210 THE STONES OF VENICE

lines which divide the dome. He therefore at once gives up the irregular twisting of the boughs hither and thither, but he will not give up their fibres. Other trees have irregular and fantastic branches, but the knitted cordage of fibres is the olive’s own. Again, were he to draw the leaves of their natural size, they would be so small that their forms would be invisible in the darkness; and were he to draw them so large as that their shape might be seen, they would look like laurel instead of olive. So he arranges them in small clusters of five each, nearly of the shape which the Byzantines give to the petals of the lily, but elongated so as to give the idea of leafage upon a spray; and these clusters,-his object always, be it remembered, being decoration not less than representation,-he arranges symmetrically on each side of his branches, laying the whole on a dark ground most truly suggestive of the heavy rounded mass of the tree, which, in its turn, is relieved against the gold of the cupola. Lastly, comes the question respecting the fruit. The whole power and honour of the olive is in its fruit; and, unless that be represented, nothing is represented. But if the berries were coloured black or green, they would be totally invisible; if of any other colour, utterly unnatural, and violence would be done to the whole conception. There is but one conceivable means of showing them, namely, to represent them as golden. For the idea of golden fruit of various kinds was already familiar to the mind, as in the apples of the Hesperides,¹ without any violence to the distinctive conception of the fruit itself.* So the mosaicist introduced small round golden berries into the dark ground between each leaf, and his work was done.

* Thus the grapes pressed by Excesse are partly golden (Spenser, book ii. cant. 12):

“Which did themselves amongst the leaves enfold,

As lurking from the vew of covetous guest,

That the weake boughes, with so rich load opprest,

Did bow adowne as overburdened.”

¹[For Ruskin’s interpretation of the myth of the garden of the Hesperides and its golden apples, see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. x.].

[Version 0.04: March 2008]