376 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

three examples, 10 to 12, the leaf has a different contour from that of 7, 8, or 9. This difference is peculiarly significant. I have always desired that the reader should theoretically consider the capital as a concentration of the cornice; but in practice it often happens that the cornice is, on the contrary, an unrolled capital; and one of the richest early forms of the Byzantine cornice (not given in Plate 15, because its separate character and importance require examination apart,) is nothing more than an unrolled continuation of the lower range of acanthus leaves on the Corinthian capital. From this cornice others appear to have been derived, like e in Plate 16, in which the acanthus outline has become confused with that of the honeysuckle, and the rosette of the centre of the Corinthian capital introduced between them; and thus their forms approach more and more to those derived from the cornice itself. Now if the leaf has the contour of 10, 11, or 12, Plate 15, the profile is either actually of a capital, or of a cornice derived from a capital; while, if the leaf have the contour of 7 or 8, the profile is either actually of a cornice or of a capital derived from a cornice. Where the Byzantines use the acanthus, the Lombards use the Persepolitan water-leaf; but the connection of the cornices and capitals is exactly the same.

§ 30. Thus far, however, we have considered the characters of profile which are common to the cornice and capital both. We have now to note what farther decorative features or peculiarities belong to the capital itself, or result from the theoretical gathering of the one into the other.

Look back to Fig. 22, p. 140. The five types there given represented the five different methods of concentration of the root of cornices, a, of Fig. 5. Now, as many profiles of cornices as were developed in Plate 15, from this cornice root, there represented by the dotted slope, so many may be applied to each of the five types in Fig. 22,-applied simply in a and b, but with farther modifications, necessitated by their truncations or spurs, in c, d, and e.

Then, these cornice profiles having been so applied in such

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