Half destroyed, or more, I said it was,—Time doing grievous work on it, and men worse.
You heard Vasari saying of it, that it stood on twelve degrees of twelve-faced steps. These—worn, doubtless, into little more than a rugged slope—have been replaced by the moderns with four circular steps, and an iron railing;[1] the bas-reliefs have been carried off from the panels of the second vase, and its fair marble lips choked with asphalt:—of what remains, you have here a rough but true image.
In which you see there is not a trace of Gothic feeling or design of any sort. No crockets, no pinnacles, no foils, no vaultings, no grotesques in sculpture. Panels between pillars, panels carried on pillars, sculptures in those panels like the Metopes of the Parthenon; a Greek vase in the middle, and griffins in the middle of that. Here is your font, not at all of Saint John, but of profane and civil-engineering John. This is hiss manner of baptism of the town of Perugia.
42. Thus early, it seems, the antagonism of profane Greek to ecclesiastical Gothic declares
- ↑ In Mr. Severn's sketch, the form of the original foundation is approximately restored.
