DECORATION XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT 299

is to be remembered that, by a deep and narrow incision, an architect has the power, at least in sunshine, of drawing a black line on stone just as vigorously as it can be drawn with chalk on grey paper; and that he may thus, wherever and in the degree that he chooses, substitute chalk sketching for sculpture. They are curiously mingled by the Romans. The bas-reliefs on the Arc d’ Orange¹ are small, and would be confused, though in bold relief, if they depended for intelligibility on the relief only; but each figure is outlined by a strong incision at its edge into the background, and all the ornaments on the armour are simply drawn with incised lines, and not cut out at all. A similar use of lines is made by the Gothic nations in all their early sculpture, and with delicious effect. Now, to draw a mere pattern-as, for instance, the bearings of a shield-with these simple incisions, would, I

¹ [Ruskin was at Orange in 1850. The note in his diary on the Roman Triumphal Arch there is as follows:-

(April 1.)-“It has a rich bas-relief of a battle on both sides, at the top-far finer than I supposed Romans could do; no ideal form nor much grace but thorough hard fighting; rich confusion of forms, and vigorous ornamental arrangement of them. Below this and above the main arch story runs round a narrow frieze of which only a fragment is left, on the south side; in which from the peculiar smallness yet distinctness of the figures, I first observed what I found presently to be a characteristic of the bas-reliefs throughout: every figure is traced by an outline formed by a sharp incision, exactly correspondent to one of Prout’s hard black outlines. At a great height, when the figures are in low relief, it is impossible too much to admire the clearness and sharpness of effect given by this device. The figures on the small frieze are all single, in various actions of effort. Below them, above the lower side arches, is a mass of noble trophy ornamentation, most picturesquely and deeply cut, chiefly ships’ heads and armour; the latter covered with ornamentation, not as in the vile cinque cento, in raised relief, but all simply drawn by lines of sharp incision on the surfaces. It is Proutism of the purest kind, so much so that I think Prout is in art precisely the representative of Romanism in architecture. No one so fit to draw Roman ruins ... But I was most interested by the architrave of the central arch. It was a piece of naturalism of the purest kind; might belong to any period of Gothic-consisting of successive portions of ornament composed of apples and apple leaves, vine fruit and vine leaf, fir cones and their long spiny bushes of foliage; all admirably cut...”

In an addition to the note he writes:-

“I ought also to have noted respecting this arch that there is down the inner, or jamb, side of its pilasters at the side of the arch, a superb writhing roll of flowing leafage almost exactly resembling, as far as its mouldering outline can be traced, that of the north door of the west front of Rouen; that the old capitals of the main shafts are Corinthian, very sharp and Byzantine in the leaf-cutting, and in the restorations all the cutting of the leaf internally been missed out; they look like early Lombard.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]