All through the Carlovingian period there is a close connection between the illuminator and the ivory carver, the latter trying to treat his subjects more in the manner of a painter, enlarged the cycle of Christian representations and began to break with tradition and recover his liberty. The figures still, in many cases, retain the heavy and rather crushed forms of degenerate Roman art; and in the endeavour to impart deeper expression the proportions were often spoiled, delicate parts, as the features being delineated in undue size, and the research for originality often leading to violent and exaggerated attitudes, and to the overloading of detail, yet all the gestures are instinct with life, and full of a naïve directness of action. A small plaque in the museum at Zurich (Fig. 22) is a good illustration of the immense influence of the miniatures on ivory carving. The Book of Psalms was especially popular, and this plaque is a word for word translation of certain verses of the XXVIIth Psalm (XXVI. in the Vulgate) into plastic form. _v._ 2. “When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.” (The crowd of warriors, some of whom have fallen). _v._ 5. “For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle he shall hide me: he shall set me up upon a rock.” (David is seen being welcomed into the Tabernacle, which stands on a rock). Part of _v._ 6. “Therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy” (altar and lamb). _V._ 10. “When my father and mother forsake me then the Lord will take me up” (in the right corner a man and woman turn away from a child). The hand above is typical of the protection of God which is asked for throughout the psalm. The slight and thin-ankled figures, and the continuous method of narration are characteristic of the miniatures, which originally derived their technique from late Roman Art, and carried on the old system of an unbroken series of scenes which is to be found in the _bas-reliefs_ of Trajan’s Column. In the Utrecht Psalter (Anglo-Saxon) is an almost identical illustration of this psalm, which proves that this plaque was copied from it or some analogous manuscript, as the Bodley Psalter (No. 603) in the British Museum. These Psalters have furnished a model for another of these scenic psalms, carved on a plaque set in the magnificent binding of the _Psalter of Charles the Bald_, in the Bibliothèque nationale at Paris. The manuscript was written between the years 842-869, and there is no reason to think that the jewelled and ivory cover is not contemporary. One side gives a graphic picture of the LVIth Psalm, and the other represents Nathan telling David the story of the little ewe lamb (2 Sam. xii.). The Louvre possesses a plaque, also of the ninth century, representing the interview of Abner and Joab (2 Sam. ii.), a subject by no means of general interest, and unlikely to have a plastic type,