Nothing further is needed to render
their grace intelligible. Indeed, knowing the faults of the school, we
may seek some consolation by telling ourselves that these incomplete
fragments yield Lanini's best. In the coved compartments of the roof,
above the windows, ran a row of dancing boys; and these are still most
beautifully modelled, though the pallor of recent whitewash is upon
them. All the boys have blonde hair. They are naked, with scrolls or
ribbons wreathed around them, adding to the airiness of their
continual dance. Some of the loveliest are in a room used to stow away
the lumber of the church--old boards and curtains, broken lanterns,
candle-ends in tin sconces, the musty apparatus of festival
adornments, and in the midst of all a battered, weather-beaten bier.
THE PIAZZA OF PIACENZA
The great feature of Piacenza is its famous piazza--romantically,
picturesquely perfect square, surpassing the most daring attempts
of the scene-painter, and realising a poet's dreams. The space is
considerable, and many streets converge upon it at irregular angles.
Its finest architectural feature is the antique Palace of the Commune:
Gothic arcades of stone below, surmounted by a brick building with
wonderfully delicate and varied terra-cotta work in the round-arched
windows. Before this facade, on the marble pavement, prance the bronze
equestrian statues of two Farnesi--insignificant men, exaggerated
horses, flying drapery--as _barocco_ as it is possible to be
in style, but so splendidly toned with verdigris, so superb in their
_bravura_ attitude, and so happily placed in the line of two
streets lending far vistas from the square into the town beyond, that
it is difficult to criticise them seriously.
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