In the twelfth century the revival of manuscript art in Germany progressed with great rapidity, and an immense number of magnificently illuminated manuscripts were produced, especially in the chief Benedictine Monasteries, which had always been the principal homes of learning and the chief centres of the illuminator's art in Germany as in other European countries[163]. _Grotesque forms._ Frederic I. (Barbarossa), b. 1121-d. 1190, imitated the example of Charles the Great in his patronage of art and especially of the art of the illuminator. The manuscripts of his time are remarkable for the richness and fancy of their twining masses of conventional foliage, mingled with dragons, monkeys, human forms and monsters of all kinds, designed with extreme beauty in their strong sweeping curves and coloured with brilliant and yet harmonious tints in a superbly decorative way. Though the figure drawing of the illuminators had not reached the perfection which was attained a century later, yet in point of decorative ornament nothing could surpass the best German manuscripts of the twelfth century[164]. Figs. 32 and 33 give good examples of the illuminations of this date. [Illustration: Fig. 32. An initial S, illuminated with foliage of the Northumbrian type, from a German manuscript of the twelfth century.] [Illustration: Fig. 33. Miniature of the Annunciation from a German manuscript of the beginning of the thirteenth century.] [Illustration: Fig. 34. Page of a Kalendar from a German _Psalter_ of about 1200 A.D.] Fig. 32 shows a fine initial S formed out of a winged dragon, and ornamented with conventional foliage of the noblest type. This initial shows the surviving Celtic or rather Northumbrian influence, which in the time of Charles the Great had been so important in the German Empire. _Painting of the Annunciation._ Fig. 33 illustrates a miniature of the Annunciation from a fine manuscript _Evangeliarium_ or Book of the _Gospels_, which is now in the library at Carlsruhe. The drawing, though stiff in pose, is noble in style; and the whole miniature, with its graceful scroll-work background, is of high decorative value, a prototype of the perfect style of the French and Anglo-Norman illuminations of the second half of the thirteenth century. In this painting, as in many other manuscripts of early date, the B. V. Mary is represented as occupied in spinning with a distaff while the angel Gabriel approaches to announce the birth of the Messiah. _Page of a Kalendar._ Fig. 34 shows a very beautifully designed page of the Kalendar at the beginning of a _Psalter_ executed about the year 1200 for the Landgrave of Thüringen. On the left is the space in which the scribe inserted the days of the months, and on the right is a noble and gracefully drawn figure of Saint Matthew. The interlaced foliage of the initial K is of characteristic German type.