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This was good St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop of Milan. The people idolized him; princes lavished uncounted treasures upon him. We stood in his tomb. Near by was the sarcophagus, lighted by the dripping candles. The walls were faced with bas-reliefs representing scenes in his life done in massive silver.
It is uncertain whether a punishment even more barbarous than these was not occasionally resorted to. In two or three bas-reliefs executioners are represented in the act of flaying prisoners with a knife. The bodies are extended upon the ground or against a wall, to which they are fastened by means of four pegs attached by strings or thongs to the two wrists and the two ankles.
In chambers, or parts of chambers, which have been left unfinished, and even in the quarries, we constantly find sketches of intended bas-reliefs, outlined in red or black ink. The copy was generally executed upon a small scale, then squared off, and transferred to the wall by the pupils and assistants of the master.
We can scarcely say that Egyptian painting is beautiful; but it certainly is very interesting. The Egyptians had three kinds of painting: one on flat surfaces, a second on bas-reliefs, or designs a little raised and then colored, and a third on designs in intaglio, or hollowed out from the flat surface and the colors applied to the figures thus cut out.
His business is now with the frieze that ran round the building behind the columns, and upon which a series of bas-reliefs were sculptured; of which Sir Henry Ellis gives the following clear outline:
The sculptured bas-reliefs are very interesting, being early Christian emblems and curious devices, symbols of sheep, palms, peacocks, crosses, and the four rivers of Paradise flowing down in stony streams from stony sources, and monograms, and pious rebuses. At the entrance of the crypt is an open stone book, called the Breviary of Gregory the Great.
The sisters had at first only received and nursed "that woman" with repugnance. Those who have seen the bas-reliefs of Rheims will recall the inflation of the lower lip of the wise virgins as they survey the foolish virgins.
Having examined these bas-reliefs, the visitor should at once turn to the groups which occupied central space in the saloon, and which originally adorned the eastern and western pediments of the Parthenon. These occupy the central space towards the southern end of the saloon. The group on the eastern pediment originally represented the birth of Minerva.
The marble slabs that covered the whole outside of the temple had been burnt for lime in a kiln that stood in front of the portico in the sixteenth century, and in this lime-kiln were found fragments of statues, bas-reliefs, and inscriptions, which were about to be destroyed in that barbarous fashion.
It rose over the steps, it leaped up the walls like an angry wave, it flowed over the blue skies, over the yellow sands, over the sunshine of landscapes, and over the pretty pathos of ragged innocence and of meek starvation. It swallowed up the delicious idyll in a boat and the mutilated immortality of famous bas-reliefs. It flowed from outside it rose higher, in a destructive silence.
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