nd put what form we can get into the
feebler projection of it thus obtained. The Egyptians do this, often
with exquisite skill, and then, as I showed you in a former lecture,
colour the whole--using the incision as an outline. Such a method of
treatment is capable of good service in representing, at little cost of
pains, subjects in distant effect, and common, or merely picturesque,
subjects even near. To show you what it is capable of, and what
coloured sculpture would be in its rudest type, I have prepared the
coloured relief of the John Dory[129] as a natural history drawing for
distant effect. You know, also, that I meant him to be ugly--as ugly as
any creature can well be. In time, I hope to show you prettier
things--peacocks and kingfishers,--butterflies and flowers, on grounds
of gold, and the like, as they were in Byzantine work. I shall expect
you, in right use of your aesthetic faculties, to like those better than
what I show you to-day. But it is now a question of method only; and if
you will look, after the lecture, first at the mere white relief, and
then see how much may be gained by a few dashes of colour, such as a
practised workman could lay in a quarter of an hour,--the whole forming,
if well done, almost a deceptive image--you will, at least, have the
range of power in Egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you.

164. But for fine sculpture, we must advance by far other methods. If we
carve the subject with real delicacy, the cast shadow of the incision
will interfere with its outline, so that, for representation of
beautiful things, you must clear away the ground about it, at all events
for a little distance. As the law of work is to use the least pains
possible, you clear it only just as far back as you need, and then for
the sake of order and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline.
By taking, in this case, the simplest I can,--a circle,--I can clear the
head with little labor in the removal of surface round it; (see the
lower figure in Plate XI.)

165. Now, these are the first terms of all well-constructed bas-relief.
The mass you have to treat consists of a piece of stone, which, however
you afterwards carve it, can but, at its most projecting point, reach
the level of the external plane surface out of which it was mapped, and
defined by a depression round it; that depression being at first a mere
trench, then a moat of certain width, of which the outer sloping bank is
in contact, as a