288 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

in which¹ everything is realised as far as possible, leaves, birds, and lizards, quite as carefully as men and quadrupeds; and usually with much greater success. The realisation is, however, in all cases, dangerous except under most skilful management, and the abstraction, if true and noble, is almost always more delightful.*

§ 10. What, then, is noble abstraction? It is taking first the essential elements of the thing to be represented, then the rest in the order of importance,² and using any expedient to impress what we want upon the mind, without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such expedient. Suppose, for instance, we have to represent a peacock: now a peacock has a graceful neck, so has a swan; it has a high crest, so has a cockatoo; it has a long tail, so has a bird of Paradise. But the whole spirit and power of [the] peacock is in those eyes of the tail.³ It is true, the argus pheasant,⁴ and one or two more birds, have something like them, but nothing for a moment comparable to them in brilliancy: express the gleaming of the blue eyes through the plumage, and you have nearly all you want of peacock, but without this, nothing; and yet those eyes are not in relief; a rigidly true sculpture of a peacock’s form could have no eyes,-nothing but feathers. Here, then, enters the stratagem of sculpture; you must cut the eyes in relief, somehow or another; see how it is done in the peacock opposite: it is so done by

* Vide Seven Lamps, Chap. IV. § 34. [Vol. VIII. p. 175.]

¹ [Ruskin’s first conclusions on the practice of the mediæval system in this respect were somewhat different. Ed. 1 reads:-

“... in which I think, generally, more completion is permitted (though this often because more was possible) in the inferior than in the higher portions of ornamental subject. Leaves and birds, and lizards are realised, or nearly so; men and quadrupeds formalised. For, observe, the smaller and inferior subject remains subordinate, however richly finished; but the human sculpture can only be subordinate by being imperfect. The realisation is, however, ...”]

² [Ed. 1 inserts “(so that wherever we please we shall always have obtained more than we leave behind)”.]

³ [Cf. the letter of May 2, 1874, in Hortus Inclusus, where Ruskin, in describing some Pompeian frescoes, speaks of “the feverish wretchedness of the humanity which ... had reduced itself to see no more than eleven eyes in a peacock’s tail.”]

⁴ [Cf. Seven Lamps, ch. iv. § 5, Vol. VIII. p. 144.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]