CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 185

window on a large scale. Pictorial subject, without such abstraction, becomes necessarily principal, or, at all events, ceases to be the architect’s concern; its plan must be left to the painter after the completion of the building, as in the works of Veronese and Giorgione on the palaces of Venice.

§ 41. Pure architectural decoration, then, may be considered as limited to the four kinds above specified; of which each glides almost imperceptibly into the other. Thus, the Elgin frieze is a monochrom* in a state of transition to sculpture, retaining, as I think, the half-cast skin too long. Of pure monochrom, I have given an example in Plate VI., from the noble front of San Michele of Lucca. It contains forty such arches, all covered with equally elaborate ornaments, entirely drawn by cutting out their ground to about the depth of an inch in the flat white marble, and filling the spaces with pieces of green serpentine; a most elaborate mode of sculpture, requiring excessive care and precision in the fitting of the edges, and of course double work, the same line needing to be cut both in the marble and serpentine.^† The excessive simplicity of the forms will be at once perceived; the eyes of the figures or animals, for instance, being indicated only by a round dot, formed by a little inlet circle of serpentine, about half an inch over: but, though simple, they admit often much grace of curvature, as in the neck of the bird seen above the right-hand pillar. The pieces of serpentine

* Rather, dichrom or dichroit-flesh colour on blue. [1880: cf. above, § 36, p. 178.]

† On the cover of this volume the reader will find some figure outlines of the same period and character, from the floor of San Miniato at Florence. I have to thank its designer, Mr. W. Harry Rogers, for the intelligent arrangement of them, and graceful adaptations of the connecting arabesque.1

¹ [This was Note 14 at the end of the book in eds. 1 and 2; omitted in later editions. The cover is now reproduced opposite. The seven “Lamps” become in Latin Religio (Sacrifice), Fides (Truth), Auctoritas (Power)-for the use of the word “Auctoritas” instead of “Potestas,” see ch. iv. § 1 n.-Observantia (Beauty)-the lamp of beauty being, as Ruskin taught, fed by observation of nature-Spiritus (Life), Memoria (Memory), and Obedientia (Obedience). The mosaic of the floor of the nave of San Miniato, forming a band from the west door to the altar, is of black and white marble; arranged in rosettes of lions, birds, griffins, etc.; with a circular portion representing the signs of the Zodiac (dated 1207).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]