e described. On
the other hand, there are one or two unique conditions, which will be
noted in the buildings where they occur.[77] The Ducal Palace furnishes
three anomalies in the arch, dogtooth, and dentil: it has a hyperbolic
arch, as noted above, Chap. X., Sec. XV.; it has a double-fanged dogtooth
in the rings of the spiral shafts on its angles; and, finally, it has a
dentil with concave sides, of which the section and two of the blocks,
real size, are given in Plate XIV. The labor of obtaining this difficult
profile has, however, been thrown away; for the effect of the dentil at
ten feet distance is exactly the same as that of the usual form: and the
reader may consider the dogtooth and dentil in that plate as fairly
representing the common use of them in the Venetian Gothic.

Sec. XVI. I am aware of no other form of fillet decoration requiring
notice: in the Northern Gothic, the fillet is employed chiefly to give
severity or flatness to mouldings supposed to be too much rounded, and
is therefore generally plain. It is itself an ugly moulding, and, when
thus employed, is merely a foil for others, of which, however, it at
last usurped the place, and became one of the most painful features in
the debased Gothic both of Italy and the North.

FOOTNOTES:

[74] I do not here speak of artistical merits, but the play of the
light among the lower shafts is also singularly beautiful in this
sketch of Prout's, and the character of the wild and broken leaves,
half dead, on the stone of the foreground.

[75] Vide the "Seven Lamps," p. 122.

[76] The sections of all the mouldings are given on the right of
each; the part which is constantly solid being shaded, and that
which is cut into dentils left.

[77] As, however, we shall not probably be led either to Bergamo or
Bologna, I may mention here a curiously rich use of the dentil,
entirely covering the foliation and tracery of a niche on the
outside of the duomo of Bergamo; and a roll, entirely incrusted, as
the handle of a mace often is with nails, with massy dogteeth or
nail-heads, on the door of the Pepoli palace of Bologna.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE ROLL AND RECESS.

Sec. I. I have classed these two means of architectural effect together,
because the one is in most cases the negative of the other, and is used
to relieve it exactly as shadow relieves light; recess alternating with
roll, not only in lateral, but i