212 THE STONES OF VENICE

being cut in white marble on the outside of the church, and the ground laid in with gold, though necessarily here represented, like the rest of the plate, in blue. And it is exceedingly interesting to see how the noble workman, the moment he is restricted to more conventional materials, retires into more conventional forms, and reduces his various leafage into symmetry, now nearly perfect; yet observe, in the central figure, where the symbolic meaning of the vegetation beside the cross required it to be more distinctly indicated, he has given it life and growth by throwing it into unequal curves on the opposite sides.

§ 19. I believe the reader will now see, that in these mosaics, which the careless traveller is in the habit of passing by with contempt,¹ there is a depth of feeling and of meaning greater than in most of the best sketches from nature of modern times; and, without entering into any question whether these conventional representations are as good as, under the required limitations, it was possible to render them, they are at all events good enough completely to illustrate that mode of symbolical expression which appeals altogether to thought, and in no wise trusts to realization. And little as, in the present state of our schools, such an assertion is likely to be believed, the fact is that this kind of expression is the only one allowable in noble art.

§ 20. I pray the reader to have patience with me for a few moments. I do not mean that no art is noble but Byzantine mosaic; but that no art is noble which in any wise depends upon direct imitation for its effect upon the mind. This was asserted in the opening chapters of Modern Painters, but not upon the highest grounds;² the results at which we have now arrived in our investigation of early art will enable me to place it on a loftier and firmer foundation.

§ 21. We have just seen [§ 6] that all great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the

¹ [Nor the careless traveller only; even Lord Lindsay, from whom Ruskin learnt so much, had no good words to say of these mosaics: see his Sketches of Christian Art, 1847, i. 118.]

² [See Vol. III. pp. 99-108.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]