The Colegiata de San Isidoro at Leon (Plate 10), an early Romanesque edifice, resembles in many respects Santiago de Compostella. The actual date of the building is difficult to establish. It was founded by Ferdinand I. of Castile in 1065 as a royal mausoleum; and the building is said to contain the tombs of eleven kings and twelve queens. It was altered and rebuilt by Maestro Pedro Vitambeu, and was not consecrated until 1149, while even then much of its decoration was probably incomplete. Some subjects of sculpture and ornamentation are very analogous to St. Sernin, Toulouse. The main façade is decorated with quaint old reliefs in stone; above the right portal are the Descent from the Cross (Plate 11) and the Deposition in the Tomb, with St. Paul on the right hand and St. Peter on the left. Then in the tympanum of the left portal is a very interesting Sacrifice of Abraham, placed under a zodiacal frieze. But perhaps the most interesting parts of the building are the chapel and cloisters of the eastern aisle, where the groined vaults are covered with fresco paintings of admirable effect and preservation. The paintings show strongly the influence of France, curiously interpreted by the native art. C. Gasquoine Hartley writes, in “A Record of Spanish Painting”: “In colour and certain peculiarities of outline they are strongly French, but they are executed with a rugged and original force which is entirely Spanish.... The Bible narratives are executed with a direct and almost brutal baldness that at once marks the frescoes as the work of a Spaniard.” We are, however, chiefly interested with their colourisation, which is very important where so much of the colourisation of statuary has disappeared. As M. Marcel Dieulafoy points out, these frescoes give the range of tones usual to this epoch in France and in Spain. We find red-brown, indigo, yellow-ochre, and white; the black seems to have been obtained by a mixture of three of these colours. It is interesting to note that these are the colours, and of about the same shade, that we find used by the Persian artists in their decorations.