Byzantine pictures have come down to us on the largest and on the smallest scale—in the great mosaics and wall paintings, and as well on small panels and in the illustrated books used in the ritual of the church. Both are important. The mural decorations are what the early Italian painter had constantly before his eye; the miniatured psalters, Gospels, lectionaries, chorals and prayer books, afforded the patterns from which he drew with little alteration the standard compositions of the Annunciation to Mary, the Nativity of Christ, His Adoration by the Shepherds and Kings, His Baptism, the Raising of Lazarus, the Last Supper, Crucifixion, Descent into Hell, Resurrection, and Ascension. But Byzantine design is most imposing in its monumental phase. The most careless traveller still feels awe before those solemn figures of Christ supreme ruler (_Pantokrator_) and his Mother queen of heaven which are seen throned against a background of azure or gold and attended by solemn figures of apostles and martyrs, Figure 2. The forms are flat,—silhouettes enriched by interior tracery, the arrangement in the space formal, symmetrical, highly decorative. The smaller narrative compositions,[2] Figure 1, are clearly conceived but have small emotional appeal. For this reason the Italians of the Golden Age spoke of the Byzantine style as rude. This is an error. Rude in the hands of half-trained local imitators, the style as formulated in the 9th century at Constantinople was highly sophisticated and decoratively of great refinement. It was based on an admirable system of color spotting and a fine understanding of silhouette. The contours were cast in easy conventional curves. These were enriched within by hatchings and splintery angles of gold which contrasted effectively with the fluent outlines. Everything was done by precept and copybook. In four centuries before the year 1300, the style showed little change, indeed is still alive in the mountains of Macedonia and, until the Revolution, in Russia. The Byzantine artist seldom looked at a fellow mortal with artistic intent. He looked at some earlier picture or considered his own color preferences. Conventional and anæmic as the narrative style was, it did all that was required of it. Nothing better serves the purpose of an authoritative Church than the awe-inspiring Christs of the Lombard and Sicilian and Roman apses, and so long as the Church felt no duty beyond that of plain statement of her claims, the unfelt narratives from the Scriptures served every religious need.