460 APPENDIX, 21

of the smaller leaves being of course f e-f g = 4. The pattern which occupies the other spandril is similar, except that the field b c, instead of the intersecting arcs, has only triangles of grey marble, arranged like rays, with their bases towards the centre. There being twenty round the circle, the reader can of course draw them for himself; they being isosceles, touching the dentil with their points, and being in contact at their bases; it has lost its central boss. The marbles are, in both, covered with a rusty coating, through which it is excessively difficult to distinguish the colours (another proof of the age of the ornament). But the white marbles are certainly, in places (except only the sugary dentil), veined with purple, and the grey seems warmed with green.

A trace of another of these ornaments may be seen over the 21st capital; but I doubt if the marbles have ever been inserted in the other spandrils, and their want of ornament occasions the slight meagreness in the effect of the lower story, which is almost the only fault of the building.

This decoration by discs, or shield-like ornaments, is a marked characteristic of Venetian architecture in its earlier ages and is carried into later times by the Byzantine Renaissance, already distinguished from the more corrupt forms of Renaissance, in Appendix 6. Of the disc decoration, so borrowed, we have already an example in Plate 1. In Plate 8 we have an earlier condition of it, one of the discs being there sculptured, the others surrounded by sculptured bands: here we have, on the Ducal Palace, the most characteristic of all, because likest to the shield, which was probably the origin of the same ornament among the Arabs, and assuredly among the Greeks. In Mr. Donaldson’s restoration of the gate of the treasury of Atreus,¹ this ornament is conjecturally employed, and it occurs constantly on the Arabian buildings of Cairo.

21. P. 272.-ANCIENT REPRESENTATION OF WATER

I have long been desirous of devoting some time to an inquiry into the effect of natural scenery upon the pagan, and especially the Greek, mind: and knowing that my friend, Mr. C. Newton,² had devoted much thought to the elucidation of the figurative and symbolic language of ancient art, I asked him to draw up for me a few notes of the facts which he considered most interesting as illustrative of its methods of representing nature. I suggested to him, for an initiative subject, the representation of water; because this is one of the natural objects whose portraiture may most easily be made a test of treatment, for it is one of universal interest, and of more closely similar aspect in all parts of the world than any other. Waves, currents, and eddies are much more like each other, everywhere, than either land or vegetation. Rivers and lakes, indeed, differ widely from the sea, and the clear Pacific from the angry Northern ocean; but the Nile is liker the Danube than a knot of Nubian palms is to a glade of the Black Forest; and the Mediterranean is liker the Atlantic than the Campo Felice is like Solway Moss.

Mr. Newton has accordingly most kindly furnished me with the following data. One or two of the types which he describes have been already noticed

¹ [See Stuart’s Antiquities of Athens and other Monuments in Greece, for T. L. Donaldson’s restoration.]

² [See Vol. VIII. p. 239.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]