Note 47 — SOME CHURCHES OF LE PUY EN VELAY AND AUVERGNE

See M. Aymard’s Album Photographique d’Archéologie Religieuse, and a communication from the same gentleman in the Bulletin Archéol. vol. ii. p. 645. M. Aymard mentions one other example, a diptych, figured in Montfaucon (L’Antiquité Expliquée) vol. iii. p. 89, which dates from about A.D. 900. The hand at Le Puy is larger than life, and has a double nimbus round it, the inner yellow, the outer dark red; the hand is white and the ground within the nimbus dark blue. The Secretary of the Comité Historique des Arts et Monuments considers that this representation of the Greek mode of giving the benediction makes it certain that the work at Le Puy is Byzantine in its origin. But one may, I think, be allowed to doubt whether this conclusion is to be absolutely depended on.