III. CAPITALS 10. FINAL APPENDIX 277

earliest of the three in this row; taken from the Madonnetta House, where the capitals have leaves both at their sides and angles. The tall angle leaf, with its two lateral ones, is given in the plate; and there is a remarkable distinction in the mode of workmanship of these leaves, which, though found in a palace of the Byzantine period, is indicative of a tendency to transition; namely, that the sharp furrow is now drawn only to the central lobe of each division of the leaf, and the rest of the surface of the leaf is left nearly flat, a slight concavity only marking the division of the extremities. At the base of these leaves they are perfectly flat, only cut by the sharp and narrow furrow, as an elevated tableland is by ravines.

Fig. 5. A more advanced condition; the fold at the recess, between each division of the leaf, carefully expressed, and the concave or depressed portions of the extremities marked more deeply, as well as the central furrow, and the rib added in the centre.

Fig. 7. A contemporary, but more finished form; the sharp furrows becoming softer, and the whole leaf more flexible.

Fig. 8. An exquisite form of the same period, but showing still more advanced naturalism, from a very early group of third-order windows, near the Church of St. Eustachio on the Grand Canal.

Fig. 9. Of the same time, from a small capital of an angle shaft of the sarcophagi at the side of St. John and Paul, in the little square which is adorned by the Colleone statue. this leaf is very quaint and pretty in giving its midmost lateral divisions only two lobes each, instead of the usual three or four.

Fig. 10. Leaf employed in the cornice of the tomb of the Doge Giovanni Soranzo,¹ who died in 1312. It nods over, and has three ribs on its upper surface; thus giving us the completed ideal form of the leaf, but its execution is still very archaic and severe.

Now the next example, fig. 11, is from the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, and therefore executed between 1354 and 1360;² and this leaf shows the Gothic naturalism and refinement of curvature fully developed. In this forty years’ interval, then, the principal advance of Gothic sculpture is to be placed.

I had prepared a complete series of examples, showing this advance, and the various ways in which the separations of the ribs, a most characteristic feature, are more and more delicately and scientifically treated, from the beginning to the middle of the fourteenth century; but I feared that no general reader would care to follow me into these minutić, and have cancelled this portion of the work, at least for the present,³ the main point being that the reader should feel the full extent of the change, which he can hardly fail to do in looking from fig. 10 to figs. 11 and 12. I believe that fig. 12 is the earlier of the two; and it is assuredly the finer, having all the elasticity and simplicity of the earliest forms, with perfect flexibility added. In fig. 11 there is a perilous element beginning to develop itself in one feature, namely, the extremities of the leaves, which, instead of merely nodding over, now curl completely round into a kind of ball. This occurs early, and in the

¹ [See below, Appendix 11, § 5, p. 294.]

² [See above, p. 94 n.]

³ [The material here referred to was never published.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]