n seen under an unvarying and often defective light;
and secondly, that mediaeval sculpture was the handicraft of the subtle
carver in delicate stone.

The sculpture which was an essential part of Lombard and Gothic
architecture required a treatment that should adapt it to its particular
place and subordinate it to a given effect. According to the height
above the eye and the direction of the light, certain details had to be
exaggerated, certain others suppressed; a sculptured window, like those
of Orsanmichele, would not give the delightful pattern of black and
white unless some surfaces were more raised than others, some portions
of figure or leafage allowed to sink into quiescence, others to start
forward by means of the black rim of undercutting; and a sepulchral
monument, raised thirty feet above the spectator's eye, like those
inside Sta. Maria Novella, would present a mere intricate confusion
unless the recumbent figure, the canopy, and various accessories, were
such as to seem unnatural at the level of the eye. Thus, the heraldic
lions of one of these Gothic tombs have the black cavity of the jaw cut
by marble bars which are absolutely out of proportion to the rest of the
creature's body, and to the detail of the other features, but render the
showing of the teeth even at the other side of the transept. Again, in
the more developed art of the fifteenth century, Rossellino's Cardinal
of Portugal has the offside of his face shelved upwards so as to catch
the light, because he is seen from below, and the near side would
otherwise be too prominent; while the beautiful dead warrior, by an
unknown sculptor, at Ravenna has had a portion of his jaw and chin
deliberately cut away, because the spectator is intended to look down
upon his recumbent figure. If we take a cast of the Cardinal's head and
look down upon it, or hang a cast of the dead warrior on the wall, the
whole appearance alters; the expression is almost reversed and the
features are distorted. On the other hand, a cast from a real head,
placed on high like the Cardinal's, would become insignificant, and laid
at the height of a table, like the dead warrior's, would look lumbering
and tumid. Thus, again, the head of Donatello's Poggio, which is visible
and intelligible placed high up in the darkness of the Cathedral of
Florence, looks as if it had been gashed and hacked with a blunt knife
when seen in the cast at the usual height in an ordinary light.

Now th