It must be admitted, however, that the excellence limits itself to the ornament. The human figure is wretchedly incorrect--even barbarous. It may be asked why is this? How is it that while the decorative portion of an illuminated book is beautiful in the highest degree, both in line and colour, and yet occasionally the artist seems not to have the remotest idea of the true shape of hands and feet or any part of the human body? Of course the usual explanation offered is that monastic education did not permit the study of the nude, and hence the monkish ignorance of figure drawing. But that is scarcely an excuse for the monstrous hands and feet and exaggerated facial expression of the miniatures. The Italian monk Angelico, in spite of his monastic limitations, succeeded in a most graceful rendering of the figure, and a charming delicacy in the forms of the hands. As in some instances the artist does reach a fair standard, it must be admitted that where he does not is owing to actual inability in himself and not in his system. The three emperors who give the name of Othonian to the period immediately succeeding the Carolingian ruled Germany, and had much to do with the ruling of Italy, from 936, when Otho I., called the Great, succeeded Henry the Fowler about five years before the death of Athelstan, whose sister Eadgyth[20] was Otho's first wife. His mother Mathilda was the patroness of the cloister-schools for women, working in them personally. She herself taught her servants and maids the art of reading. Her daughter Mathilda, the famous Abbess of Quedlinburg, in 969 persuaded the Abbat Wittikind of Corvey to write the History of the Saxon Kings, Henry her father, and Otho her brother (now in the Royal Library at Dresden). Hazecha, the Treasury-mistress of Quedlinburg, also employed the monks of Corvey, with whose beautiful initial drawing she was greatly pleased, to illuminate her own Life of St. Christopher. The beautiful but imperious Princess Hedwig, another of Otho's sisters, read Virgil with Ekkehard of St. Gall, and taught the child Burchard Greek, while Otho's niece Gerberga, Abbess of Gandersheim, was the instructress of the celebrated Hrosvita, "the oldest German poetess." And this reminds us that at this time the women-cloisters of Germany and the Netherlands were among the most active centres of learning and book-production. The great monument of feminine erudition and artistic skill, called the "Hortus Deliciarum," was of a somewhat later time, but other examples still exist, among them the beautiful Niedermünster Gospels of the Abbess Uota, now at Munich. A wood-cut by Albert Dürer prefixed to the first edition of Hrosvita's works (Nürnberg, 1501) represents the nun Hrosvita kneeling before the Emperor and beside the Archbishop Wilhelm of Mainz presenting her book.[21] As to the literary labours of Hrosvita, this is not the place to discuss them. She is simply an incidental figure in our view of the brilliant Court of the Othos.