230 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

of national feeling or achievement. More decoration will, indeed, be usually required than can take so elevated a character; and much, even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of fancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of some national bearing or symbol.¹ It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere surface ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety which the spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much more in important features-capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of course in all confessed bas-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual intention. Actual representation of history has in modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean indeed, but steadfast; that of unmanageable costume:² nevertheless, by a sufficiently bold imaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may be vanquished; not perhaps in the degree necessary to produce sculpture in itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to become a grand and expressive element of architectural composition. Take, for example, the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice. History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning.³ The large one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to the symbolisation of Abstract Justice; above it is a sculpture of the Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in its treatment to its decorative purpose. The figures, if the subject had been entirely composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted

¹ [The MS. continues:-

“Everything under such circumstances depends upon the beauty, and much on the simplicity of the emblem itself. The giglio rosso of Florence may be set as thick over a wall surface as lilies in their own field; so might our own rose, as richly as it studs its native briar, but we must beware of multiplying a Queen’s Arms.”

See above, Chap. iv. § 8, p. 147.]

² [Cf., in the case of portrait painting, Modern Painters, vol. ii., Vol. IV. p. 189 of this edition.]

³ [For further account of the capitals here described, see Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]