n (consequent
on the incrusted character of Venetian architecture) of the general idea
of dentil, which had been originally given by the Greeks, and realised
both by them and by the Byzantines in many laborious forms, long before
there was need of them for arch armor; and the lower half of Plate IX.
will give some idea of the conditions which occur in the Romanesque of
Venice, distinctly derived from the classical dentil; and of the gradual
transition to the more convenient and simple type, the running-hand
dentil, which afterwards became the characteristic of Venetian Gothic.
No. 13[76] is the common dentiled cornice, which occurs repeatedly in
St. Mark's; and, as late as the thirteenth century, a reduplication of
it, forming the abaci of the capitals of the Piazzetta shafts. Fig. 15
is perhaps an earlier type; perhaps only one of more careless
workmanship, from a Byzantine ruin in the Rio di Ca' Foscari: and it is
interesting to compare it with fig. 14 from the Cathedral of Vienne, in
South France. Fig. 17, from St. Mark's, and 18, from the apse of Murano,
are two very early examples in which the future true Venetian dentil is
already developed in method of execution, though the object is still
only to imitate the classical one; and a rude imitation of the bead is
joined with it in fig. 17. No. 16 indicates two examples of experimental
forms: the uppermost from the tomb of Mastino della Scala, at Verona;
the lower from a door in Venice, I believe, of the thirteenth century:
19 is a more frequent arrangement, chiefly found in cast brick, and
connecting the dentils with the dogteeth: 20 is a form introduced richly
in the later Gothic, but of rare occurrence until the latter half of the
thirteenth century. I shall call it the _gabled_ dentil. It is found in
the greatest profusion in sepulchral Gothic, associated with several
slight variations from the usual dentil type, of which No. 21, from the
tomb of Pietro Cornaro, may serve as an example.

Sec. XV. All the forms given in Plate IX. are of not unfrequent
occurrence: varying much in size and depth, according to the expression of
the work in which they occur; generally increasing in size in late work
(the earliest dentils are seldom more than an inch or an inch and a half
long: the fully developed dentil of the later Gothic is often as much as
four or five in length, by one and a half in breadth); but they are all
somewhat rare, compared to the true or armor dentil, abov