The object of much controversy is another fine Earthly Paradise carved on the back of an Areobindus diptych in the Louvre (No. 13). It is divided into registers by irregular lines of herbage; above are Adam and Eve and the Serpent, next come a series of weird mythological creatures, and then follow serried ranks of animals, fabulous and otherwise. Molinier declares it cannot be later than the sixth century, and connects it with the Bargello diptych, but there is a real difference in the feeling and technique of the animals, and a bizarre element, quite foreign to the matter-of-fact and straightforward methods of ancient art. In the opinion of de Linas and Graeven, the carving was added in the early periods of the Italian Renaissance, and the former points out a connection with the carvings on the façade of Orvieto Cathedral. [Illustration: ALINARI PHOTO.] [BARGELLO, FLORENCE 6. DIPTYCH WITH THE EARTHLY PARADISE AND SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL Italian, fifth century] The second leaf of the Bargello diptych is covered with three rows of exquisitely carved and well characterized figures. The top row may represent the meeting of Paul and Barnabas with Peter at Damascus. The next shows Paul at Malta, shaking the viper into the fire (Acts, xviii. 3), and remaining unhurt, to the surprise of Publius, governor of the island, who stands by dressed as a man of rank in a chlamys embroidered with a segment and fastened by a rich fibula. The soldier with the strange sleeved fur coat hung over his shoulders is probably one of the governor’s guard. At the bottom we see the healing of the father of Publius, who lay sick of a fever. The Lipsanoteca, or large ivory casket in the Museo Civico at Brescia, is a fine work of early Christian sculpture, and has far more connection with antiquity than with the early development of the art of the Middle Ages. But it is difficult to pass it by undescribed, as it gives the early types of so much that is met again in later art. Molinier classes it among the sixth century ivories of mixed style. But Westwood points out that the mingling of subjects from the Old and New Testament histories, and the small size given to some of them as border pieces, show the precise treatment of many early sarcophagi, also the classical nature of many of the details point to an early date, and he attributes it at latest to the fourth century, with which date Graeven entirely agrees.