l of
the upper arcade of the Fondaco de' Turchi.

Such are the principal generic conditions of the Byzantine capital; but
the reader must always remember that the examples given are single
instances, and those not the most beautiful but the most intelligible,
chosen out of thousands: the designs of the capitals of St. Mark's alone
would form a volume.

[Illustration: Plate XI.
BYZANTINE SCULPTURE.]

Sec. XXV. Of the archivolts which these capitals generally sustain,
details are given in the Appendix and in the notice of Venetian doors in
Chapter VII. In the private palaces, the ranges of archivolt are for the
most part very simple, with dentilled mouldings; and all the ornamental
effect is entrusted to pieces of sculpture set in the wall above or
between the arches, in the manner shown in Plate XV., below, Chapter
VII. These pieces of sculpture are either crosses, upright oblongs, or
circles: of all the three forms an example is given in Plate XI.
opposite. The cross was apparently an invariable ornament, placed either
in the centre of the archivolt of the doorway, or in the centre of the
first story above the windows; on each side of it the circular and
oblong ornaments were used in various alternation. In too many instances
the wall marbles have been torn away from the earliest Byzantine
palaces, so that the crosses are left on their archivolts only. The best
examples of the cross set above the windows are found in houses of the
transitional period: one in the Campo St^a M. Formosa; another, in which
a cross is placed between every window, is still well preserved in the
Campo St^a Maria Mater Domini; another, on the Grand Canal, in the
parish of the Apostoli, has two crosses, one on each side of the first
story, and a bas-relief of Christ enthroned in the centre; and finally,
that from which the larger cross in the Plate was taken in the house
once belonging to Marco Polo, at San Giovanni Grisostomo.

Sec. XXVI. This cross, though graceful and rich, and given because it
happens to be one of the best preserved, is uncharacteristic in one
respect; for, instead of the central rose at the meeting of the arms, we
usually find a hand raised in the attitude of blessing, between the sun
and moon, as in the two smaller crosses seen in the Plate. In nearly all
representations of the Crucifixion, over the whole of Europe, at the
period in question, the sun and the moon are introduced, one on each
side of the