to which I wish to lead you on these points will be the subject of future lectures, being of too great importance for examination here. But you cannot spend your time in more profitable study than by examining and comparing, touch for touch, the treatment of light and shadow in the figures of the Christ and sequent angels, in Plates VIII. and IX., as we have partly examined those of the subject before us; and in thus assuring yourself of the uselessness of trusting to any ordinary modern copyists, for anything more than the rudest chart or map—and even that inaccurately surveyed—of ancient design.
The last plate given in this volume contains the two lovely subjects of the Annunciation and Visitation, which, being higher from the ground, are better preserved than the groups represented in the other plates. They will be found to justify, in subtlety of chiselling, the title I gave to Giovanni, of the Canova of the thirteenth century.[1]
I am obliged to leave without notice, at present, the branch of ivy, given in illustration of the term 'marble rampant,' at the base of Plate
- ↑ Ante, § 179.
