356 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

ribbed form, which is the result of a group of shafts bound together, and which is especially beautiful when special service is given to each member.

§ 18. On shafts of inferior size, every species of decoration may be wisely lavished, and in any quantity, so only that the form of the shaft be clearly visible. This I hold to be absolutely essential, and that barbarism begins wherever the sculpture is either so bossy, or so deeply cut, as to break the contour of the shaft, or compromise its solidity. Thus, in Plate 21 (Appendix 8), the richly sculptured shaft of the lower story has lost its dignity and definite function, and become a shapeless mass, injurious to the symmetry of the building, though of some value as adding to its imaginative and fantastic character. Had all the shafts been like it, the façade would have been entirely spoiled; the inlaid pattern, on the contrary, which is used on the shortest shaft of the upper story, adds to its preciousness without interfering with its purpose, and is every way delightful, as are all the inlaid shaft ornaments of this noble church (another example of them is given in Plate XII. of the Seven Lamps).¹ The same rule would condemn the Caryatid: which I entirely agree with Mr. Fergusson² in thinking (both for this and other reasons) one of the chief errors of the Greek schools; and, more decisively still, the Renaissance inventions of shaft ornament, almost too absurd and too monstrous to be seriously noticed, which consist in leaving square blocks between the cylinder joints,³ as in the portico of No. 1, Regent Street, and many other buildings in London; or in rusticating portions of the shafts, or

¹ [The church is S. Michele, Lucca: see Vol. VIII. p. 125; and cf. Vol. I. p. 206; Vol. II. p. xxviii.; and below, p. 430.]

² [See James Fergusson’s Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art, more especially with reference to Architecture, p. 384. Fergusson condemns “so manifest an absurdity as employing statues, representing living figures, to do the duty of stone pillars.” “It is difficult to understand,” he says of the Caryatid in the British Museum, “what kind of entablature could be placed over it, of sufficient lightness to avoid the effect of either crushing the figure, or of being so flimsy as to be insufficient for the purposes of a roof.”]

³ [No longer visible, either through the alteration or frequent re-painting of the building.]

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