coloring; and thus many dispositions which I have had occasion to
reprobate in form, are, in color, the best that can be invented. I have
always, for instance, spoken with contempt of the Tudor style, for this
reason, that, having surrendered all pretence to spaciousness and
breadth,--having divided its surfaces by an infinite number of lines, it
yet sacrifices the only characters which can make lines beautiful;
sacrifices all the variety and grace which long atoned for the caprice
of the Flamboyant, and adopts, for its leading feature, an entanglement
of cross bars and verticals, showing about as much invention or skill of
design as the reticulation of the bricklayer's sieve. Yet this very
reticulation would in color be highly beautiful; and all the heraldry,
and other features which, in form, are monstrous, may be delightful as
themes of color (so long as there are no fluttering or over-twisted
lines in them); and this observe, because, when colored, they take the
place of a mere pattern, and the resemblance to nature, which could not
be found in their sculptured forms, is found in their piquant
variegation of other surfaces. There is a beautiful and bright bit of
wall painting behind the Duomo of Verona, composed of coats of arms,
whose bearings are balls of gold set in bars of green (altered blue?)
and white, with cardinal's hats in alternate squares. This is of course,
however, fit only for domestic work. The front of the Doge's palace at
Venice is the purest and most chaste model that I can name (but one) of
the fit application of color to public buildings. The sculpture and
mouldings are all white; but the wall surface is chequered with marble
blocks of pale rose, the chequers being in no wise harmonized, or fitted
to the forms of the windows; but looking as if the surface had been
completed first, and the windows cut out of it. In Plate XII. fig. 2 the
reader will see two of the patterns used in green and white, on the
columns of San Michele of Lucca, every column having a different design.
Both are beautiful, but the upper one certainly the best. Yet in
sculpture its lines would have been perfectly barbarous, and those even
of the lower not enough refined.
XL. Restraining ourselves, therefore, to the use of such simple
patterns, so far forth as our color is subordinate either to
architectural structure, or sculptural form, we have yet one more manner
of ornamentation to add to our general means of effect, monochrome
design, the intermediate condition between coloring and carving. The
relations of the entire system of architectural decoration may then be
thus expressed.
1. Organic form dominant. True, independent sculpture, and
alto-relievo; rich capitals, and mouldings; to be elaborate in
completion of form, not abstract, and either to be left in pure
white marble, or most cautiously touched with color in points and
borders only, in a system not concurrent with their forms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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