358 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

in the frescoes of the Riccardi Palace,¹ among stems of trees for the most part as vertical as stone shafts, has suddenly introduced one of the shape given in Fig. 62. Many forest trees present, in their accidental contortions, types of most complicated spiral shafts, the plan being originally of a grouped shaft rising from several roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find models for every kind of shaft decoration, so graceful or so gorgeous, as he will find in the great forest aisle, where the strength of the earth itself seems to rise from the roots into the vaulting; but the shaft surface, barred as it expands with rings of ebony and silver, is fretted with traceries of ivy, marbled with purple moss, veined with grey lichen, and tesselated, by the rays of the rolling heaven, with flitting fancies of blue shadow and burning gold.

¹ [For other references to these frescoes, see Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 320).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]