This bas-relief brings us to the very few Spanish statues of this period, when all the skill of the artists seems to have been spent in buildings. There is the small ivory crucifix, formerly painted and encrusted with gems, in the Museum of Leon (Plate 2), and the crucifix of the Cid, now at Salamanca (Plate 3). Both are Byzantine in character. The little-known statue of the Virgin and Child, preserved in the sanctuary of Ujué, is a work of greater interest. The figure is ninety-one centimetres in height, and dates, M. Marcel Dieulafoy thinks, from the eleventh, or even the end of the tenth century. The colouring, and also the primitive character of the work, has been spoiled to some extent by added ornaments, and by the silver throne on which the figure now sits. But there is real strength in the face of the Virgin, and more individuality than is common in the Byzantine figures; again we have a hint of Spanish work. Figures in stone, dating back to the eleventh century, and earlier, may be found on the portals, fonts, and tombs of many Spanish churches, especially in the N.W. and in the district of the Pyrenees. Most of them are of barbaric workmanship, but many are interesting. A painted sculpture of the Saviour seated in the act of blessing, in the Byzantine manner, was discovered in 1895 at Santander. M. Marcel Dieulafoy, who mentions this work, places it in the tenth or the eleventh century. These few statues, then, are all that we have of Latin-Byzantine art in Spain. Rude as the figures undoubtedly are, falling far below the works of the native Iberian art which preceded them, it will not do to neglect them. Christian Spain was convulsed with ceaseless warfares, which gave little time for the development of the arts. Native talent slept. Christian monarchs employed Moorish sculptors, architects, decorators, and goldsmiths. So it happened that there was developed in Spain a sort of pseudo-Mozarabic style in which, for a time, the characteristic Spanish work seemed lost. CHAPTER III THE CHURCHES OF THE ROMANESQUE AND EARLY GOTHIC PERIODS At the close of the eleventh century a new and more vigorous life sprang up in the art of Spain. The fresh impulse came from France; it expended itself chiefly in building.