Well, the vaulting ribs, as in Giotto's vault, then, have here, under
their painting, this rude profile: but do not suppose the vaults are
simply the shells cast over them. Look how the ornamental borders fall
on the capitals! The plaster receives all sorts of indescribably
accommodating shapes--the painter contracting and stopping his design
upon it as it happens to be convenient. You can't measure anything; you
can't exhaust; you can't grasp,--except one simple ruling idea, which a
child can grasp, if it is interested and intelligent: namely, that the
room has four sides with four tales told upon them; and the roof four
quarters, with another four tales told on those. And each history in
the sides has its correspondent history in the roof. Generally, in good
Italian decoration, the roof represents constant, or essential facts;
the walls, consecutive histories arising out of them, or leading up to
them. Thus here, the roof represents in front of you, in its main
quarter, the Resurrection--the cardinal fact of Christianity; opposite
(above, behind you), the Ascension; on your left hand, the descent of
the Holy Spirit; on your right, Christ's perpetual presence with His
Church, symbolized by His appearance on the Sea of Galilee to the
disciples in the storm.
The correspondent walls represent: under the first quarter, (the
Resurrection), the story of the Crucifixion; under the second quarter,
(the Ascension), the preaching after that departure, that Christ will
return--symbolized here in the Dominican church by the consecration of
St.
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