Margaret of Richmond, executed for Henry VII.'s Chapel by the Florentine Torrigiano, and the figures by Torell, is decidedly in favour of the latter. No work in Italy of the thirteenth century excels in beauty these effigies by the English sculptor. At an earlier period than this, during the life of Henry III., some English artists, as well as foreigners, were employed to embellish the cathedrals and palaces of the King. These native craftsmen, who seem to have been at once artists, masons, carvers, upholsterers, or sometimes tailors,[A] are mostly forgotten, but we can trace the names of MASTER EDWARD of Westminster, or Edward Fitz Odo--probably the son of Odo, goldsmith to Henry III.--MASTER WALTER, who received twenty marks "for pictures in our Great Chamber at Westminster," and MASTER JOHN of Gloucester, who was plasterer to the King. The names of the "imaginators" of Queen Eleanor's Crosses are also well known. The early pictorial art of England has been so neglected or forgotten, that it is commonly said to have commenced with the portrait painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [Illustration: FROM ST. ETHELWOLD'S BENEDICTIONAL. _By_ GODEMAN, A MONK OF HYDE ABBEY. A.D. 970. _An Illuminated MS. in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire_.] Ignorance, indifference, and bigotry have destroyed, or suffered to perish, the paintings which adorned the walls of almost every church, and the panels of nearly every rood-screen, hundreds of years before the date assigned to the English school. In Kempley Church, Gloucestershire, the walls appear to have been painted early in the twelfth century with large figure subjects. Those in the chancel are in a good state of preservation, and represent the vision in the Apocalypse, and Christ in majesty, attended by the twelve apostles and the saints, painted in life size. In Chaldon Church, Surrey, the chancel walls are ornamented with subjects illustrating the _Scala humanae Salvationis_, works apparently of the twelfth century, which, though necessarily rude, are as good as any Italian examples of the same period. In Westminster Abbey there is an important series of small paintings by an English artist contemporary with Cimabue. These pictures once formed the chief ornaments of a frontal, and belonged to the high altar.[B] The work in question consists of a rectangular piece of framed and richly panelled wood-work, about eleven feet long by three feet high. The general design consists of three central figures painted under canopies. On each side are four star-shaped panels filled with painted groups of figures; beyond these on each side is another single figure under a canopy. The wood is covered with fine stucco, or _gesso_, to the thickness of cardboard, as is always the case with old paintings on panels, and generally when on stone. The pictures still extant on the frontal comprise, in the centre, a figure of Christ in the act of benediction, holding an orb in His left hand.