The background of the third tympanum, _Fire_, is a mountainous and volcanic region, its peaks touched with lurid light from constant eruptions. The festoons are composed of sunflowers, and the seated figures in the centre carry each a flaming torch. The columns to the right and left bear flaming globes, while the flanking standards support the fiery nest of the phœnix--the bird which was fabled by the ancients to live, sole of its species, five hundred years, at the end of which time it repaired to the desert and built a funeral pyre, in the flames of which it was consumed. From its ashes as a nest a new phœnix arose, as here depicted. In the border of the decoration are salamanders, which, according to the old superstition, lived in the midst of fire. In the last tympanum, _Water_, the central figure, clad in green, holds festoons of seaweed and water-lilies--flowers, buds and pads. On either side is a mermaid, one of them with a seashell. The background is the open sea. The standards are in the form of rostral columns (such as the Romans erected in honor of their victorious admirals) ornamented with garlands of laurel and the beaks and sterns of captured ships. On top is set a galley, with oars and sails. Over each of the standards to the side hovers a sea gull. The geniuses at the end of the picture have tails like mermaids, and in the border are dolphins. The disc of the ceiling repeats in another form the general idea of the decorations of the tympanums. In the centre is the sun, across which the sun-god, Apollo, drives his four-horse chariot. The sun, however, is still the sun, and not a yellow background; the dusky picture outlined against it is to be taken as a vision, so to say, of its attributes. Around the sun as a centre, is painted a chain of alternate medallions and cartouches--four of each, or eight in all--which typify the Four Elements represented in the tympanums below. A medallion and a cartouche are devoted to each. The former sort are painted so as to suggest a cameo design. The first of them, which occurs, like the other three, on the side nearest the tympanum of the corresponding subject, typifies _Earth_, a female figure reclined amidst a summer landscape. In her hand is a scythe, and behind her is a plow, standing in the midst of a wheat field. _Water_ is a mermaid riding off a rocky shore on the back of a dolphin. In her hand she holds an oar. _Fire_ is a woman watching the smoke which floats away from the flame of a little brazier at her side. Behind her is a tripod on which incense is burning. In the distance is Mt. Vesuvius, sending out a steady cloud of smoke, and in the plain beneath are the ruins of Pompeii. _Air_ is a female figure clad in flowing drapery, and floating among the clouds on the outstretched wings of an eagle.