Though the arabesques of Raphael and his pupils in the Loggia of the Vatican (1515) have been severely criticised as being full of coarse absurdities and designed with questionable taste, still, taking them as a whole, they were a decided improvement on the grosser absurdities of the Pompeian school of grotesque decoration, and they are certainly distinguished by good drawing and clever execution. Doubtless the later achievements in painted decoration at the Villa Madama and the ducal palace of Mantua had less incongruities of design and were more refined than the Vatican pilasters, but they lack the freshness, the boldness, and virility of the latter. It is not always a good argument, for instance, to say—which has often been said of the decoration in question—that a thick stem should be used to support heavy masses, for it can be said with equal truth that a thick stem may be painted to look like a weak vegetable flabby stalk—like that of a cabbage—and so have really a weaker appearance than one painted to represent the fibrous stem of a woody tree; and besides, if a thin stem supporting a heavy mass is vigorously drawn, it will look strong enough, and be useful also in giving the necessary amount of contrast that is wanted in decoration. Such a thing may be quite admissible in painted ornament that would be out of place in sculptured work or in architectural forms. [Illustration: Fig. 424.—Cinquecento Floral Ornament. Acanthus, Oak, Convolvulus, &c.] [Illustration: Fig. 425.—Venetian Panel. Sixteenth Century.] The Cinquecento artists were better craftsmen than the Romans. The design and delicacy of finish on some of the sculptured ornament of the sixteenth century have never been excelled in any period of the world’s art history. It is strange that many of our would-be teachers in design of the present day are not in sympathy with it; perhaps however, it is not to be wondered at, for they may have tried, and found how difficult it really is to get within measurable distance of its excellence. It is cheap and plausible to say that a style is dead with the people who created it; but this is not what the artists of the sixteenth century said, and we know what they produced out of a dead style. By all means let us have originality, if it is good art, but let us have the good art first. In the Cinquecento ornament we find that a greater variety of plants, animals, and designed objects, such as vases, candelabra, and armour, were made use of than is generally found in antique ornament. The acanthus, vine, oak, and poppy foliage have all been simplified to a general type of acanthoid leafage (Fig. 425). Such animals as the lion, goat, and the dolphin fish form occur frequently, sometimes almost naturally, but more often with foliated endings (Figs. 425 and 426). Some compositions are made up entirely with well-chosen vase and candelabra forms (Fig. 427). [Illustration: Fig. 426.—Cinquecento; from the Martinengo Tomb, Brescia.]