Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/276

242 that the essential business of sculpture is to produce a series of agreeable bosses or rounded surfaces; to which, if possible, some meaning may afterwards be attached. In the present instance, every egg becomes an angel, or evangelist, and every arrow a lily, or a wing. The whole is in the most exquisitely finished Byzantine style.

287. I am not sure of being right in niy interpretation of the meaning of these figures; but I think there can be little question about it. There are eleven altogether; the three central, Christ with His mother and St. Joseph; then, two evangelists, with two alternate angels, on each side. Each of these angels carries a rod with a fleur-de-lys termination; their wings decorate the intermediate ridges (formed, in a pure Greek moulding, by the arrows); and, behind the heads of all the figures, there is now a circular recess; once filled, I doubt not, by a plate of gold. The Christ, and the Evangelists, all carry books, of which each has a mosaic, or intaglio ornament, in the shape of a cross. I could