"Dominus Jachobus hobiit[121] M.CCLI. Dominus Laurentius hobiit M.CCLXXVIII."
You see, therefore, this tomb is an invaluable example of thirteenth century sculpture in Venice. In Plate VI., you have an example of the (coin) sculpture of the date accurately corresponding in Greece to the thirteenth century in Venice, when the meaning of symbols was everything and the workmanship comparatively nothing. The upper head is an Athena, of Athenian work in the seventh or sixth century—(the coin itself may have been struck later, but the archaic type was retained). The two smaller impressions below are the front and obverse of a coin of the same age from Corinth, the head of Athena on one side, and Pegasus, with the archaic Koppa, on the other. The smaller head is bare, the hair being looped up at the back and closely bound with an olive branch. You are to note this general outline of the head, already given in a more finished type in Plate II., as a most important elementary form in the finest sculpture, not of Greece only, but of all Christendom. In the upper head the hair is restrained still more closely by a round helmet, for the most part smooth, but embossed with a single flower tendril, having one bud, one flower, and above it, two olive leaves. You have thus the most absolutely restricted symbol possible to human thought of the power of Athena over the flowers and trees of the earth. An olive leaf by itself could not have stood for the sign of a tree, but the two can, when set in position of growth.
Plate VI.—Archaic Athena of Athens and Corinth.
I would not give you the reverse of the coin on the same plate, because you would have looked at it only, laughed at it, and not examined the rest; but here it is, wonderfully engraved for you (Fig. 6): of it we shall have more to say afterwards.
Fig. 6.
81. And now as you look at these rude vestiges of the religion of Greece, and at the vestiges, still ruder, on the Ducal tomb, of the religion of Christendom, take warning against two opposite errors.
There is a school of teachers who will tell you that nothing but Greek art is deserving of study, and that all our work at this day should be an imitation of it.