ABSTRACT
The Pleasures of Limestone They contain on an average, it is reckoned, about 5 per cent of lime. This lime is carried in solution by rivers to the sea. Except under special circumstances it is not then deposited, since the amount of carbon dioxide in sea-water keeps the calcium carbonate in solution: it is, however, extracted from the water by animals and plants.1 The deposits of their remains are cemented into limestone. Limestone is petrified organism. We may see hundreds of shell fossils on the surfaces of some blocks. Nor are the animal fossils rare. The skeletons of coral are common, so too of the crinoid, a kind of star-fish. These fossils were, and are, encountered continually in the quarries ; and however falsely ancient philosophy and science may have explained them, art, which employs in a more direct way deep unconscious ' knowledge5, magnified the truth. Shells were a Quattro Cento symbol. They have a long history in classical architecture and sculpture. But it was the Quattro Cento carvers who in their exuberance contrived for them the import of momentous emblems. Marine decoration of every kind is abundant in Quattro Cento art: dolphins, sea-monsters, as well as the fruits of the earth and the children of men, encrust the stone or grow there. The metamorphosed structure of marble encouraged an extreme anthropomorphic interpretation of its original life. Needless to say, though marine symbols attained a heightened significance in the humanism expressed by Quattro Cento art, they are common to Roman and Greek art and to Mediterranean art as a whole. So we must contemplate
