The taste for ornamental patterns has early been introduced into the very representations of characters.
The Virgin of the Assumption goes up in a mandorla carried by angels.
The outline is made of small cubes of shading off colours, like a mosaic ; the stencilled background juxtaposes identical patterns but with three different colours, in a kind of a carpet.
Two stencils have been used to embellish the sumptuous textiles of saint Erige's dress, in the cope of Saint Gregory and on the front of the altar.
They represent two imaginary animals, a bird that is half peacock and half eagle, and a four-footed animal that is half lion and half greyhound.
According to the sense into which the stencils are turned, the animals are either confronted or placed back to back.
In the cul-de-four of that same apse of Auron, God wears a dress decorated exactly the same way.
