260 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

or distribute them over sculptured rocks, or lead them up steps into pyramids: I need hardly instance Canova’s works,* and the Dutch pulpit groups, with fishermen, boats, and nets, in the midst of church naves.

If the figures be in bas-relief, though as large as life, the scene may be explained by lightly traced outlines: this is admirably done in the Ninevite marbles.¹

If the figures be in bas-relief, or even alto-relievo, but less than life, and if their purpose is rather to enrich a space and produce picturesque shadows, than to draw the thoughts entirely to themselves, the scenery in which they act may become prominent. The most exquisite examples of this treatment are the gates of Ghiberti.² What would that Madonna of the Annunciation be, without the little shrine into which she shrinks back? But all medićval work is full of delightful examples of the same kind of treatment: the gates of hell and of paradise are important pieces, both of explanation and effect, in all early representations of the last judgment, or of the descent into Hades. The keys of St. Peter, and the crushing flat of the devil under his own door, when it is beaten in, would hardly be understood

* The admiration of Canova I hold to be one of the most deadly symptoms in the civilization of the upper classes in the present century.³

¹ [In the British Museum, the fruit of Sir Austen Layard’s explorations on behalf of the Museum at Nimroud and Kouyunjik (the site of Nineveh). The diggings began in 1845; the first arrivals of sculptures, ivories, etc., at the Museum were in 1847; others followed at various intervals, 1848-1851. Ruskin often refers to the antiquities in his books written in those years; see, e.g., Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. pp. 160 (ivories), 170 (sculptures), 244; below, §§ 14, 25, 36; ch. xxi. §§ 7, 11, 12; Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. iv. § 38, ch. vi. § 26; vol. iii. ch. iii. § 69.]

² [For another reference to the bronze gates of the Baptistery of Florence by Ghiberti, see Vol. VIII. pp. 149, 154. The Annunciation is the first subject on the Northern Gate. Ruskin’s defence of the treatment of architectural accessories, etc., is the more interesting for the criticism in a contrary sense by Reynolds and Flaxman. “The criticism of Sir Joshua Reynolds,” says the latter in noticing Ghiberti’s Gates, “was one indisputable proof of that great man’s judgment in the sister arts. His observation amounted to this, that Ghiberti’s landscape and buildings occupied so large a portion of the compartments that the figures remained but secondary objects, entirely contrary to the principle of the ancients” (Lectures on Sculpture, by John Flaxman, R. A., 1838, p. 249).]

³ [For other references to Canova in a like sense, see Vol. III. pp. 154, 230; Vol. IV. pp. 121, 279.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]