Page:Ruskin - The Seven Lamps of Architecture.djvu/197

Rh figures, of the ball and cross patterns between the arches, and of the triangular ornament round the arch on the left.

XLII. I have an intense love for these monochrom figures, owing to their wonderful life and spirit in all the works on which I have found them; nevertheless, I believe that, the excessive degree of abstraction which they imply necessitates our placing them in the rank of a progressive or imperfect art, and that a perfect building should rather be composed of the highest sculpture (organic form dominant and sub-dominant), associated with pattern colours, on the flat or broad surfaces. And we find, in fact, that the cathedral of Pisa, which is a higher type than that of Lucca, exactly follows this condition, the colour being put in geometrical patterns on its surfaces, and animal forms and lovely leafage used in the sculptured cornices and pillars. And I think that the grace of the carved forms is best seen when it is thus boldly opposed to severe traceries of colour, while the colour itself is, as we have seen, always most piquant when it is put into sharp and angular arrangements. Thus the sculpture is approved and sent off by the colour, and the colour seen to the best advantage in its opposition both to the whiteness and the grace of the carved marble.

XLIII. In the course of this and the preceding Chapters, I have now separately enumerated most of the conditions of Power and Beauty, which, in the outset, I stated to be the grounds of the deepest impressions with which architecture could affect the human mind: but I would ask permission to recapitulate them, in order to see there be any building which I may offer as an example of the unison, in such manner as is possible, of them all. Glancing back, then, to the beginning of the third Chapter, and introducing in their place the conditions incidentally determined in the two previous sections, we shall have the following list of noble characters: