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All the mouldings, sculptures, and bass-reliefs seem to to have been executed after the walls and pillars were in their places; and everywhere the stones are fitted together in a manner so perfect that the joinings are not easy to find. There is neither mortar nor mark of the chisel; the surfaces are as smooth as polished marble.
So did the black polished oak floor, and the walls with their white bass-reliefs of twisting wreaths and scrolls, with busts at intervals of Cicero and Dante, and other severe and melancholy personages. The rapiers upon the high white chimney-piece were more to his taste.
The Cappella Colleoni is our destination that masterpiece of the sculptor-architect's craft, with its variegated marbles rosy and white and creamy yellow and jet-black in patterns, bass-reliefs, pilasters, statuettes, incrusted on the fanciful domed shrine. Upon the façade are mingled, in the true Renaissance spirit of genial acceptance, motives Christian and Pagan with supreme impartiality.
Here, then, we see how Adam and Eve were made and tempted and expelled from Paradise and set to labor, how Cain killed Abel, and Lamech slew a man to his hurt, and Isaac was offered on the mountain. The tale of human sin and the promise of redemption are epitomized in twelve of the sixteen bass-reliefs.
These are covered with statues and bass-reliefs, many of the former being in a state of dilapidation which, considering the extreme hardness of the stone, indicates great age, while others are true chefs-d'oeuvre. The entire structure forms a square, and every part is admirable both in general effect and detail.
One day, however, he received us, and we saw a dining-room wainscoted in old oak, with table, chimney-piece, sideboards, dressers, and chairs, all in wood so carved as to have caused envy to Cornejo Duque and Verbruggen, if they had been present; a drawing-room upholstered in buttercup damask, and with doors, cornices, skirting-board, and embrasures in ebony; a library arranged in bookcases inlaid with tortoise-shell and brass in Boule style; a bathroom in yellow and black marble, with stucco bass-reliefs; a dome boudoir, whose ancient paintings had been restored by Edmond Hedouin; a gallery lighted from above, which we recognized later in the collection of Cousin Pons.
"In the British Museum and elsewhere you have seen bass-reliefs and figures brought from the ruins of Assyrian cities, and in these the country is called Assur. "The history becomes complicated, and is a record of the achievements of the Assyrian kings, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Sennacherib, and others. It would not be profitable to go over them.
Imagine a reclining figure one hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet high, entirely overlaid with plate gold; the soles of its monstrous feet covered with bass-reliefs inlaid with mother-of-pearl and chased with gold; each separate design distinctly representing one of the many transmigrations of Buddha whereby he obtained Niphan.
The carving of the stone was extraordinarily rich, to be sure; but the bass-reliefs which covered the walls were wholly of a gloomy sort being for the most part representations of the slaughter of men in sacrifice, and the tearing of hearts out so that the eight of them made me shiver, notwithstanding the warmth of the sun.
Many may think this interpretation of Amadeo's bass-reliefs far-fetched; yet, such as it is, it agrees with the spirit of humanism, bent ever on harmonizing the two great traditions of the past.
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