The Crown of Wild Olive

All grandest effects in mouldings may be, and for the most part have been, obtained by rolls and cavettos of circular (segmental) section. More refined sections, as that of the fluting of a Doric shaft, are only of use near the eye and in beautiful stone; and the pursuit of them was one of the many errors of later Gothic. The statement in the text that the mouldings, even of best time, "have no real relation to construction," is scarcely strong enough: they in fact contend with, and deny the construction, their principal purpose seeming to be the concealment of the joints of the voussoirs.

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Some of the most precious work done for me by my assistant Mr. Burgess, during the course of these lectures, consisted in making enlarged drawings from portions of photographs. Plate III. is engraved from a drawing of his, enlarged from the original photograph of which Plate I. is a reduction.

113

Glance forward at once to § 75, read it, and return to this.

114

There is a primary and vulgar sense of "exhibited" in Lucian's mind; but the higher meaning is involved in it.

115

In the Greek, "ambrosial." Recollect always that ambrosia, as food of gods, is the continual restorer of strength; that all food is ambrosial when it nourishes, and that the night is called "ambrosial" because it restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the 23rd Psalm, the stillness of waters.

116

I have italicised this final promise of blessedness, given by the noble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle's 5th Latter-day pamphlet, throughout; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition.

117

"Falsely represented," would be the better expression. In the cast of the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is represented by a repetition of casts from one mould, of which the design itself is entirely conjectural.

118

I shall be obliged in future lectures, as hitherto in my other writings, to use the terms, Idolatry and Imagination in a more comprehensive sense; but here I use them for convenience sake, limitedly, to avoid the continual occurrence of the terms, noble and ignoble, or false and true, with reference to modes of conception.

119

"And in sum, he himself (Prometheus) was the master-maker, and Athena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused the moulded things to have soul (psyche) in them."—Lucian, Prometheus.

120

His relations with the two great Titans, Themis and Mnemosyne, belong to another group of myths. The father of Athena is the lower and nearer physical Zeus, from whom Metis, the mother of Athena, long withdraws and disguises herself.

121

The Latin verses are of later date; the contemporary plain prose retains the Venetian gutturals and aspirates.

122

The best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect faculty of representing monkeys, lizards, and insects; absolute incapability of representing either a man, a horse, or a lion.

123

See date of delivery of Lecture. The picture was of a peasant girl of eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire.

124

In Durer's "Melencholia."

125

Turner's, in the Hakewill series.

126

Nothing is more wonderful, or more disgraceful among the forms of ignorance engendered by modern vulgar occupations in pursuit of gain, than the unconsciousness, now total, that fine art is essentially Athletic. I received a letter from Birmingham, some little time since, inviting me to see how much, in glass manufacture, "machinery excelled rude hand work." The writer had not the remotest conception that he might as well have asked me to come and see a mechanical boat-race rowed by automata, and "how much machinery excelled rude arm-work."

127

Such as the sculptureless arch of Waterloo Bridge, for instance, referred to in the Third Lecture, § 84.

128

It is strange, at this day, to think of the relation of the Athenian Ceramicus to the French Tile-fields, Tileries, or Tuileries; and how these last may yet become—have already partly become—"the Potter's field," blood-bought (December, 1870.)

129

This relief is now among the other casts which I have placed in the lower school in the University galleries.

130

The reference is to a cast from a small and low relief of Florentine work in the Kensington Museum.

131

The actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not above the twentieth of an inch, but I magnified it in photograph, for this Lecture, so as to represent a relief with about the third of an inch for maximum projection.

132

This plate has been executed from a drawing by Mr. Burgess, in which he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, and preserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photograph would have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains.

133

These two marbles will always, henceforward, be sufficiently accessible for reference in my room at Corpus Christi College.

134

That it was also, in, some cases, the earliest that the Greeks gave, is proved by Lucian's account of his first lesson at his uncle's; the ενκοπευς, literally "in-cutter"—being the first tool put into his hand, and an earthenware tablet to cut upon, which the boy pressing too hard, presently breaks;—gets beaten—goes home crying, and becomes, after his dream above quoted, a philosopher instead of a sculptor.

135

The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine, though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my class, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do not choose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in fuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the Sixth Lecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of the published course on Florentine Sculpture.

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