[M.153L]                                                              [M.153]	St Marks.  Atrium door	153
                                                                      
                                                                      		but as might have been expected, both the horizontal shoulders
                                                                      		gave way under the weight of wall:  and the rest, seen in No
                                                                      		116, begins where the flower leaf upper moulding is broken away
                                                                      		behind the angels head;  its course is then concealed by the tracery
                                                                      		but the tracery itself is of course broken in its weakest part, behind
                                                                      		the angels shortest wing - and so down under its hand coming out
                                                                      		in a flaky fracture above the stilt  On the other side the same
                                                                      		fracture has taken place in the same points - but more destructively
                                                                      		- crushing the ornaments to pieces - they have been stuck in again
                                                                      		shapelessly, mixed with bits of the leaf plinth - and the new
                                                                      		portion of leaf moulding has been fitted in below the angel.
                                                                      		The entire mosaic of the tympanum has I suppose been added
                                                                      		for support; with the rose and leaf architrave, and the whole
                                                                      		further strengthened by a thick iron bar.  The smaller
                                                                      		band of jointed masonry round the arch is in a dark lilac
                                                                      		brown spotted marble - facing merely, like the rest of the wall.
                                                                      		The leaf traceries which form the background to the figures
                                                                      		are deeply undercut, attached only here & there to the back in
                                                                      		the angle of the arch under the angels longer wing, the left hand
                                                                      		angels left wing, is a recess cut deep down behind the roll,
                                                                      		 enough to put one’s hand into, of which I cannot conceive the
                                                                      		use.  Fig 2 No 116 shows the mode in which the leaf
                                                                      		roll stops on the flat dark stone of the wall, & is changed above into

[Version 0.05: May 2008]