in 1312. It nods over, and has three ribs on its upper
surface; thus giving us the completed ideal form of the leaf, but its
execution is still very archaic and severe.

Now the next example, fig. 11, is from the tomb of the Doge Andrea
Dandolo, and therefore executed between 1354 and 1360; and this leaf
shows the Gothic naturalism and refinement of curvature fully developed.
In this forty years' interval, then, the principal advance of Gothic
sculpture is to be placed.

I had prepared a complete series of examples, showing this advance, and
the various ways in which the separations of the ribs, a most
characteristic feature, are more and more delicately and scientifically
treated, from the beginning to the middle of the fourteenth century, but
I feared that no general reader would care to follow me into these
minutiae, and have cancelled this portion of the work, at least for the
present, the main point being, that the reader should feel the full
extent of the change, which he can hardly fail to do in looking from
fig. 10 to figs. 11 and 12. I believe that fig. 12 is the earlier of the
two; and it is assuredly the finer, having all the elasticity and
simplicity of the earliest forms, with perfect flexibility added. In
fig. 11 there is a perilous element beginning to develope itself into
one feature, namely, the extremities of the leaves, which, instead of
merely nodding over, now curl completely round into a kind of ball. This
occurs early, and in the finest Gothic work, especially in cornices and
other running mouldings: but it is a fatal symptom, a beginning of the
intemperance of the later Gothic, and it was followed out with singular
avidity; the ball of coiled leafage increasing in size and complexity,
and at last becoming the principal feature of the work; the light
striking on its vigorous projection, as in fig. 14. Nearly all the
Renaissance Gothic of Venice depends upon these balls for effect, a late
capital being generally composed merely of an upper and lower range of
leaves terminating in this manner.

It is very singular and notable how, in this loss of _temperance_, there
is loss of _life_. For truly healthy and living leaves do not bind
themselves into knots at the extremities. They bend, and wave, and nod,
but never curl. It is in disease, or in death, by blight, or frost, or
poison only, that leaves in general assume this ingathered form. It is
the flame of autumn that has shrivelled them, or the web