IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER 247

leather and steel? His flying mantle,-is it not silk more than marble? That is all in the beautiful doing of it: precision first in exquisite sight of the thing itself, and understanding of the qualities and signs, whether of silk or steel; and then, precision of touch, and cunning in use of material, which it had taken three hundred years to learn. Think what cunning there is in getting such edge to the marble as will represent the spur line, or strap leather, with such solid under-support that, from 1480 till now, it stands rain and frost!

50. And for knowledge of form,-look at the way the little princess’s foot comes out under the drapery as she shrinks back. Look at it first from the left, to see how it is foreshortened, flat on the rock; then from the right, to see the curve of dress up the limb:-think of the difference between this and the feet of poor St. George Sartor of St. Mark’s, pointed down all their length. Finally, see how studious the whole thing is of beauty in every part,-how it expects you also to be studious. Trace the rich tresses of the princess’s hair, wrought where the figure melts into shadow;-the sharp edges of the dragon’s mail, slipping over each other as he wrings neck and coils tail;-nay, what decorative ordering and symmetry is even in the roughness of the ground and rock! And lastly, see how the whole piece of work, to the simplest frame of it, must be by the sculptor’s own hand: see how he breaks the line of his panel moulding with the princess’s hair, with St. George’s helmet, with the rough ground itself at the base;-the entire tablet varied to its utmost edge, delighted in and ennobled to its extreme limit of substance.

Here, then, as I said, is the top of Venetian sculpture-art. Was there no going beyond this, think you?

Assuredly, much beyond this the Venetian could have gone, had he gone straight forward. But at this point he became perverse, and there is one sign of evil in this piece, which you must carefully discern.

51. In the two earlier sculptures, of the sheep, and the

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