I. THE QUARRY 51

been thrown away, and well it may be, for it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had been broken off, but on clearing away the dust, I saw the wretched effigy had only one hand, and was a mere block on the inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge’s cap is chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side, is blocked out only on the other:-it having been supposed throughout the work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side.

§ 43. It was indeed to be so seen by nearly every one; and I do not blame-I should, on the contrary, have praised-the sculptor for regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous mask, when we demanded true

no clatter of scales, no terror, no muscular action in wings, utterly base-Body stuffed.

“Fat-legged boys sprawling on sea-horses or spreading handkerchiefs on dolphins’ backs occupy two panels of basement, the arabesques of leaves ending in currants with wriggly stems and birds eating them-or, at least, holding them in their bills, for there is no peck, no life, no gesture-only the two birds delicately feathered, each in a proper posture opposite the other, holding the currants as opera girls do in a ballet over the heads of the principal figures. ... (Compare Middle Age sculpture, as Noah [see Plate 20 in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ], where the birds are really and truly alive, though not half so well cut.) All these arabesques, I say, are very graceful and wonderful, as sharply cut as it is possible to cut marble, and as brainless as the common penmanship of William Butterworth, Esq. [a law writer?]. One wants a name for such sculpture; it ought to be called Chiselmanship.

“The Sarcophagus is carried by the cardinal virtues as usual. I got up to examine them. It is impossible to express their utter insipidity. I never saw human faces so wanting in meaning. They are all, however, properly long-nosed and wreathy-haired, à la Diane, and round-thighed. The Temperance has perhaps the most of shallow and simple in her; and observe that instead of the vase with the curved stream of water, as in the good times, she has only the empty flagon, which en revanche is well carved at the top and a great way down inside. How little the man who cut them-these vile lay figures-could have felt what a Virtue was.

“Of all virtues, however, he is most wanting in Honesty. From the Sarcophagus I ascended to the figure. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness,” etc. etc. (much as in the text to the end of § 42).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]