§24. PERSPECTIVE IN METAL AND STONE. 211 



which would appear in mediaeval sculpture.* The waves of the 

 sea, clouds, and trees, are equally ill-adapted to a bas-relief; 

 and all attempts at distance and perspective are unsuccessful. 

 [Nothing but the exquisite skill of a Grhiberti could make us 

 tolerate background landscape, and distant as well as near 

 figures in bas-relief, or the different actions of the same 

 persons, on one field; and, however we may admire the 

 execution of the beautiful gates of the Florence bapistery 

 the introduction of background in bronze or marble is an 

 unjustifiable liberty.] This opinion, I am glad to find, accords 

 with the remarks of Sir C. Eastlake, who (in his " Literature 

 of the Fine Arts, p. 98) says, " the Greeks, as a general prin- 

 ciple, considered the ground of figures in relief to be the real 

 wall, or whatever the solid plane might be, and not to repre- 

 sent air as if it was a picture This was founded on 



rational principles The shadows thrown by figures on 



the surface on which they are relieved at once betray the 

 solidity of that surface;" .... and the " absence of perspec- 

 tive in Greek bassi-relievi was not from absolute ignorance 

 of its principles, but from a conviction that they would be 

 misapplied in sculpture." He then observes that even Vasari 

 "admits the absurdity of representing the plane on which the 

 figures stand ascending towards the horizon, according to the 

 laws of perspective, in consequence of which 'we often see,' 

 he says, ' the point of the foot of a figure, standing with its 

 back to the spectator, touching the middle of the leg,' owing 

 to the rapid ascent, or foreshortening of the ground. Such 

 errors, he adds, are to be seen 'even in the doors of San 

 Giovanni. ' " f 



[Stone and metal are suited to statues and bas-reliefs, not 



* See the ship in the departure of Chryscis, a painting found at Pompeii. 

 (PI. xxi. vol. i. Inghirami Gal. Omer.) 



f Vasari Vit. Pit. Intr. Scult. ch. iii. where he speaks of the inferiority of 

 the antique treatment of bas-reliefs and of " mezzi-rilievi." 



P 2 



