[103] Various attempts have been made to show that Torell was an Italian, and that the painted retable at Westminster was the work of a foreign artist, but there is not the slightest foundation for either of these theories. [104] As examples of this I may mention the famous "Lateran Cope" in Rome, the "Piccolomini Cope" at Pienza, and two others of similar date and style in the Museums of Florence and Bologna. On many occasions we find that the Popes of this period, on sending the Pall to a newly elected English Archbishop, suggested that they would like in return embroidered vestments of English work, _opus Anglicanum_. It should be observed that in almost all published works on the subject the above mentioned copes are wrongly described as being of Italian workmanship. [105] Both before and after this period manuscripts of the _Vulgate_ were comparatively rare, but between 1250 and about 1330 many thousands of manuscript Bibles must have been produced, all closely similar in style, design, choice of subject and character of writing. There is no other large class of manuscripts in which such remarkable uniformity of style is to be seen. [106] As an example of the wonderful thinness of this uterine vellum, I may mention a Bible of about 1260 in my own possession which consists of 646 leaves, and yet measures barely an inch and a half in thickness. In spite of its extreme thinness this vellum is sufficiently opaque to prevent the writing on one side from showing through to the other. [107] For example a Bible of this class in the Cambridge University library, dating from about 1280, has from thirteen to seventeen lines to an inch! [108] This method of painting the shadows in pure colour, and using the same pigment mixed with white for the rest, was employed on a large scale by many of the Sienese painters in the fourteenth century, and by the Florentine Fra Angelico in the fifteenth. Fra Angelico's earliest works were manuscript illuminations, executed about the year 1407 in the Dominican Convent at Fiesole. [109] The Bodleian library (_Douce_, 366) possesses a specially beautiful manuscript _Psalter_, which belonged to Robert of Ormsby, a monk of Norwich Abbey. [110] In all periods the Benedictines were the chief monastic scribes and miniaturists; the Mother House at Monte Cassino was one of the chief centres in Italy for the production of manuscripts, and wherever the Benedictines settled they brought with them the art of manuscript illumination; see page 211. [111] This is specially noticeable in the development of the architectural styles; not only general forms, but details of mouldings and the like seem to spring up all over England almost simultaneously. [112] See below, fig. 25, page 133.