Every variety
is here, from pale yellow to purple passing through orange, red,
and brown, entirely at your command; nearly every kind of green and
grey also is attainable, and with these and with pure white what
harmony might you not achieve. Of stained and variegated stone the
quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable. Were brighter
colours required, let glass, and gold protected by glass, be used
in mosaic, a kind of work as durable as the solid stone and
incapable of losing its lustre by time. And let the painter's work
be reserved for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber.
'This is the true and faithful way of building. Where this cannot
be, the device of external colouring may indeed be employed without
dishonour - but it must be with the warning reflection that a time
will come when such aids will pass away and when the building will
be judged in its lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin.
Better the less bright, more enduring fabric. The transparent
alabasters of San Miniato and the mosaics of Saint Mark's are more
warmly filled and more brightly touched by every return of morning
and evening, while the hues of the Gothic cathedrals have died like
the iris out of the cloud, and the temples, whose azure and purple
once flamed above the Grecian promontory, stand in their faded
whiteness like snows which the sunset has left cold.
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