276 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

of Florence.¹ We shall find him in a basket at Venice, at the base of one of the Piazzetta shafts.²

§ 29. (7.) Fish. These, as beautiful in their forms as they are familiar to our sight, while their interest is increased by their symbolic meaning, are of great value as material of ornament. Love of the picturesque has generally induced a choice of some supple form with scaly body and lashing tail, but the simplest fish form is largely employed in mediæval work. We shall find the plain oval body and sharp head of the Thunny constantly at Venice; and the fish used in the expression of sea-water, or water generally, are always plain-bodied creatures in the best mediæval sculpture. The Greek type of the dolphin, however, sometimes but slightly exaggerated from the real outline of the Delphinus Delphis,* is one of the most picturesque of animal forms; and the action of its slow revolving plunge is admirably caught upon the surface sea represented in Greek vases.

§ 30. (8.) Reptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent and lizard exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror in strange combination; the horror, which in an imitation is felt only as a pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favourite subjects in all periods of art; and the unity of both lizard and serpent in the ideal dragon, the most picturesque and powerful of all animal forms, and of peculiar symbolical interest to the Christian mind, is perhaps the principal of

* One is glad to hear from Cuvier, that though dolphins in general are “les plus carnassiers, et, proportion gardée avec leur taille, les plus cruels de l’ordre;” yet that in the Delphinus Delphis, “toute l’organisation de son cerveau annonce qu’il ne doit pas être dépourvu de la docilité qu’ils” (les anciens) “lui attribuaient.”³

¹ [This famous piece of Greek sculpture is in the second vestibule of the Uffizi. A copy of it in bronze, forming a fountain, by Pietro Tacca, is in the Mercato Nuovo. Ruskin refers to the Boar in Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 303).]

² [The crab is, however, not again referred to. Ruskin had intended to describe the pillars of the Piazzetta in the Examples (see Stones of Venice, Venetian index, s. “Piazzetta”), but that work was suspended before he had done so and was never continued.]

³ [Though dolphins in general are “the most carnivorous and in proportion to their size the most cruel of their order ... the common dolphin appears to have been the dolphin of the ancients. ... The entire organisation of the beast would seem to indicate the docility which they attributed to it” (Cuvier’s Animal Kingdom, London: 1840, p. 146).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]