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Two buildings projected squarely forward, like the bastions of a fortress, exhibiting on their faces low bassi-relievi of vast size, which represented, in the consecrated manner, the victorious Pharaoh scourging his enemies and trampling them under foot; immense pages of history carved with a chisel on colossal stone books which the most distant posterity was yet to read.
Among these are a torso in marble of a Roman knight, in a cuirass, and another colossal torso, with a charming little draped statue seated in a curule chair, and holding a cornucopia in the left hand; a cinerary monument, enriched with bassi-relievi, representing a human sacrifice; a bronze head of Apollo, much injured; and a Janus.
When Tahoser, whose temples were beginning to beat violently, and who began to see red flashes in the dark waters of the river, rose hastily to fill her lungs with a long breath of air, the papyrus boat had resumed its confident way, and Poëri was handling the scull with the imperturbable phlegm of the allegorical personages who row the barge of Maut on the bassi-relievi and the paintings of the temples.
The pillars and the columns seemed to strike firmly into the ground in order to upbear the weight of the mighty stones placed on the cubes of their capitals, the walls to slope inwards so as to have a firmer foundation, and the stones to join together so as to form but one block; but polychromous decorations and bassi-relievi hollowed out and enriched with more brilliant tints added, in the daytime, lightness and richness to these vast masses, which when night had fallen, recovered all their imposing effect.
The first stage retreats from the pediment; and the second, which is of a round form, and terminated by a conical-shaped top, is less in advance than the first, giving a pyramidal effect. The four fronts of the pediment are nearly covered by bassi-relievi, representing battles of infantry; the figures of which are nearly as large as life, and admirably designed.
Besides, were eight hundred musicians too many to precede the Pharaoh, beloved of Ammon Ra, represented by colossi of basalt and granite sixty cubits high, whose name was written on the cartouches of imperishable monuments, and whose story was carved and painted upon the walls of the hypostyle halls, on the sides of pillars, in endless bassi-relievi and innumerable frescoes?
Within this cloister and the hall leading to it are the well-known Pembroke Marbles statues, busts, urns, vases, bassi-relievi, and fragments of great value from Grecian and Roman works. This collection was formed during the last century, being gathered by the then earl from various sources.
M. Malosse believes that the mausoleum was erected to Julius, and the arch to Augustus Cæsar the first being dead, and the second then living; and that the statues in the former, in the Roman togas, were intended to represent the two. He imagines that the subjects of the bassi-relievi on the four fronts of the mausoleum bear out this hypothesis.
Giotto made not only the design, but even, Vasari assures us, worked at the groups and "bassi-relievi" of these "stories in marble, in which are depicted the beginning of all the arts." ...
I heard in the distance, muttering and complaining low, the nations upon whose heads I wipe my sandals or which I lift by their hair, as I am represented doing on the symbolical bassi-relievi of the palaces, and in my cold breast, as strong as that of a basalt god, I never heard the beat of my own heart.
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