Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.
VIII
RANCONEZZO
Piazza Cavour
A ROMANESQUE DOORWAY
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How the hand of Time has mellowed the ruddy brick and the marble's whiteness until ivory and rose blend and are in harmony with those stained and faded frescoes which still remain in the panels of the upper walls. Columns of veined marble stand in ranks on either side of the entrance. They are mounted on the backs of stiff-maned lions. Fit supporters are these for the arches of the Sanctuary as, at its very door, with claw and tooth they tear to pieces the bestial forms of vice and ignorance. Above rise the moulded archivolts, tier on tier, clothed with vine and tendril and peopled with bird and beast. These may be uncouth in form, but the rude hands that fashioned them learned their lesson at the feet of Nature. What there is of convention in arrangement or in pattern has flowed hither through the East from the original fountains of Greece and Rome but now at last all moves in freedom and without restraint. As in the short nights of the North sunrise follows fast upon the setting of the sun, so here though we see in this work the sunset of the Antique yet it is already aglow with light from the coming dawn of Mediæval Art.
Roberts, Italian Sketches.