been done, or at any rate commenced, within a short period of the completion of the church, and are therefore very valuable. The ground of the painting is white, many of the patterns of borders being very elaborate compositions of flowers and foliage. The main arches are painted to represent voussoirs of red brick and stone, but I am inclined to think that they are really entirely of brick; their soffeits, which are very broad and flat, are all painted with large scroll patterns of foliage. In the groining the diagonal ribs are painted at the intersection with stripes of colour alternating with white, and on each side of all the ribs a wide border of foliage is painted, whilst in the centre of each groining-cell some large device is painted in a medallion, some of these being merely ornamental, others having figures. The detail of much of the painting is cinquecento in its character, and not valuable as an example to be literally copied, but its general effect is certainly very beautiful, and it is worthy of all praise in respect of the strictness with which it is kept subservient to the architecture, and in some respects, indeed,

The church of the Capuchins, at Lugo, is a Spanish example of the same arrangement.

2 Admirable drawings of it have been published by Mr. Grüner.

even serves to atone for its deficiencies, as, e. g., in the broad painted horizontal borders, which take the place, very successfully, of brick or stone string-courses, which in the construction are entirely omitted.

It surprised me, I confess, very much, to find a church painted throughout without any use of gold, and yet with good result; so it is, however; the effect is most solemn and religious, and there is a very rich effect of colour; the fact is, that the white ground answers the same purpose in a degree, though of course not to the full extent, that gold would.

But if the walls are beautiful in their colour, not less so is the pavement, which, from one end of the church to the other, remains to this day to all appearance just as it was on the day that the church was finished. The nave and transepts are all in one pattern; the spaces between the columns in a variety of beautiful designs, and divided from the nave and aisle pavements by a strip of white marble on each side; and the aisles again are on the same scheme throughout. The colours of the marble used are white, red, and bluish grey, and the patterns very simple and generally geometrical in outline, and there is a quiet richness of effect in their arrangement which is exceedingly beautiful. Such a pavement must unhappily be for ever Italian, and we in England can scarce hope ever to attain to anything so exquisite; but we do not well to forget that by the mixture of a small quantity only of marble with our encaustic tiles we should attain to much greater beauty of effect than we can by the use of tiles alone, and there are many towns-as, e.g., Plymouth—the very pavement of whose streets is of a material which might most advantageously be introduced, more often than it has yet been, inside the walls of our sanctuaries, as well as under the feet of every passer along the streets.

There are some monuments and paintings here quite worth looking at. The Pellegrini Chapel, next to the choir, has two fine trefoil-headed monuments in red marble with the background painted with subjects of about the same age (circa 1392); and in the Cavalli Chapel there is an admirably painted wall, against which has been put a monument which, though somewhat rude and coarse in its sculpture, nevertheless produces a very fine effect of colour and architecture combined.1

The window tracery of Sta. Anastasia is rather singular plate tracery, consisting of mere piercings through the

stone with very little moulding; most of the windows are of two very lofty trefoiled lights with circles and trefoils

1 An extremely careful chromo-lithograph of this wall and monument has been issued by the Arundel Society, accompanied with a notice of both, written by Mr. Ruskin.