But let us turn our eyes towards Italy. Venice had scarcely raised her lofty dome ere Pisa aspired to have one also. Many a Tuscan ship, launched upon the sea for conquests of a new kind, brought from Greece an infinity of monuments, statues, bas-reliefs, capitals, friezes, and various fragments; and the Tuscan people, the best organised race in Europe for fully appreciating all the beauty of form, were called upon to draw their inspiration from the relics of ancient works of Art. The enthusiasm became general. In 1016, Buschetto, regarded as the first architect of his time, undertook the building of the Cathedral of Pisa, where ancient fragments are still conspicuous amid the works of more modern creation: a kind of holographic testament the benefit of which the followers of the art of Phidias have thus handed down to posterity. The pupils of Buschetto, accepting the impulse of his masterly hand and reproducing his ideas, soon spread all over the peninsula, and the cathedrals of Amalfi, Pistoia, Siena, and Lucca arose, the Byzantine character of which differed from the Lombard style presented by the Cathedral of Milan. One might almost have fancied that the bosom of the earth brought forth statues which, as if by enchantment, peopled every pedestal; and that from heaven descended the ray which animated them with their sublime expression. The art of casting in bronze, hitherto almost unknown in Italy, became naturalised there as much as the art of carving in stone. While in the West the Arts were making such a spring, in the East they had relapsed into the lowest stage of debasement, at the period when Byzantium was simultaneously threatened by the Bulgarians and the Crusaders; although for a time they had appeared to revive, owing to the zeal of Basil the Macedonian, Constantine VIII., and some of their successors. Eastern sculpture disappeared when the Latins sacked the ancient capital of the first Christian emperor (1204). At the approach of the thirteenth century, which was destined to be the great age of Christian architecture and sculpture, artists no longer looked, as they had hitherto done, towards Byzantium, they depended on themselves; and although some hesitation might still be felt, they found all round them models they could imitate, traditions they could follow, and masters to whom they could listen. Christian art had now an independent existence, and the various schools asserted their styles in a way which became every day more clear, more powerful, and more original. “The style of the head of Christ at Amiens” (Fig. 281), says M. Viollet-le-Duc, writing on this subject, “fully deserves the attention of [Illustration: Fig. 281.--“The _Beau Dieu d’Amiens_;” a Statue of Christ in the Front of the Cathedral of Amiens. (Thirteenth Century.)]