DECORATION XX. MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT 273

and then compare the sculpture of the coiling eddies of the Tigris and its reedy branches in those slabs of Nineveh,¹ with the crested curls of the Greek sea on the coins of Camerina or Tarentum. But both agree in the undulatory lines, either of the currents or the surface, and in the introduction of fish as explanatory of the meaning of those lines (so also the Egyptians in their frescoes, with most elaborate realisation of the fish).² There is a very curious instance on a Greek mirror in the British Museum, representing Orion on the sea;³ and multitudes of examples with dolphins on the Greek vases: the type is preserved without alteration in mediæval painting and sculpture. The sea in that Greek mirror (at least 400 B.C.), in the mosaics of Torcello and St. Mark’s, on the font of St. Frediano at Lucca, on the gate of the fortress of St. Michael’s Mount in Normandy, on the Bayeux tapestry, and on the capitals of the Ducal Palace at Venice (under Arion on his dolphin)⁴ is represented in a manner absolutely identical. Giotto, in the frescoes of Avignon,⁵ has, with his usual strong feeling for naturalism, given the best example I remember, in painting, of the unity of the conventional system with direct imitation, and that both in sea and river; giving in pure blue colour the coiling whirlpool of the stream, and the curled crest of the breaker. But in all early sculptural examples, both imitation and decorative effect are subordinate to easily

¹ [In the British Museum; cf. above, p. 260 n. A charming instance of the representation of the sea may be seen on the coin of Camarina by Evaenetus, II. c. 18, in the Museum display of electrotypes. Ruskin took another of the coins of Camarina as the text for a discourse on the characteristics of Greek art (“The Hercules of Camarina,” in Queen of the Air, §§ 161-177). For a specimen of similar representations on coins of Tarentum, see III. c. 10 in the Museum electrotypes; for Ruskin’s account of it, see The Cestus of Aglaia, § 18.]

² [Several examples may be seen in the Egyptian Gallery at the British Museum.]

³ [No. 545 in the Collection of Bronzes; in the Etruscan Saloon: see E. T. Cook’s Popular Handbook to the ... British Museum, p. 482. The mirror is of Etruscan workmanship.]

⁴ [Capital No. 8 in the description in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 77.]

⁵ [The story of Giotto’s visit to Avignon told by Vasari (Bohn’s ed. 1855, i. 106) is incorrect. He was invited there by Pope Benedict XI., but the death of the pontiff prevented the visit. (See Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s History of Painting in Italy, 1864, ii. 272.) The frescoes at Avignon are by Simone Martini, who settled there 1338-39 (see ibid. ii. 90-6). Some are on the portico of the cathedral, now much defaced; others in the Hall of Consistory and in two chapels in the Palace of the Popes; the latter are those here referred to; compare Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 85.]

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