Oriental manufactures, are to be traced in the Romanesque ornaments, and were the origin of many of those most familiar to us, actual architectural features of Classic form, such as capitals, do not seem to have been very directly copied, excepting where the remains of antique buildings were at hand to offer models. The Romanesque capitals of earlier date are, in many cases, of types belonging to no other style, though in others they betray a distant descent from the Roman; and the cushion capital, and perhaps others, seem derived from Byzantium; but generally their forms differ much from the original, till we approach the period of which I am treating, when suddenly they assume an almost Classic form—the acanthus being freely used, and that of a variety resembling that of ancient Greece ([Fig. 18]), as distinguished from Rome ([Fig. 19]); and the same Greek leafage being found in cornices ([Fig. 21]), scroll-work ([Fig. 20]), and almost every other position in which it could be used. Not having travelled in the south of France, I will not venture to be very dogmatic as to the cause of this sudden change. I fancy, from such drawings as I have seen, that this Byzantine capital prevails a good deal in the south of France, but I am not able with certainty to distinguish it from the capitals directly imitated from Classic remains around.[13] M. Viollet de Duc views them all as being of this origin, calling them Gallo-Romaine, as distinguished from the Romanesque capitals found side by side with them. I view those, however, I am treating of as distinctly Byzantine, and the following facts suggest a route by which the purely Byzantine foliage may have reached the north of France.
| Fig. 20.—Scroll, St. Denis. | Fig. 21.—Part of a Cornice, St. Denis. |
The Church of St. Mark, at Venice, was erected between the years 977 and 1071, and its capitals are, many of them, precisely of the kind I am naming ([Fig. 22]), and are also identical with many at Constantinople ([Fig. 23]). No one who has had a training in drawing the Corinthian capital will fail to recognise at Venice that variety of the acanthus by which he has been accustomed to distinguish the Greek from the Roman Corinthian. According to M. de Verneill, the Church of St. Frond, at
| Fig. 22.—Capital from the Church of St. Mark, Venice. | Fig 23.—Capital from St. John’s, Constantinople. |
