368 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

leaves which destroys the effect of their organization. On the other hand, some of the Italian cornices, which are actually composed by running tendrils throwing off leaves into oval interstices, are so massive in their treatment, and so marked and firm in their vertical and arched lines, that they are nearly as suggestive of support as if they had been arranged on the rooted system. A cornice of this kind is used in St. Michele of Lucca (Plate VI. in the Seven Lamps, and 21 here), and with exquisite propriety; for that cornice is at once a crown to the story beneath it and a foundation to that which is above it, and therefore unites the strength and elasticity of the lines proper to the cornice with the submission and prostration of those proper to the foundation.

§ 17. This, then, is the first point needing general notice in the designs in Plate 16. The second is the difference between the freedom of the Northern and the sophistication of the classical cornices, in connection with what has been advanced in Appendix 8. The cornices, a, d, and b, are of the same date, but they show a singular difference in the workman’s temper: that at b is a simple copy of a classical mosaic; and many carved cornices occur, associated with it, which are, in like manner, mere copies of the Greek and Roman egg and arrow mouldings. But the cornices a and d are copies of nothing of the kind; the idea of them has indeed been taken from the Greek honeysuckle ornament, but the chiselling of them is in no wise either Greek, or Byzantine, in temper. The Byzantines were languid copyists; this work is as energetic as it is original; energetic, not in the quantity of work, but the spirit of it: an indolent man, forced into toil, may cover large spaces with evidence of his feeble action, or accumulate his dulness into rich aggregation of trouble, but it is gathered weariness still. The man who cut those two uppermost cornices had no time to spare; did as much cornice as he could in half an hour; but would not endure the slightest trace of error in a curve, or of bluntness in an edge. His work is absolutely unreprovable; keen, and true, as Nature’s own; his entire force

[Version 0.04: March 2008]