Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/260

 236 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.-ea. the world wherever the cultus of the goddess obtained. But the people for whom the terra-cotta was fabricated would not have been deceived as to the real intention of the artist, and would forthwith have placed the pillars exactly where we have on their proper stylobate. Fresh light has been thrown on the subject from another part of the globe. In 1882, on the Labican way, near Rome, a fragmentary piece of " sepulchral glass," vetro cimiteriano, was unearthed. It is unique of its kind, and as the name implies, is generally found in old places of burial. The seven-branch candlestick, the palms and other emblems of Jewish art, make it evident that we have here a representation of the temple of Jerusalem, due to the Hebrew colony in Rome, which Sig. Rossi places in the last decades of the third cen- tury, or at latest in the be- ginning of the fourth a.d. We refer those of our readers who may wish to know more re- specting this monument, to Sig. Rossi's learned disserta- tion. For the purpose of our thesis we are concerned with the odd pillars alone, which the artist, to distinguish them from the red painted columns of the façade, and those of the cloisters around the temple, left white, had invested with a deep brown russet colour to imitate bronze. Our drawing (Fig. 151) not being polychrome, the two dark colours, red and brown, cannot be differentiated ; but the real position of the twin columns, awkwardly placed at different levels, one not resting upon its socket, but some inches above it, is not to be mistaken. 1 To return. In virtue of the principle that a pylon should pro- ject beyond the building to which it serves as façade, we have allowed 30 cubits as length of the pylons of the double gate- ways, and 60 for that of the temple, to render it proportional 1 This interesting monument was fully described in the daily and weekly publi- cations at the time of its discovery. — Editor. Fig. 151. — Bottom of Glass Bowl. Archives de r Orient Latin, torn. ii. p. 439.