What the clay can do almost better than any crystalline material, may be seen in the mouldings so characteristic of Lombard architecture.  Geometrical patterns of the rarest and most fanciful device; scrolls of acanthus foliage, and traceries of tendrils; Cupids swinging in festoons of vines; angels joining hands in dance, with fluttering skirts and windy hair, and mouths that symbol singing; grave faces of old men and beautiful profiles of maidens leaning from medallions; wide-winged genii filling the spandrils of cloister arches, and cherubs clustered in the rondure of rose-windows—­ornaments like these, wrought from the plastic clay, and adapted with true taste to the requirements of the architecture, are familiar to every one who has studied the church front of Crema, the cloisters of the Certosa, the courts of the Ospedale Maggiore at Milan, or the public palace of Cremona.

If the mandorlato gives a smile to those majestic Lombard buildings, the terra-cotta decorations add the element of life and movement.  The thought of the artist in its first freshness and vivacity is felt in them.  They have all the spontaneity of improvisation, the seductive melody of unpremeditated music.  Moulding the supple earth with ‘hand obedient to the brain,’ the plasticatore has impressed his most fugitive dreams of beauty on it without effort; and what it cost him but a few fatigueless hours to fashion, the steady heat of the furnace has gifted with imperishable life.  Such work, no doubt, has the defects of its qualities.  As there are few difficulties to overcome, it suffers from a fatal facility—­nec pluteum coedit nec demorsos sapit ungues.  It is therefore apt to be unequal, touching at times the highest point of inspiration, as in the angels of Guccio at Perugia, and sinking not unfrequently into the commonplace of easygoing triviality, as in the common floral traceries of Milanese windows.  But it is never laboured, never pedantic, never dulled by the painful effort to subdue an obstinate material to the artist’s will.  If marble is required to develop the strength of the few supreme sculptors, terra-cotta saves intact the fancies of a crowd of lesser men.

When we reflect that all the force, solemnity, and beauty of the Lombard buildings was evoked from clay, we learn from them this lesson:  that the thought of man needs neither precious material nor yet stubborn substance for the production of enduring masterpieces.  The red earth was enough for God when He made man in His own image; and mud dried in the sun suffices for the artist, who is next to God in his creative faculty—­since non merita nome di creatore se non Iddio ed il poeta.  After all, what is more everlasting than terra-cotta?  The hobnails of the boys who ran across the brickfields in the Roman town of Silchester, may still be seen, mingled with the impress of the feet of dogs and hoofs of goats, in the tiles discovered there.  Such traces might serve as a metaphor for the footfall of artistic genius, when the form-giver has stamped his thought upon the moist clay, and fire has made that imprint permanent.