Mr. W. R. Lethaby calls attention to the practical and expedient way in which mediaeval carvers of effigies utilized their long blocks of stone:  “Notice,” he says, “how... the angels at the head and the beast at the foot were put in just to square out the block, and how all the points of high relief come to one plane so that a drawing board might be firmly placed on the statue.”  Only such cutting away as was actually necessary was encouraged; the figure was usually represented as putting the earthly powers beneath his feet, while angels ministered at his head.  St. Louis ordered a crown of thorns to be placed on his head when he was dying, and the crown of France placed at his feet.  The little niches around the tombs, in which usually stood figures of saints, were called “hovels.”  It is amusing to learn this to-day, with our long established association of the word with poverty and squalor.

Henry VII. left directions for the design of his tomb.  Among other stipulations, it was to be adorned with “ymages” of his patron saints “of copper and gilte.”  Henry then “calls and cries” to his guardian saints and directs that the tomb shall have “a grate, in manner of a closure, of coper and gilte,” which was added by English craftsmen.  Inside this grille in the early days was an altar, containing a unique relic,—­a leg of St. George.

Sculpture and all other decorative arts reached their ultimatum in England about the time of the construction of Henry VII.’s chapel at Westminster.  The foundation stone was laid in 1502, by Henry himself.  Of the interesting monuments and carvings contained in it, the most beautiful is the celebrated bronze figure by Torregiano on the tomb of the king and queen, which was designed during their lives.  Torregiano was born in 1470, and died in 1522, so he is not quite a mediaeval figure, but in connection with his wonderful work we must consider his career a moment.  Vasari says that he had “more pride than true artistic excellence.”  He was constantly interfering with Michelangelo, with whom he was a student in Florence, and on one memorable occasion they came to blows:  and that was the day when “Torregiano struck Michelangelo on the nose with his fist, using such terrible violence and crushing that feature in such a manner that the proper form could never be restored to it, and Michelangelo had his nose flattened by that blow all his life.”  So Torregiano fled from the Medicean wrath which would have descended upon him.  After a short career as a soldier, impatient at not being rapidly promoted, he returned to his old profession of a sculptor.  He went to England, where, says Vasari, “he executed many works in marble, bronze, and wood, for the king.”  The chief of these was the striking tomb of Henry VII. and the queen.  Torregiano’s agreement was to make it for a thousand pounds:  also there is a contract which he signed with Henry VIII., agreeing to construct a similar tomb also for that monarch, to be one quarter part larger than that of Henry VII., but this was not carried out.