WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 315 



question, certainly had the effect of creating forms of 

 infinite beauty and pictures of unspeakable reality." 1 



When we recollect that Mrs. Jameson achieved so much 

 before the foundations of Christian archaeology had been 

 fully laid ; before de Rossi 's monumental publications had 

 supplied the means of interpreting early Christian sculp- 

 ture; before critics and archaeologists were at one regard- 

 ing the significance of early Christian and Middle Age 

 symbolism, or agreed on the principles that were to guide 

 to a correct understanding of the pictures of Roman and 

 Gothic art, and while students were yet in ignorance as 

 to the real influence of Byzantine art on that of western 

 Europe, we cannot but wonder at the courage and the 

 energy of this gifted woman in undertaking and in bring- 

 ing to a happy issue a work which, even to-day, with all 

 our increased facilities and greater array of facts, would 

 be considered a herculean task. 



As we read her admirable volumes on Sacred and Legen- 

 dary Art we can, as did a close friend of hers, see the en- 

 raptured author "kindle into enthusiasm amidst the gor- 

 geous natural beauty, the antique memorials and the sacred 

 Christian relics of Italy/' and we are prepared to believe, 

 with the same friend, that there was not ' ' a cypress on the 

 Roman hills, or a sunny vine overhanging the southern 

 gardens, or a picture in those vast somber galleries of for- 

 eign palaces, or a catacomb spread out, vast and dark, 

 under the martyr churches of the City of the Seven Hills, 

 which was not associated with some vivid flashes of her 

 intellect and imagination." And we can also understand 

 how "the strange, mystic symbolism of the early mosaics 

 was a familiar language to her," and why she should ex- 

 perience special delight when she found herself "on the 

 polished marble of the Lateran floor or under the gor- 

 geously somber tribune of the Basilica of Santa Maria 



i Frauenarbeit in der Archceologie in Deutsche Rundschau, March, 

 1890, page 396. 



