182 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

“Venus and Mercury,”¹ but always the severest type-the peacock plume. Any of these men would have looked with infinite disgust upon the leafage and scroll-work which forms the ground of colour in our modern painted windows, and yet all whom I have named were much infected with the love of renaissance designs. We must also allow for the freedom of the painter’s subject, and looseness of his associated lines; a pattern being severe in a picture, which is over luxurious upon a building. I believe, therefore, that it is impossible to be over quaint or angular in architectural colouring; and thus many dispositions which I have had occasion to reprobate in form, are, in colour, the best that can be invented. I have always, for instance, spoken with contempt of the Tudor style,² for this reason, that, having surrendered all pretence to spaciousness and breadth,-having divided its surfaces by an infinite number of lines, it yet sacrifices the only characters which can make lines beautiful; sacrifices all the variety and grace which long atoned for the caprice of the Flamboyant, and adopts, for its leading feature, an entanglement of cross bars and verticals, showing about as much invention or skill of design as the reticulation of the bricklayer’s sieve. Yet this very reticulation would in colour be highly beautiful; and all the heraldry,³ and other features which, in form, are monstrous, may be delightful as themes of colour (so long as there are no fluttering or over-twisted lines in them); and this, observe, because, when coloured, they take the place of a mere pattern, and the resemblance to nature, which could not be found in their sculptured forms, is found in their piquant variegation of other surfaces. There is a beautiful and bright bit of wall painting behind the Duomo of Verona, composed of coats of arms, whose bearings are balls of gold set in bars of green (altered blue?) and white, with cardinals’ hats in alternate squares. This is of course, however, fit only for domestic work. The front of the Doge’s palace at Venice

¹ [No. 10 in the National Gallery. For other references to the picture, see Queen of the Air, § 163, and Fors Clavigera, Letter 94.]

² [See above, p. 146, and below, p. 258.]

³ [Cf. above, p. 147.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]