DECORATION XXVII. CORNICE AND CAPITAL 385

angle of a four-sided abacus, whose hollow sides fall back behind the bell, and have generally a rosette or other ornament in their centres. The mediæval architects often put another square abacus above all, as represented by the shaded portion of Fig. 67, and some massy conditions of this form, elaborately ornamented, are very beautiful; but it is apt to become rigid and effeminate, as assuredly it is in the original Corinthian, which is thoroughly mean and meagre in its upper tendrils and abacus.

§ 44. The lowest capital in Plate 18 is from St. Mark’s, and singular in having double spurs; it is therefore to be compared with the doubly spurred base, also from St. Mark’s, in Plate 11. In other respects it is a good example of the union of breadth of mass with subtlety of curvature, which characterises nearly all the spurred capitals of the convex school. Its plan is given in Fig. 68: the inner shaded circle is the head of the shaft; the white cross, the bottom of the capital, which expands itself into the external shaded portions at the top. Each spur, thus formed, is cut like a ship’s bow, with the Doric profile; the surfaces so obtained are then charged with arborescent ornament.

§ 45. I shall not here farther exemplify the conditions of the treatment of the spur, because I am afraid of confusing the reader’s mind, and diminishing the distinctness of his conception of the differences between the two great orders, which it has been my principal object to develop throughout this chapter. If all my readers lived in London, I could at once fix this difference in their minds by

IX. 2 B

[Version 0.04: March 2008]