No finer examples of the art of the colourist in mosaic can be seen than in the procession of Virgins at San Apollinaire Nuovo in Ravenna. Cool, restrained, and satisfying, the composition has all the elements of chromatic perfection. In the golden background occasional dots of light and dark brown serve to deepen the tone into a slightly bronze colour. The effect is especially scintillating and rich, more like hammered gold than a flat sheet. The colours in the trees are dark and light green, while the Virgins, in brown robes, with white draperies over them, are relieved with little touches of gold. The whole tone being thus green and russet, with purplish lines about the halos, is an unusual colour-scheme, and can hardly carry such conviction in a description as when it is seen. In the East, the Church of Sta. Sophia at Constantinople exhibited the most magnificent specimens of this work; the building was constructed under Constantine, by the architects Anthemius and Isidore, and the entire interior, walls and dome included, was covered by mosaic pictures. Among important works of the seventh century is the apse of St. Agnese, in Rome. Honorius decorated the church, about 630, and it is one of the most effective mosaics in Rome. At St. John Lateran, also, Pope John IV. caused a splendid work to be carried out, which has been reported as being as "brilliant as the sacred waters." In the eighth century a magnificent achievement was accomplished in the monastery of Centula, in Picardie, but all traces of this have been lost, for the convent was burnt in 1131. The eighth was not an active century for the arts, for in 726 Leo's edict was sent forth, prohibiting all forms of image worship, and at a Council at Constantinople in 754 it was decided that all iconographic representation and all use of symbols (except in the Sacrament) were blasphemous. Idolatrous monuments were destroyed, and the iconoclasts continued their devastations until the death of Theophilus in 842. Fortunately this wave of zeal was checked before the destruction of the mosaics in Ravenna and Rome, but very few specimens survived in France.