The monastery of St. Andrew, which he founded on the Celian Hill, is now the church of San Gregorio. To stand on the summit of the majestic flight of steps which leads to the portal, and look across to the ruined palace of the Cæsars, makes the mind giddy with the rush of thoughts. _There_, before us, the Palatine Hill—pagan Rome in dust: _here_, the little cell, a few feet square, where slept in sackcloth the man who gave the last blow to the power of the Cæsars, and first set his foot as sovereign on the cradle and capital of their greatness. St. Gregory was in person tall and corpulent, and of a dark complexion, with black hair, and very little beard. He speaks in one of his epistles of his large size, contrasted with his weakness and painful infirmities. He presented to the monastery of St. Andrew his own portrait, and those of his father, and his mother St. Sylvia: they were still in existence 300 years after his death, and the portrait of Gregory probably furnished that particular type of physiognomy which we trace in all the best representations of him, in which he appears of a tall, large, and dignified person, with a broad full face, black hair and eyebrows, and little or no beard. As he was, next to St. Jerome, the most popular of the Four Doctors, single figures of him abound. They are variously treated: in general, he bears the tiara as pope, and the crosier with the double cross, in common with other papal saints; but his peculiar attribute is the dove, which in the old pictures is always close to his ear. He is often seated on a throne in the pontifical robes, wearing the tiara: one hand raised in benediction; in the other a book, which represents his homilies, and other famous works attributed to him: the dove either rests on his shoulder, or is hovering over his head. He is thus represented in the fine statue, designed, as it is said, by M. Angelo, and executed by Cordieri, in the chapel of St. Barbara, in San Gregorio, Rome; and in the picture over the altar-piece of his chapel, to the right of the high altar. In the Salviati Chapel, on the left, is the ‘St. Gregory in prayer,’ by Annibal Caracci. He is seen in front bareheaded, but arrayed in the pontifical habit, kneeling on a cushion, his hands outspread and uplifted; the dove descends from on high; the tiara is at his feet, and eight angels hover around:—a grand, finely-coloured, but, in sentiment, rather cold and mannered picture.[286]