Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/282

 254 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud/ea. faces formally specified in the text. It reduces, moreover, the " swelling member " interposing between the shaft and the capital, strictly so called, to the dimensions of a torus moulding, inadequate to display the striking net- work pattern, which, had it extended on so narrow a sur- face, would scarcely have been noticed with so much compla- cency by Jewish writers. It yet labours under another dis- advantage : that no matter the amplitude allowed to the capital, its diameter, being little more than that of the shaft, would not yield sufficient room for the number of pome- granates indicated in the text. On the other hand, if, to get them all in, their relative size is reduced, the general effect would amount to that of an ordinary Ionian beading. This, at something more than ten metres above ground, would result in blurred aspect ; whereas the creation of M. Chipiez is free from all these drawbacks : it is a type which we met in Chaldaea and upon which we drew attention at the time. 1 The lines of the ornament about the capital are geometric and curvilinear in form, while the four-petallous flower, widely open, yields a broken line of far greater dimension than any other combination would have supplied. 2 Ample scope, too, 1 Hist, of Art, torn. ii. pp. 217, 223, Fig. 74. 2 Stade (Gesckichte, torn. i. p. 332) has followed the text more closely than De Vogué, and given his capital the requisite spheroidal form ; with pomegranates, not on an insignificant moulding, but on the " swelling member," the importance of which has been fully grasped by him. Nevertheless, his capital cannot be said to bear even a far-off resemblance to a lily of any kind, albeit not unlike an asparagus top, whilst the shaft is bare and poor in the extreme. Bibliothèque Nationale,