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Those who have only once been driven round together with the crew of sightseers, can carry little away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze-work, inlaid agates and labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens with rows of pink primroses in spring, and of begonia in autumn, blooming beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta.
To overpraise the simplicity and beauty of design, the purity of feeling, and the technical excellence of Andrea's bronze-work, would be difficult. Many students will always be found to prefer his self-restraint and delicacy to the more florid manner of Ghiberti. What we chiefly observe in this gate is the control exercised by the sister art of painting over his mode of conception and treatment.
Those who have only once been driven round together with the crew of sight-seers can carry little away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze-work, inlaid agates and labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens with rows of pink primroses in spring and of begonia in autumn, blooming beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta.
In many instances, particularly in those of iron- and bronze-work, intarsia, and carving in wood, the modern Italian artists, who began as imitators, have attained a degree of excellence which entitles them to take rank as the founders of a new artistic renaissance, while their familiarity with cinque-cento art and the loving study of it have led them to produce work in each of the above-named branches which is calculated to improve the taste of both workers and purchasers in countries beyond the Alps.
Surface decoration, whether of fresco or mosaic, bronze-work or bas-relief, wood-carving or panelling in marble, baked clay or enamelled earthenware was never carried to such perfection in Gothic buildings of the purer type; nor had sculpture in the North an equal chance of detaching itself from the niche and tabernacle, which forced it to remain the slave of architecture.
Hence, such bronze work as originated was very unsatisfactory; the lack of skill in casting, and the consequent elaboration of bronze-work with the file, lasting late into the Renaissance. But the men of the Middle Ages were marvellously skilful carvers of stone.
Compared with the splendid temples of Nikko in Japan, glowing with scarlet and black lacquer, and gleaming with gold, temples on which cunning craftsmanship of wood-carving, enamels and bronze-work has been lavished in almost superfluous profusion, or even with the severer but dignified temples of unpainted cryptomeria wood at Kyoto, this Chinese pagoda was scarcely worth looking at.
The beautiful and curiously twisted columns, triple portals, arches, and arcades, as well as the whole façade and front exterior, are of black and white marbles; and there is some very fine bronze-work, painting, and statuary. It was given out to be a pure emerald, till the mistake was detected by a scientific judge.
"Three thousand camels," I murmured, recalling my dear mother's lessons; "all at one fell swoop; not to mention five hundred yoke of oxen, carried off by the Sabeans, then a leading firm of speculative cattle-dealers!" "Ah, well," Charles meditated aloud, shaking the ash from his cheroot into a Japanese tray fine antique bronze-work. "There were big transactions in live-stock even then!
Pottery, bronze-work, some exquisitely wrought scale armour, very light but overlapping six times, were unearthed within this enclosure. There were also Greek vases and other Greek remains, dating in the earlier part of the reign of Ahmosis, who had subsequently sent the Greeks away, and prevented them from trading in Egypt.
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