Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/277

Rh not show you a more severe or perfectly representative piece of architectural sculpture.

The heads of the eleven figures are as simply decorative as the ball flowers are in our English Gothic tracery; the slight irregularity produced by different gesture and character giving precisely the sort of change which a good designer wishes to see in the parts of a consecutive ornament.

288. The moulding closes at each extremity with a palm-tree, correspondent in execution with those on coins of Syracuse; for the rest, the interest of it consists only in these slight variations of attitude by which the figures express wonder or concern at some event going on in their presence. They are looking down; and, I do not doubt, are intended to be the heavenly witnesses of the story engraved on the stone below,—The Life and Death of the Baptist.

The lower stone on which this is related, is a model of skill in Fiction, properly so called. In Fictile art, in Fictile history, it is equally exemplary. 'Feigning' or 'affecting' in the most exquisite way by fastening intensely on the principal points.

Ask yourselves what are the principal