258 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

to be the real supporters of the canopy, represented as of yielding drapery, yet the beauty of the angelic figures, and the tenderness of the thought, disarmed all animadversion. But the scholars of the Pisani, as usual, caricatured when they were unable to invent; and the quiet curtained canopy became a huge marble tent, with a pole in the centre of it. Thus vulgarised, the idea itself soon disappeared, to make room for urns, torches, and weepers, and the other modern paraphernalia of the churchyard.

§ 8. (3.) Shipping. I have allowed this kind of subject to form a separate head, owing to the importance of rostra in Roman decoration, and to the continual occurrence of naval subjects in modern monumental bas-relief. Mr. Fergusson says, somewhat doubtfully, that he perceives a “kind of beauty” in a ship:¹ I say, without any manner of doubt, that a ship is one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of the noblest;² nor do I know any lines, out of divine work, so lovely as those of the head of a ship, or even as the sweep of the timbers of a small boat, not a race boat, a mere floating chisel, but a broad, strong, sea boat, able to breast a wave and break it: and yet, with all this beauty, ships cannot be made subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in particular delight beneath the pediments of the Admiralty;³ nor does scenery of shipping ever become prominent in bas-relief without destroying it: witness the base of the Nelson pillar. It may be, and must be sometimes, introduced in severe subordination to the figure subject, but just enough to indicate the scene; sketched in the lightest lines on the background; never with any attempt at realisation, never with any equality to the force of the figures, unless the whole purpose of the subject be picturesque. I shall

¹ [A reference, not textual however, to James Fergusson’s Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art, more especially with reference to Architecture, 1849, p. 138.]

² [An opinion which Ruskin afterwards elaborated in the prefatory matter to The Harbours of England.]

³ [The main part of the building abutting on Whitehall was built in 1722-26 from the designs of Ripley. The screen before the court, which has marine ornaments on the entablatures, was subsequently built by Robert Adam.]

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