fortress of St. Michael's Mount in
Normandy, on the Bayeux tapestry, and on the capitals of the Ducal
Palace at Venice (under Arion on his Dolphin), is represented in a
manner absolutely identical. Giotto, in the frescoes of Avignon, has,
with his usual strong feeling for naturalism, given the best example I
remember, in painting, of the unity of the conventional system with
direct imitation, and that both in sea and river; giving in pure blue
color the coiling whirlpool of the stream, and the curled crest of the
breaker. But in all early sculptural examples, both imitation and
decorative effect are subordinate to easily understood symbolical
language; the undulatory lines are often valuable as an enrichment of
surface, but are rarely of any studied gracefulness. One of the best
examples I know of their expressive arrangement is around some figures
in a spandril at Bourges, representing figures sinking in deep sea (the
deluge): the waved lines yield beneath the bodies and wildly lave the
edge of the moulding, two birds, as if to mark the reverse of all order
of nature, lowest of all sunk in the depth of them. In later times of
debasement, water began to be represented with its waves, foam, etc., as
on the Vendramin tomb at Venice, above cited; but even there, without
any definite ornamental purpose, the sculptor meant partly to explain a
story, partly to display dexterity of chiselling, but not to produce
beautiful forms pleasant to the eye. The imitation is vapid and joyless,
and it has often been matter of surprise to me that sculptors, so fond
of exhibiting their skill, should have suffered this imitation to fall
so short, and remain so cold,--should not have taken more pains to curl
the waves clearly, to edge them sharply, and to express, by drill-holes
or other artifices, the character of foam. I think in one of the Antwerp
churches something of this kind is done in wood, but in general it is
rare.

Sec. XXVI. 4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays). If neither the sea nor
the rock can be imagined, still less the devouring fire. It has been
symbolised by radiation both in painting and sculpture, for the most
part in the latter very unsuccessfully. It was suggested to me, not long
ago,[66] that zigzag decorations of Norman architects were typical of
light springing from the half-set orb of the sun; the resemblance to the
ordinary sun type is indeed remarkable, but I believe accidental. I
shall give you, in my large plate