The work is so far inferior to the _ciborium_ at Valpolicella, that it would seem to be, as Cattaneo remarks, by an earlier hand. The ornamentation is not a finished sculpture, but only rudely cut into the surface of the stone, like a first sketch. Possibly the remuneration offered by the employer was not liberal enough to encourage Orso to put any elaborate work into the altar, or he might have blocked out the work, and left it unfinished either by reason of death, or absence. Another famous work of that time was one which Luitprand himself caused to be sculptured by Magister Giovanni, of the Comacine Guild. It was the covering for the tomb of S. Cumianus in the monastery of Bobbio. It will be remembered that Agilulf and Theodolinda gave shelter to the Irish Saint Columbanus, and assisted him to found the convent of Bobbio. One of the monks there, another Irishman, named Cumianus, was afterwards canonized, and Luitprand built his tomb. We are told it was covered with precious marbles, which would seem to indicate something in the style which the Cosmati afterwards made so famous. The tomb of Theodata at Pavia is a fine specimen of Comacine-Longobardic sculpture. It is now to be seen in the cortile of the Palazzo Malaspina with some other old sarcophagi. This has been called a Byzantine work, but the extreme vitality and expression in the hippogriffs and the Solomon's knots which sign it, mark the work as Comacine; besides, we are told by the most early authors that the Longobards never employed Greek artists. There is the usual mixture of Christianity and Mediævalism in the sculptures on the top of the tomb. Winged griffins with serpent tails prance on each side of a vine, from which serpents' heads look out. Fishes are in the corner, and an interlaced border, whose spaces are filled with grapes and mystic circles, frames, as it were, the design. The side is entirely Christian; and if the peacocks which drink out of a vase with a cross in it, were less lively, it might almost pass for a Byzantine design; but the Comacine Magister has set his mark even here, in his knots with neither end nor beginning, his concentric circles, and roses of Sharon; and has told us in his mystic language that Theodata was a Christian, and though tempted, clung to the cross. Theodata, a noble Roman dame, was one of the ladies of honour to Ermelind, King Cunibert's Anglo-Saxon wife.[69] One day Ermelind incautiously described the exquisite beauty of this lady, whom she had seen in the bath, and greatly inflamed his imagination. He brutally ruined the lovely Theodata, and afterwards shut her up in a monastery, probably that of St. Agatha, which his father had built. This took place in A.D. 720. The beautiful tomb was but a poor atonement for the coarse cruelty which had spoiled her life.