[Illustration: MOSAIC IN BAS-RELIEF, NAPLES]

The Zuccati were very independent skilled workmen, as well as being
able to design their own subjects. They were, in the judgment of
Georges Sand, superior to another of the masters in charge of the
works, Bozza, who was less of a man, although an artist of some
merit. Later than these men, there were few mosaic workers of high
standing; in Florence the art degenerated into a mere decorative
inlay of semi-precious material, heraldic in feeling, costly and
decorative, but an entirely different art from that of the Greeks
and Romans. Lapis-lazuli with gold veinings, malachite, coral,
alabaster, and rare marbles superseded the smalts and gold of an
elder day.




CHAPTER XI

ILLUMINATION OF BOOKS

One cannot enter a book shop or a library to-day without realizing
how many thousands of books are in constant circulation. There was
an age when books were laboriously but most beautifully written,
instead of being thus quickly manufactured by the aid of the
type-setting machine; the material on which the glossy text was
executed was vellum instead of the cheap paper of to-day, the
illustrations, instead of being easily reproduced by photographic
processes, were veritable miniature paintings, most decorative,
ablaze with colour and fine gold,--in these times it is easy to