examples of this kind of sculpture-painting are the works of Mino da
Fiesole; their best effects being reached by strange angular, and
seemingly rude, touches of the chisel. The lips of one of the children
on the tombs in the church of the Badia, appear only half finished when
they are seen close; yet the expression is farther carried and more
ineffable, than in any piece of marble I have ever seen, especially
considering its delicacy, and the softness of the child-features. In a
sterner kind, that of the statues in the sacristy of St. Lorenzo equals
it, and there again by incompletion. I know no example of work in which
the forms are absolutely true and complete where such a result is
attained; in Greek sculptures is not even attempted.
XXII. It is evident that, for architectural appliances, such masculine
handling, likely as it must be to retain its effectiveness when higher
finish would be injured by time, must always be the most expedient; and
as it is impossible, even were it desirable that the highest finish
should be given to the quantity of work which covers a large building,
it will be understood how precious the intelligence must become, which
renders incompletion itself a means of additional expression; and how
great must be the difference, when the touches are rude and few, between
those of a careless and those of a regardful mind. It is not easy to
retain anything of their character in a copy; yet the reader will find
one or two illustrative points in the examples, given in Plate XIV.,
from the bas-reliefs of the north of Rouen Cathedral. There are three
square pedestals under the three main niches on each side of it, and one
in the centre; each of these being on two sides decorated with five
quatrefoiled panels. There are thus seventy quatrefoils in the lower
ornament of the gate alone, without counting those of the outer course
round it, and of the pedestals outside: each quatrefoil is filled with a
bas-relief, the whole reaching to something above a man's height. A
modern architect would, of course, have made all the five quatrefoils of
each pedestal-side equal: not so the Mediæval. The general form being
apparently a quatrefoil composed of semicircles on the sides of a
square, it will be found on examination that none of the arcs are
semicircles, and none of the basic figures squares. The latter are
rhomboids, having their acute or obtuse angles uppermost according to
their larger or smaller size; and the arcs upon their sides slide into
such places as they can get in the angles of the enclosing
parallelogram, leaving intervals, at each of the four angles, of various
shapes, which are filled each by an animal. The size of the whole panel
being thus varied, the two lowest of the five are tall, the next two
short, and the uppermost a little higher than the lowest; while in the
course of bas-reliefs which surrounds the gate, calling either of the
two lowest (which are equal), _a_, and either of the next two _b_, and
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