V. BYZANTINE PALACES 165

with some idea of imitating those “nets of chequer-work and wreaths of chain-work” on the chapiters of Solomon’s temple, which are, I suppose, the first instances on record of an ornamentation of this kind thus applied. The braided work encloses on each of the four sides of the capital a flower whose form, derived from that of the lily, though as usual modified, in every instance of its occurrence, in some minor particulars, is generally seen as represented in fig. 11, Plate 8. It is never without the two square or oblong objects at the extremity of the tendrils issuing from its root, set like vessels to catch the dew from the points of its leaves; but I do not understand their meaning. The abacus of the capital has already been given at a, Plate 16, Vol. I.; but no amount of illustration or eulogium would be enough to make the reader understand the perfect beauty of the thing itself, as the sun steals from interstice to interstice of its marble veil, and touches with the white lustre of its rays at midday the pointed leaves of its thirsty lilies.

In all the capitals hitherto spoken of, the form of the head of the bell has been square, and its varieties of outline have been obtained in the transition from the square of the abacus to the circular outline of the shafts. A far more complex series of forms results from the division of the bell by recesses into separate lobes or leaves, like those of a rose or tulip, which are each in their turn covered with flowerwork or hollowed into reticulation. The example (fig. 10, Plate 7) from St. Mark’s will give some idea of the simplest of these conditions: perhaps the most exquisite in Venice, on the whole, is the central capital of the upper arcade of the Fondaco de’ Turchi.

Such are the principal generic conditions of the Byzantine capital; but the reader must always remember that the examples given are single instances, and those not the most beautiful but the most intelligible, chosen out of thousands: the designs of the capitals of St. Mark’s alone would form a volume.

§ 25. Of the archivolts which these capitals generally

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