320 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

his Sketches in France and Italy.¹ I have before observed that this artist never fails of seizing the true and leading expression of whatever he touches: he has made this ornament the leading feature of the niche, expressing it, as in distance it is only expressible, by a zigzag.

§ 5. The reader may perhaps be surprised at my speaking so highly of this drawing, if we take the pains to compare Prout’s symbolism of the work on this niche with the facts as they stand here in Plate 9. But the truth is that Prout has rendered the effect of the monument on the mind of the passer-by;-the effect it was intended to have on every man who turned the corner of the street beneath it: and in this sense there is actually more truth and likeness* in Prout’s translation than in my facsimile, made diligently by peering into the details from a ladder.² I do not say that all the symbolism in Prout’s sketch is the best possible; but it is the best which any architectural draughtsman has yet invented; and in its application to special subjects it always shows curious internal evidence, that the sketch has been made on the spot, and that the artist tried to draw what he saw, not to invent an attractive subject. I shall notice other instances of this hereafter.³

§ 6. The dogtooth, employed in this simple form, is, however, rather a foil for other ornament, than itself a satisfactory or generally available decoration. It is, however, easy to enrich it as we choose: taking up its simple form at 3,

* I do not here speak of artistical merits, but the play of the light among the lower shafts is also singularly beautiful in this sketch of Prout’s, and the character of the wild and broken leaves, half-dead, on the stone of the foreground.

¹ [For this work, see references in Vol. I. p. xxix., and Vol. III. p. 217. The drawing here referred to was in Ruskin’s collection and is now at Brantwood. It was No. 49 in the Prout and Hunt Exhibition; it is reproduced in this edition as a plate in Ruskin’s notes on that exhibition. Some of Ruskin’s own drawings of the same subject are given as illustrations to Verona and its Rivers.]

² [Cf. Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 219), where Ruskin remarks of Prout’s architectural drawings generally that “his abstract of decoration has more of the spirit of the reality than far more laborious imitation.”]

³ [An intention fulfilled many years later in the Notes on Prout and Hunt.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]