The first examples to come under consideration are the few surviving MSS. of early origin which, preserving as they do the classical tradition, form the connecting link between the art of the Roman empire and that of the middle ages. The most ancient of these, it is now agreed, is the fragmentary copy of the _Iliad_, on vellum, in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, which consists of cuttings of the coloured drawings with which the volume was adorned in illustration of the various scenes of the poem. The MS. may have been executed in Italy, and there is good reason to assign the fragments to the 3rd century. The character of the art is quite classical, bearing comparison with that of the wall-paintings of Pompeii and the catacombs. Equally classical in their style are the fifty illustrative pictures of the Vatican Virgil, known as the _Schedae Vaticanae_, of the 4th century; but in these we find an advance on the Homeric fragments in the direction of decoration, for gilt shading is here employed to heighten the lights, and the frames in which the pictures are set are ornamented with gilt lozenges. A second famous MS. of Virgil in the Vatican library is the _Codex Romanus_, a curious instance of rough and clumsy art, with its series of illustrations copied by an unskilful hand from earlier classical models. And a still later example of persistence of the classical tradition is seen in the long roll of the book of Joshua, also in the Vatican, perhaps of the 10th century, which is filled with a series of outline drawings of considerable merit, copied from an earlier MS. But all such MSS. exhibit little tendency to decoration, and if the book ornamentation of the early middle ages had been practised only in the western empire and not also at Constantinople, it is very doubtful if the brilliant illumination which was afterwards developed would have ever existed. [Illustration: PLATE I. THE LINDISFARNE GOSPELS.--ABOUT A.D. 700. (British Museum. Cotton MS., Nero D. iv. f. 211.)] Byzantine. When the centre of government passed eastward, Roman art came under Oriental influence with its sense of splendour, and developed the style known as Byzantine which, in its earlier stages, and until it became stereotyped in character, was broad in its drawing, on classical lines, and brilliant in its colouring, and which introduced a profuse application of gold in the details of ornament. Reacting on the art of the west, the influence of the Byzantine or Greek school is not only prominent in such early works as the mosaics of Ravenna, but it has also left its mark in the peculiar character of Italian pictorial art of the middle ages.