"The restored tribune mosaics (A.D. 858--887, during the pontificate of Nicholas I.), close the list of Roman Byzantine works. By their time it had become apparent that such figures as the art of the day was alone able to achieve, could have no possible relation to each other, and therefore no longer constitute a composition; the artists accordingly separated the Madonna on the throne, and the four saints with uplifted hands, by graceful arcades. The ground is gold, the nimbuses blue. The faces consist only of feeble lines--the cheeks are only red blotches; the folds merely dark strokes; nevertheless a certain flow and fulness in the forms, and the character of a few accessories (for instance, the exchange of a crown upon the Virgin's head for the invariable Byzantine veil), seem to indicate that we have not so much to do here with the decline of Byzantine art, as with a northern and probably Frankish influence."--_Kugler._ The convent attached to this church was the abode of Tasso during his first visit to Rome. Behind Sta. Francesca Romana, and facing the Coliseum, are the remains generally known as the _Temple of Venus and Rome_, also called Templum Urbis (now sometimes called by objectors the "Portico of Livia"), which, if this name is the correct one, was originally planned by the Emperor Hadrian to rival the Forum of Trajan, erected by the architect Apollodorus. It was built upon a site previously occupied by the atrium of Nero's Golden House. Little remains standing except a cella facing the Coliseum, and another in the cloisters of the adjoining convent (these, perhaps, being restorations by Maxentius, _c._ 307, after a fire had destroyed most of the building of Hadrian), but the surrounding grassy height is positively littered with fragments of the grey granite columns which once formed the grand portico (400 by 200 feet) of the building. A large mass of Corinthian cornice remains near the cella facing the Coliseum. This was the last pagan temple which remained in use in Rome.[65] It was only closed by Theodosius in 391, and remained entire till 625, when Pope Honorius carried off the bronze tiles of its roof to St. Peter's. "Ac sacram resonare viam mugitibus, ante Delubrum Romæ; colitur nam sanguine et ipsa More deæ, nomenque loci, ceu numen, habetur. Atque Urbis, Venerisque pari se culmine tollunt Templa, simul geminis adolentur thura deabus." _Prudentius contr. Symm._ v. 214.