ubject is the JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.

It is impossible to overstate, or to regard with too much admiration,
the significance of this single fact. It is as if the palace had been
built at various epochs, and preserved uninjured to this day, for the
sole purpose of teaching us the difference in the temper of the two
schools.

Sec. XXXVI. I have called the sculpture on the Fig-tree angle the
principal one; because it is at the central bend of the palace, where it
turns to the Piazzetta (the facade upon the Piazzetta being, as we saw
above, the more important one in ancient times). The great capital, which
sustains this Fig-tree angle, is also by far more elaborate than the head
of the pilaster under the Vine angle, marking the preeminence of the
former in the architect's mind. It is impossible to say which was first
executed, but that of the Fig-tree angle is somewhat rougher in execution,
and more stiff in the design of the figures, so that I rather suppose it
to have been the earliest completed.

[Illustration: Plate XIX.
LEAFAGE OF THE VINE ANGLE.]

Sec. XXXVII. In both the subjects, of the Fall and the Drunkenness, the
tree, which forms the chiefly decorative portion of the sculpture,--fig
in the one case, vine in the other,--was a necessary adjunct. Its trunk,
in both sculptures, forms the true outer angle of the palace; boldly cut
separate from the stone-work behind, and branching out above the figures
so as to enwrap each side of the angle, for several feet, with its deep
foliage. Nothing can be more masterly or superb than the sweep of this
foliage on the Fig-tree angle; the broad leaves lapping round the
budding fruit, and sheltering from sight, beneath their shadows, birds
of the most graceful form and delicate plumage. The branches are,
however, so strong, and the masses of stone hewn into leafage so large,
that, notwithstanding the depth of the undercutting, the work remains
nearly uninjured; not so at the Vine angle, where the natural delicacy
of the vine-leaf and tendril having tempted the sculptor to greater
effort, he has passed the proper limits of his art, and cut the upper
stems so delicately that half of them have been broken away by the
casualties to which the situation of the sculpture necessarily exposes
it. What remains is, however, so interesting in its extreme refinement,
that I have chosen it for the subject of the opposite illustration
rather than the nobler masses of the fig-tr