342 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

importance of the broad difference between the raised and flat profile will be felt on glancing at the examples 1 to 6 in Plate 12. The three upper examples are the Romanesque types, which occur as parallels with the Byzantine types, 1 to 3 of Plate 11. Their plans would be nearly the same; but instead of resembling flat leaves, they are literally spurs, or claws, as high as they are broad; and the third, from St. Michele of Pavia, appears to be intended to have its resemblance to a claw enforced by the transverse fillet. 1 is from St. Ambrogio, Milan; 2 from Vienne, France. The 4th type, Plate 12, almost like the extremity of a man’s foot, is a Byzantine form (perhaps worn on the edges), from the nave of St. Mark’s; and the two next show the unity of the two principles, forming the perfect Italian Gothic types,-5, from the tomb of Can Signorio della Scala, Verona; 6, from San Stefano, Venice (the base 11 of Plate 11 in perspective). The two other bases, 10 and 12 of Plate 11 are conditions of the same kind, showing the varieties of rise and fall in exquisite modulation; the 10th, a type more frequent at Verona and Venice, in which the spur profile overlaps the roll, instead of rising out of it, and seems to hold it down, as if it were a ring held by sockets. This is a character found both in early and late work: a kind of band, or fillet, appears to hold and even compress, the centre of the roll in the base of one of the crypt shafts of St. Peter’s, Oxford,¹ which has also spurs at its angles; and long bands flow over the base of the angle shaft of the Ducal Palace of Venice, next the Porta della Carta.

§ 17. When the main contours of the base are once determined, its decoration is as easy as it is infinite. I have merely given, in Plate 12, three examples to which I shall need to refer, hereafter. No. 9 is a very early and curious one; the decoration of the base 6 in Plate 11, representing a leaf turned over and flattened down; or, rather, the idea of the turned leaf, worked as well as could be managed on

¹ [St. Peter in the East, in New College Lane; the Norman crypt is of about the time of Stephen (A.D. 1150).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]