III. CAPITALS 10. FINAL APPENDIX 271

spoken of capitals as of true Venetian work, which M. Lazari supposes to be of the Lower Empire. No. 11, from St. Mark’s, was not above noticed. The way in which the cross is gradually left in deeper relief as the sides slope inwards, and away from it, is highly picturesque and curious.

No. 9 has been reduced from a larger drawing, and some of the life and character of the curves lost in consequence. It is chiefly given to show the irregular and fearless freedom of the Byzantine designers, no two parts of the foliage being correspondent; in the original it is of white marble, the ground being coloured blue.

Plate 10, Vol. II. (facing p. 164), represents the four principal orders of Venetian capitals in their greatest simplicity, and the profiles of the most interesting examples of each. The figures 1 and 4 are the two great concave and convex groups; and 2 and 3 the transitional. Above each type of form I have put also an example of the group of flowers which represent it in nature: fig. 1 has a lily; fig. 2 a variety of the Tulipa sylvestris; figs. 3 and 4 forms of the magnolia. I prepared this plate in the early spring, when I could not get any other examples, * or I would rather have had two different species for figs. 3 and 4; but the half-open magnolia will answer the purpose, showing the beauty of the triple curvature in the sides.

I do not say that the forms of the capitals are actually taken from flowers, though assuredly so in some instances, and partially so in the decoration of nearly all. But they were designed by men of pure and natural feeling for beauty, who therefore instinctively adopted the forms represented, which are afterwards proved to be beautiful by their frequent occurrence in common flowers.

The convex forms, 3 and 4, are put lowest in the plate only because they are heaviest; they are the earliest in date, and have already been enough examined.

I have added a plate to this volume¹ (Plate 12), which should have appeared in illustration of the fifth chapter of Vol. II., but was not finished in time. It represents the central capital and two of the lateral ones of the Fondaco de’ Turchi, the central one drawn very large in order to show the excessive simplicity of its chiselling, together with the care and sharpness of it, each leaf being expressed by a series of sharp furrows and ridges. Some slight errors in the large tracings from which the engraving was made have, however, occasioned a loss of spring in the curves, and the little fig. 4 of Plate 10, Vol. II., gives a truer idea of the distant effect of the capital.

The profiles given in Plate 10, Vol. II., are the following:

1.a. Main capitals, upper arcade, Madonnetta House.

PLATE 10,b. Main capitals, upper arcade, Casa Falier.

Vol. II.c. Lateral capitals, upper arcade, Fondaco de’ Turchi.

d. Small pillars of St. Mark’s, pulpit.

* I am afraid that the kind friend, Lady Trevelyan, who helped me to finish this plate, will not like to be thanked here; but I cannot let her send into Devonshire for magnolias, and draw them for me, without thanking her.²

¹ [See below, opposite p. 378.]

² [For Pauline, Lady Trevelyan, see Introduction to Vol. XII., and Præterita, ii. ch. xii. §§ 226, 227. One of Sir Walter Trevelyan’s seats was in Devonshire-Nettlecombe Court, Taunton.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]