Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/212

170 the scrolls in the same relief (Plate IX) has a character which makes us wonder how a designer who could so finely render the nervous life of leafage could associate with this leafage the lifeless details just noticed, and the further monstrosities of the axial composition including the characterless grotesque animals out of which the scroll leafage issues. The symmetrical Arabesque scheme of the whole, and the nonsensical details of the central part, are from the Roman source, while the leafage, though also cast in the Roman form, owes much of its best quality to the inspiration of Gothic art. The qualities that give their subtle charm to such conventionalized forms elude complete analysis and definition, but they are based on the proportions, curvature, and relations of lines and surfaces that belong to the organic forms of nature.

Such subtle beauty of leafage is exceptional in the ornamental design of the Renaissance. The carver of the fifteenth century generally misses the vigour of line, the finer surface flexures, and the expression of organic structure shown in the supremely fine details of the reliefs by the Lombardi. The convolutions of Renaissance design are apt to be more formal and the leading lines less springy. In some cases the finer qualities of curvature are wholly wanting, as in the scrolls that border the bronze door-valves of St. Peter's in Rome by the Florentine sculptor Filarete (Fig. 99). In these scrolls the heavy and lifeless character of the poorest Roman models is reproduced. The finish of these carvings, in the better examples, is usually elaborate, and in such work as that of the