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Only the fragments of frescoes and the rich terra-cotta mouldings and slender columns of the elegant cortile recall the joyous day which Beatrice d'Este and her ladies spent at the villa.
Thorwaldsen was not a man of great originative genius, and nothing at all of a potter, troubling himself little about hard or soft paste or this or the other glaze; but he infused the love of classic form into the bleakest corners of Scandinavia, and made her youth modellers of terra-cotta into shapes unexcelled by any imitators of the antique.
And he made two other medallions in the same place, in relief, in one of which, for the Guild of Apothecaries, he made a Madonna, and in the other, for the Mercatanzia, a lily on a bale, which has round it a festoon of fruits and foliage of various sorts, so well made, that they appear to be real and not of painted terra-cotta.
However, this was not his last connection with this part of Kensington, for in 1861 he built himself a house in Palace Green, but he only occupied it for two years, when his death occurred at the early age of fifty-two. The houses in Kensington Court, near by, are elaborately decorated with ornamental terra-cotta mouldings.
Impruneta is famous for its new terra-cotta vessels and its ancient della Robbias. For in the church is some of Luca's most exquisite work an altarpiece with a frieze of aerial angels under it, and a stately white saint on either side, and the loveliest decorated columns imaginable; while in an adjoining chapel is a Christ crucified mourned by the most dignified and melancholy of Magdalens.
The tournament cost 10,000 gold florins and was very splendid, Verrocchio and other artists being called in to design costumes, and it is thought that Pollaiuolo's terra-cotta of the Young Warrior in the Bargello represents the comely Giuliano de' Medici as he appeared in his armour in the lists.
'A faint sage-green, or a pale gray or even that too lovely terra-cotta red 'Flower-pot colour! screamed Bessie. 'Horrid! 'I should like to go, faltered Ida, 'but I have so much to do an afternoon class no, it is quite impossible. Thank you very much for thinking of me, all the same.
Presently the high colors of the rocks appear high cliffs with terra-cotta facades, and a new look in the texture of the rocks, a soft, beaming, less frowning expression, and colored as if by the Western sunsets. We are looking upon much younger rocks geologically than we see at home, and they have the tints and texture of youth.
In ceiling of east and west arches, faint relief, terra-cotta effect, Greek designs; coloring, orange, faint greens, and browns. Signs of zodiac on gateways, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces. Half-dome to south, "Niche of Ceres." Rich coloring in vault, contrasted with light tones in arched section.
You may tell me that the terra-cotta constructions within it carry ugliness beyond a joke; you may tell me that in spite of the park's vaunted situation nothing can be seen from it save the chimneys and kilns of earthenware manufactories, the scaffoldings of pitheads, the ample dome of the rate-collector's offices, the railway, minarets of non-conformity, sundry undulating square miles of monotonous house-roofs, the long scarves of black smoke which add such interest to the sky of the Five Towns and, of course, the gold angel.
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