Though in the main the eleventh century was a period of artistic decadence, mentioned above as having succeeded the brilliant Carolingian period (see page 78), yet we find that in certain places in Germany there was a very distinct beginning of artistic revival, especially in the illumination of manuscripts, about the middle of the eleventh century and even earlier. A school of magnificently decorative art began then to be developed, and though the drawing of the human figure was still weak, yet effects of the noblest decorative character were produced by manuscript illuminators, foreshadowing that marvellous climax of manuscript art which was reached in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. _Missal of Henry II._ Fig. 29 shows a sumptuously decorative page from an eleventh century manuscript _Missal_ which was executed for the Emperor Henry II. (now in the Munich library). On a brilliant diapered background in gold, red and blue, a standing figure of the Emperor is crowned by Christ, who sits within a _vesica_ aureole. The Emperor receives from two angels the great Cross Standard of the Empire and a sword. His arms are supported by a saint on each side, Saints Ulrich and Emmeram. The whole page is a superb piece of decoration, and is specially interesting because illuminations of this type were evidently used by the earliest painters of stained glass windows to supply them with designs. [Illustration: Fig. 29. A page from the _Missal_ of the Emperor Henry II.] Fig. 30 illustrates a stained glass figure of King David, one of five lancet-windows from the Cathedral of Augsburg, executed about 1065, when the Church was consecrated, and probably about the oldest existing example of a figure in stained glass. The manuscript-like type of the design is very evident. [Illustration: Fig. 30. Figure of King David from a stained glass window in the Cathedral of Augsburg, dating from 1065.] _Gospels of the XIth century._ Fig. 31 is from a magnificently decorated book of the _Gospels_, executed in the eleventh century for Uota, Abbess of the convent of Niedermünster, at Ratisbon, in the reign of the Emperor Henry II. The whole page is a superbly decorative composition; in the centre is a Crucifixion with figures of Life and Death at the foot of the cross. In the lower angles are minute paintings of the Rent Veil of the Temple, and the opened sepulchres; above, at the sides, are symbolical figures of the Church and the Synagogue, or Grace and Law. At the upper angles are the Sun and Moon veiling their faces before the Passion of Christ. Graceful scroll foliage, of the Oriental textile type, fills in the spandrels. [Illustration: Fig. 31. Miniature from an eleventh century manuscript of the _Gospels_, by a German illuminator.] _Revival of art._