84 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

§ 20. Thus in the use of brick: since that is known to be originally moulded, there is no reason why it should not be moulded into diverse forms. It will never be supposed to have been cut, and, therefore, will cause no deception; it will have only the credit it deserves. In flat countries, far from any quarry of stone, cast brick may be legitimately, and most successfully, used in decoration, and that elaborate, and even refined. The brick mouldings of the Palazzo Pepoli at Bologna, and those which run round the market-place of Vercelli, are among the richest in Italy.¹ So also, tile and porcelain work, of which the former is grotesquely, but successfully, employed in the domestic architecture of France, coloured tiles being inserted in the diamond spaces between the crossing timbers; and the latter admirably in Tuscany, in external bas-reliefs, by the Robbia family, in which works, while we cannot but sometimes regret the useless and illarranged colours,² we would by no means blame the employment of a material which, whatever its defects, excels every other in permanence, and, perhaps, requires even greater skill in its management than marble. For it is not the material, but the absence of the human labour, which makes the thing worthless; and a piece of terra cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by the human hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by machinery. It is, indeed, possible, and even usual, for men to sink into machines themselves, so that even hand-work has all the characters of mechanism; of the difference between living and dead hand-work I shall speak presently;³ all that I ask at present is, what it is always in our power to secure-the confession of what we have done, and what we have given; so that when we use stone at

¹ [The MS. here refers to an unpublished plate, giving the Palazzo Pepoli and Vercelli mouldings, and the title and timber work of a house at Beauvais. For Ruskin’s sketch at Vercelli in 1846, see Vol. I. p. 28. In the bottom corner of the sketch it will be seen that he drew some details of the mouldings.]

² [For Ruskin’s first impressions of the Robbia work, and his more emphatically expressed dislike of the colouring, see Vol. IV. p. 300 n. For later references, see Aratra Pentelici, § 129; Queen of the Air, § 140; and Relation of Michael Angelo and Tintoret. Ruskin had a Virgin and Child by Luca della Robbia over the mantelpiece of his study at Brantwood.]

³ [See below, p. 214. The MS. adds, “that being no question of mere honesty.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]