162 THE STONES OF VENICE

itself among the enervated Romans, and which was brought to the highest perfection of which it was capable by Raphael in the arabesques of the Vatican. It may be generally described as an elaborate and luscious form of nonsense. Its lower conditions are found in the common upholstery and decorations which, over the whole of civilised Europe, have sprung from this poisonous root; an artistical pottage, composed of nymphs, cupids, and satyrs, with shreddings of heads and paws of meek wild beasts, and nondescript vegetables. And the lowest of all are those which have not even graceful models to recommend them, but arise out of the corruption of the higher schools, mingled with clownish or bestial satire, as is the case in the later Renaissance of Venice, which we were above examining. It is almost impossible to believe the depth to which the human mind can be debased in following this species of grotesque. In a recent Italian garden, the favourite ornaments frequently consist of stucco images, representing, in dwarfish caricature, the most disgusting types of manhood and womanhood which can be found amidst the dissipation of the modern drawing-room; yet without either veracity or humour, and dependent, for whatever interest they possess, upon simple grossness of expression and absurdity of costume. Grossness, of one kind or another, is, indeed, an unfailing characteristic of the style; either latent, as in the refined sensuality of the more graceful arabesques, or, in the worst examples, manifested in every species of obscene conception and abominable detail. In the head, described in the opening of this chapter, at Santa Maria Formosa, the teeth are represented as decayed.¹

§ 40. (4.) The minds of the fourth class of men, who do not play at all, are little likely to find expression in any trivial form of art, except in bitterness of mockery; and this character at once stamps the work in which it appears as belonging to the class of terrible, rather than of playful, grotesque. We have, therefore, now to examine the state of

¹ [Here the “Travellers’ Edition” stops again, concluding its Chapter V., “Mene,” with § 76 below. For the head in question, see above, p. 145.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]