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At the crossing, which is crowned by a square coffered dome, the spandrils are filled with curious winged heads, while the semi-dome of the apse is covered with narrow ribs. The windows are exactly like those outside, but the west door has over it a very refined though plain pediment.
It has five ogee trefoil niches with saints within them, and a framing of late Gothic foliage, with half-lengths of angels in the spandrils. The central saint is accompanied by two small kneeling donors; the other four are the Aquileian virgins. The spaces between are inlaid with red marble. The caps appear to be of the fourteenth century, the period of the foliage cornice.
Beneath, on capital's of the supporting pillars, stand the Sibyls, each with her attendant genius, while prophets lean or crouch within the spandrils of the arches. Thus every portion of this master-work is crowded with figures some detached, some executed in relief; and yet, amid so great a multitude, the eye is not confused; the total effect is nowhere dissipated.
On the plinth under a round arched recess stands a sarcophagus with a tablet in front bearing the date A.D. 1525, while behind in an elegant shell-topped niche is a figure kneeling on a beautiful corbel. The front of this arch is adorned with cherubs' heads, the jambs with arabesques, and heads look out of circles in the spandrils.
In the spandrils of the gateway and in many other parts of the building might be seen the arms of the family; while the tall twisted stacks of chimneys, which appeared to spring from all parts of the roof, were carved and built in such curious and quaint devices that they were rather an ornament than an excrescence.
At the church of S. Giovanni Battista is a fine external stair of fourteenth-century Venetian type, a double flight returning on itself, with a landing at the change of direction. The balustrade is continued round the side of the church and the tower, but with square unmoulded shafts in place of the colonnettes. The trefoiled heads are cut in the rail with the carved spandrils between.
The architects, Sir Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward, had allowed their workmen to design parts of the detail, such as capitals and spandrils, quite in the spirit of Ruskin's teaching, and the work was accordingly of deep interest to him. So far back as April, 1856, he had given an address to the men employed at the Museum, whom he met, on Dr. Acland's invitation, at the Workmen's Reading Rooms.
Vasari knew no difference between these two kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects. To discern the difference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and the spandrils of the Lateran cloister, requires thorough training of the hand in the finest methods of draughtsmanship; and, secondly, trained habit of reading the mythology and ethics of design.
§ IX. The methods of treating these spaces might alone furnish subject for three very interesting essays; but I shall only note the most essential points respecting them. One of the spandril decorations of Bayeux Cathedral is given in the "Seven Lamps," Plate VII. fig. 4. It is little more than one of these Euston Square spandrils, with its circles foliated.
The canopy has six fourteenth or fifteenth-century octagonal colonnettes, supporting ogee trefoiled arches with a domical termination, coloured in red and white chequers, and with scrolls and rosettes of red on the spandrils of the arches below. The shape and decoration show Arab influence strongly. In the pavement is still preserved a great deal of that laid down by Elias in the sixth century.
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