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Not only on the Continent, but also in England, monumental sculpture began to be made again in the late 10th and 11th centuries; there too, it tended to derive its forms from illuminated manuscripts. The Romsey Cross, executed between 1000 and 1020, is the transcription in stone of models from a Winchester school manuscript. The environment was favourable for the new types, for, leavening the native barbarian and Irish tendencies, there was in the English monasteries a spirit of cultivated renascence, particularly evident in the art of miniatures. The Saxon sculptor here created work inspired by continental models in which Byzantine influence predominated over native characteristics, and the Romsey Christ has been likened to a 10th-century ivory.
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