Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/283

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
APPENDIX.
249

cannot tolerate this monstrosity. He indulgently corrects Giovanni, and Adam and Eve have entirely orthodox one-eighth heads, by rule of schools.

But how of Eve's sharp-cut nose and pointed chin, thin lips, and look of quiet but rather surprised attention—not specially reverent, but looking keenly out from under her eyelids, like a careful servant receiving an order?

Well—those are all Giovanni's own notions;—not the least classical, nor scientific, nor even like a pretty, sentimental modern woman. Like a Florentine woman—in Giovanni's time—it may be; at all events, very certainly, what Giovanni thought proper to carve.

Now examine your modern edition. An entirely proper Greco-Roman academy plaster bust, with a proper nose, and proper mouth, and a round chin, and an expression of the most solemn reverence; always, of course, of a classical description. Very fine, perhaps. But not Giovanni.

294. After Eve's head, let us look at her feet. Giovanni has his own positive notions about those also. Thin and bony, to excess, the right, undercut all along, so that the profile