NOTES ON LATER VENETIAN SCULPTURE 439

but no more with pleasant fancy; each is turned into an ugly mask, as foolish as it is ugly.

This means that they had pursued beauty alone till they are sick of it, and are compelled to refresh themselves with the detestable.

All the moulding and arrangement of mass are, however, well proportioned and subtle in this façade; the idea of proportion being now the only one left in the designer’s empty head. He finds that a great deal has been written about it in Latin, and supposes it therefore to be a science. In the pride of his heart and feebleness of his brain he thinks the Scientific part of Architecture must be the Gentlemanly and Polite essence of it. He restricts himself to the study of this as a sublime duty, is dull upon the subtlest principles, and vacant on the purest meta-physical basis of negation.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]