Another very interesting work is the font for immersion in S. Frediano at Lucca, sculptured by Maestro Roberto in the twelfth century. The figures which surround it are as usual full of meaning but grotesque in proportion; though one can see in the draperies a foreshadowing of that return to classicality which Niccolò Pisano afterwards advanced towards perfection. We have here a queer representation of Adam and Eve, both clad in classical garments and standing by a conventional fig tree, out of which looks the head of the Eternal Father in a cloud like a medallion. Eve is clutching the tail of a monstrous serpent. In the next compartment the four Evangelists carry their emblems on their shoulders. St. Mark, with his lion, sits in a curule chair, and looks like a Roman Prefect, mediævalized. St. John has his eagle standing on a Roman altar beside him, while St. Matthew carries the child on his shoulder like a St. Christopher. As the work of a forerunner of Niccolò Pisano in the same brotherhood, the font is intensely interesting. The cathedral at Beneventum (one of the Lombard dukedoms) has some beautiful Comacine arabesques on the pilasters of the great door. We give an illustration from one of them. The interlaced maze is formed by a conventional vine, in the branches of which are symbolical animals. Here is the Lamb of God, signed as divine and eternal by numberless circles all over it. The eagle, symbol of faith, is strangling sin in the form of a serpent; above, is a calf, emblem of the Christian, overcoming evil in the form of a bird of prey. In meaning, the intention is the same as the old sculptures on San Michele, executed six centuries previously; but speaking technically, sculpture as an art has advanced greatly. There is rich and clear relief, and intelligibility of design in this work. [Illustration: PILASTER OF THE DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF BENEVENTUM, 12TH CENTURY. _See page 246._] Symonds,[192] speaking of this stage of art, says--"The so-called Romanesque and Byzantine styles were but the dotage of second childhood (it was a childhood which grew and developed into virility, however), fumbling with the methods and materials of an irrevocable past. It is true indeed that unknown mediæval carvers had shown an instinct for the beautiful, as well as great fertility of grotesque invention. The façades of Lombard churches are covered with fanciful and sometimes forcibly dramatic groups of animals and men in contest; and contemporaneously with Niccolò Pisano, many Gothic sculptors of the north were adorning the façades and porches of cathedrals with statuary unrivalled in one style of loveliness. Yet the founder of a line of progressive artists had not arisen, and except in Italy the conditions were still wanting under which alone the plastic arts could attain independence." Here Symonds goes on to speak of Niccolò Pisano, as the fountain-head of sculpture.