branching tendril; in
fig. 6, the bunch of grapes thrown carelessly in at the right-hand
corner, in defiance of all symmetry; in fig. 7, the volutes knitted into
wreaths of ivy; in fig. 14, the leaves, drifted, as it were, by a
whirlwind round the capital by which they rise; while figs. 13 and 15
are as completely living leaves as any of the Gothic time. These designs
may or may not be graceful; what grace or beauty they have is not to be
rendered in mere outline,--but they are indisputably more _natural_ than
any Greek ones, and therefore healthier, and tending to greatness.

Sec. XXI. In the second place, note in all these examples, the excessive
breadth of the masses, however afterwards they may be filled with
detail. Whether we examine the contour of the simpler convex bells, or
those of the leaves which bend outwards from the richer and more
Corinthian types, we find they are all outlined by grand and simple
curves, and that the whole of their minute fretwork and thistle-work is
cast into a gigantic mould which subdues all their multitudinous points
and foldings to its own inevitable dominion. And the fact is, that in
the sweeping lines and broad surfaces of these Byzantine sculptures we
obtain, so far as I know, for the first time in the history of art, the
germ of that unity of perfect ease in every separate part, with perfect
subjection to an enclosing form or directing impulse, which was brought
to its most intense expression in the compositions of the two men in
whom the art of Italy consummated itself and expired--Tintoret and
Michael Angelo.

I would not attach too much importance to the mere habit of working on
the rounded surface of the stone, which is often as much the result of
haste or rudeness as of the desire for breadth, though the result
obtained is not the less beautiful. But in the capital from the Fondaco
de' Turchi, fig. 6, it will be seen that while the sculptor had taken
the utmost care to make his leaves free, graceful, and sharp in effect,
he was dissatisfied with their separation, and could not rest until he
had enclosed them with an unbroken line, like that of a pointed arch;
and the same thing is done in many different ways in other capitals of
the same building, and in many of St. Mark's: but one such instance
would have been enough to prove, if the loveliness of the profiles
themselves did not do so, that the sculptor understood and loved the
laws of generalization; and that the feelin