and this for divers reasons. One was that I cut my grooves much deeper
and with wider trenches in the steel; for this is not usual in Turkish
work. Another was that the Turkish arabesques are only composed of arum
leaves a few small sunflowers; [1] and though these have a certain
grace, they do not yield so lasting a pleasure as the patterns which we
use. It is true that in Italy we have several different ways of
designing foliage; the Lombards, for example, construct very beautiful
patterns by copying the leaves of briony and ivy in exquisite curves,
which are extremely agreeable to the eye; the Tuscans and the Romans
make a better choice, because they imitate the leaves of the acanthus,
commonly called bear's-foot, with its stalks and flowers, curling in
divers wavy lines; and into these arabesques one may excellently well
insert the figures of little birds and different animals, by which the
good taste of the artist is displayed. Some hints for creatures of this
sort can be observed in nature among the wild flowers, as, for instance,
in snap-dragons and some few other plants, which must be combined and
developed with the help of fanciful imaginings by clever draughtsmen.
Such arabesques are called grotesques by the ignorant. They have
obtained this name of grotesques among the moderns through being found
in certain subterranean caverns in Rome by students of antiquity; which
caverns were formerly chambers, hot-baths, cabinets for study, halls,
and apartments of like nature. The curious discovering them in such
places (since the level of the ground has gradually been raised while
they have remained below, and since in Rome these vaulted rooms are
commonly called grottoes), it has followed that the word grotesque is
applied to the patterns I have mentioned. But this is not the right term
for them, inasmuch as the ancients, who delighted in composing monsters
out of goats, cows, and horses, called these chimerical hybrids by the
name of monsters; and the modern artificers of whom I speak, fashioned
from the foliage which they copied monsters of like nature; for these