Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/161

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VI.—MARBLE COUCHANT.
133

would be undeceived by a glance either at the early redents of Amiens, fringing hollow vaults, or the late redents of Rouen, acting as crockets on the outer edges of pediments.

156. Again: if you think of the tracery in its bars, you call the cusp a redent; but if you think of it in the openings, you call the apertures of it foils. Do you suppose that the thirteenth century builder thought only of the strength of the bars of his enclosure, and never of the beauty of the form he enclosed? You will find in my chapter on the Aperture, in the "Stones of Venice," full development of the æsthetic laws relating to both these forms, while you may see, in Professor Willis's 'Architecture of the Middle Ages,' a beautiful analysis of the development of tracery from the juxtaposition of aperture; and in the article 'Meneau,' just quoted of M. Viollet le Duc, an equally beautiful analysis of its development from the masonry of the chassis. You may at first think that Professor Willis's analysis is inconsistent with M. Viollet le Duc's. But they are no more inconsistent than the accounts of the growth of a human being would be, if given by two anatomists, of whom one had