of line. But the ornamental designers of the Renaissance drew their inspiration from the Græco-Roman travesties of Greek ornamentation, such as the tiresome arabesques that were painted on the walls of Pompeian houses.
The arrangements, as well as the treatment, of the details drawn from plant life that are associated with this style of design are often most artificial and inorganic, as in the pulpit of Santa Croce before mentioned, where on the side of a console (Fig. 100) fruit and leafage issue from a nondescript receptacle of ungraceful shape, having a clumsy fluted stalk bound with a fluttering ribbon ending in a tassel. Such unnaturally
Fig. 100.—Console of pulpit in Santa Croce.
composed details are unknown in the pure Gothic art which the men of the Renaissance thought so barbaric. The introduction of objects like the singular cornucopia and the ribbon of this design is common in Renaissance ornamentation. Without affirming that artificial objects may never enter into an ornamental composition, I think it may be said that such objects, if used as conspicuous features, ought to have some beauty of form,[1] and certainly every group of objects, of whatever kind, should be composed so as to produce an effect of organic unity.
- ↑ The theory respecting the use of artificial elements in architectural ornamentation developed by Ruskin in his well-known chapter entitled, "The Lamp of Beauty," in the Seven Lamps of Architecture, is, I believe, entirely" right in principle, though the author is arbitrary in some of his conclusions and overemphatic in some of his statements.
