174 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

this principle will be actually found, I believe, to guide the old workmen. If the animal form be in a gargoyle, incomplete, and coming out of a block of stone, or if a head only, as for a boss or other such partial use, its sculpture will be highly abstract. But if it be an entire animal, as a lizard, or a bird, or a squirrel, peeping among leafage,¹ its sculpture will be much farther carried, and I think, if small, near the eye, and worked in a fine material, may rightly be carried to the utmost possible completion. Surely we cannot wish a less finish bestowed on those which animate the mouldings of the South door of the cathedral of Florence; nor desire that the birds in the capitals of the Doge’s palace should be stripped of a single plume.²

APHORISM 22. Perfect sculpture should be a part of the severest architecture.⁴

§ 34. Under these limitations, then, I think that perfect sculpture may be * made a part of the severest architecture; but this perfection was said in the outset³ to be dangerous. It is so in the highest degree; for the moment the architect allows himself to dwell on the imitated portions, there is a chance of his losing sight of the duty of his ornament, of its business as a part of the composition, and sacrificing its points of shade and effect to the delight of delicate carving. And then he is lost. His architecture has become a mere framework for the setting of delicate sculpture, which had better be all taken down and put into cabinets. It is well, therefore, that the young architect should be taught to think of imitative ornament as of the extreme of grace in language; not to be regarded at first, not to be obtained at the cost of purpose, meaning, force or conciseness, yet, indeed,

* I have written, it will be observed, “should be,” in the marginal definition of the Aphorism, and I ought to have written it in the text. See the next note. [1880.]

¹ [The MS. adds, “or even if only filling a required space as in Plate XV.” (the original intention being to have a greater number of illustrations).]

² [For the “bird” capitals, see Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii., Capitals 2 (§ 68), 11 (§ 94), and 34 (§ 126).]

³ [See above, § 30, p. 170.]

⁴ [This aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, consists of the whole of § 34.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]