 Christ also holds a book and makes the blessing gesture, no doubt under Byzantine influence.In both, Christ's head is surrounded by a crossed halo.In Early Medieval Western art the image was very often given a full page in illuminated Gospel Books, and in metalwork or ivory on their covers, and it remained very common as a large-scale fresco in the semi-dome of the apse in Romanesque churches, and carved in the tympanum of church portals.