Other old objects--boxes, triptyches, statuettes, incensories, book-covers, crucifixes, and processional crosses--partly or wholly covered with enamel, belong or recently belonged to the Marquises of Castrillo and Casa-Torres, the Count of Valencia de Don Juan, and Señor Escanciano. All, or nearly all, of these are thought to have proceeded from Limoges (Pl. v.). _Champlevé_ enamel is also on the tiny "Crucifix of the Cid" (Pl. vi.) at Salamanca, as well as on the Virgin's throne in the gilt bronze statuette of the Virgin de la Vega at San Esteban in the same city.[21] Of this image, although it properly belongs to another heading of my book, I think it well to give a reproduction here (Plate vii.). I will also mention, in spite of its presumably foreign origin, the enamelled altar-front of San Miguel de Excelsis in Navarre--a small sanctuary constructed by a mediæval cavalier who, by an accident occasioned by the dark, murdered his father and mother in lieu of his wife.[22] This altar-front, conspicuously Byzantine in its style, measures four feet three inches high by seven feet five inches long, and is now employed as the _retablo_ of the little church which stands in solitary picturesqueness on the lofty mountain-top of Aralar. The figures, coloured in relief upon a yellowish enamel ground, are those of saints, and of a monarch and his queen--possibly King Sancho the Great, who is believed to have been the donor of the ornament. If this surmise be accurate, the front would date from the eleventh century. [21] Together with the statuette of Ujué in Navarre, the Virgen de la Vega of Salamanca may be classed as one of the earliest "local Virgins" of this country. Sometimes these images are of wood alone, sometimes of wood beneath a silver covering, sometimes, as that of the Claustro de León, of stone. But whatever may be the substance, the characteristics are the same:--Byzantine rigidness and disproportion, the crude and primitive anatomy of artists only just emerging from the dark. The Virgin and Child of Santa María la Real of Hirache in Navarra may be instanced as another of the series. This image dates from late in the twelfth or early in the thirteenth century, although a crown and nimbus have been added subsequently. It measures rather more than a yard in height, and consists of wood covered with silver plates, except the hands and face, which are painted. The Virgin, seated, holds the Infant with her left arm; in her right hand is an apple. A kind of stole bearing the following inscription in Gothic letter falls upon the Infant's breast; "_Puer natus est nobis, venite adoremus. Ego sum alpha et omega, primus et novissimus Dominus._" Before this statuette the King Don Sancho is stated to have offered his devotion. [22] I quote this legend in Appendix A.