File:Essays and Belles Lettres (1906) (14804230533).jpg

Identifier: essbelleslet00rhys (find matches)
Title: Essays and Belles Lettres
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Rhys, Ernest 1859-1946 (editor)
Subjects:
Publisher: New York: E P Dutton & Co
Contributing Library: Brigham Young University-Idaho, David O. McKay Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University-Idaho

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Fig. 13. or flat-bottomed brackets of stone, projecting from the wall.Each bracket is about a foot and a half square, and isshaped thus (fig. 13.), showing to the spectator, as he walksbeneath, the flat bottom of each bracket, quite in the shade,but within a couple of feet of the eye, and lighted by thereflected light from the pavement. The whole of the sur-face of the wall round the great entrance is covered withbas-relief, as a matter of course; but the architect appearsto have been jealous of the smallest space which was wellwithin the range of sight; and the bottom of every bracketis decorated also—nor that slightly, but decorated with no Architecture and Painting 93 fewer than six figures each, besides a flower border, in a space,as I said, not quite a foot and a half square. The shape ofthe field to be decorated being a kind of quatrefoil, as shownmfig. 13., four small figures are placed, one in each foil, andtwo larger ones in the centre. I had only time, in passing
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Fig. 14. through the town, to make a drawing of one of the anglesof these pedestals; that sketch I have enlarged, in orderthat you may have some idea of the character of the sculpture. Here is the enlargement of it (fig, 14.). Nowobserve, this is one of the angles of the bottom of apedestal, not two feet broad, on the outside of a Gothic 94 Architecture and Painting building; it contains only one of the four little figureswhich form those angles; and it shows you the head onlyof one of the larger figures in the centre. Yet just observehow much design, how much wonderful composition, thereis in this mere fragment of a building of the great times; afragment, literally no larger than a school-boy could strikeoff in wantonness with a stick : and yet I cannot tell youhow much care has been spent,—not so much on theexecution, for it does not take much trouble to execute

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