"There are few Christian mosaics in which mystic meaning and poetic imagination are more felicitous than in those on the apse of S. Clemente, where the crucifix, and a wide-spreading vine-tree (allusive to His words, who said 'I am the True Vine'), spring from the same stem; twelve doves, emblems of the apostles, being on the cross with the Divine Sufferer; the Mother and St. John beside it, the usual hand stretched out in glory above, with a crown; the four doctors of the Church, also other small figures, men and birds, introduced amidst the mazy vine-foliage; and at the basement, the four mystic rivers, with stags and peacocks drinking at their streams. The figure of St. Dominic is a modern addition. It seems evident, from characteristics of style, that the other mosaics here, above the apsidal arch, and at the spandrils, are more ancient, perhaps by about a century; these latter representing the Saviour in benediction, the four Evangelic emblems, St. Peter and St. Clement, St. Paul and St. Laurence seated; the two apostles designated by their names, with the Greek 'hagios' in Latin letters. The later art-work was ordered (see the Latin inscription below) in 1299, by a cardinal titular of S. Clemente, nephew to Boniface VIII.; the same who also bestowed the beautiful gothic tabernacle for the holy oils, with a relief representing the donor presented by St. Dominic to the Virgin and Child--set against the wall near the tribune, an admirable, though but an accessorial, object of mediæval art."--_Hemans' Mediæval Art._