"Acanthus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... overflowing with money and jewels, Graceful and his companions entered a circular temple, which was Crapaudine's drawing-room. The walls were of lapis-lazuli, and the ceiling, of sky-blue enamel, was supported by twelve chiseled pillars of massive gold, with capitals of acanthus leaves of white enamel edged with gold. A huge frog, as large as a rabbit, was seated in a velvet easy-chair. It was the fairy of the place. The charming Crapaudine was draped in a scarlet mantle covered with glittering spangles, and wore on her head ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... human art or genius; and it is pleasing to see the tendrils, leaves, and scarlet berries of the nightshade playfully twining among the sculptured friezes which are scattered about in every position but straight lines; or other plants between the volutes, rivalling the acanthus foliage of the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... significant forms from certain points of view; and there is a partition—for the nave is divided into two chapels, one for the brothers and one for the fathers, I conclude—and in this partition a massive door, which yet looks quite light and graceful, carved with oak and acanthus leaves, and every time I passed through I had the impression that the door was a sentient thing, subconscious of me; and the delicate Italian-Renaissance brick vault which springs from the vast nave seemed to look upon me with a gloomy knowledge of me, and of the heart within me; and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... elsewhere we find it doubled, as it were, so that four volutes occur between the astragali and the abacus (Figs. 42 and 77).[263] In other examples, again, it is elongated upwards until it takes a shape differing but little from the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian capital ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... and luxurious, rather, and explored to the full the happiness of stretching. Round about her were huddled the drowsy boys; on the slopes of the steep place where she lay she could see the goats browsing on lentisk and juniper, acanthus, bramble, mountain-ash. Misty on the blue plain lay Padua, a sleeping city, white and violet—remote now and in every sense below her and her concerns. The sky was without cloud, very pale still, glowing white at the edge; the sun not yet out of the sea. The ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Upon the paladin's return the cry Redoubled, and the mourning louder grew Orlando to the corse approached more nigh, And speechless stood awhile, his friends to view, Pale, as at eve is the acanthus' dye Or lily's, which were plucked at morn: he drew A heavy sigh, and on the warrior dead Fixing his ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... revenues of the King and Queen of Spain. A brief survey of this first island was all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite impression of the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in the sunshine, and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the green wall of the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to push on to the rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island to ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... temple order'd round With massy pillars of the Doric mood Broad-fluted, nor with shafts acanthus-crown'd, Pourtray'd along the frieze with Titan's brood That battled Gods for heaven; brilliant-hued, With golden fillets and rich blazonry, Wherein beneath the cornice, horsemen rode With form divine, a fiery chivalry— Triumph of ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... be recognised attitudes and gestures borrowed from the frescoes of the necropolis and the tombs of Egypt. It is from Egypt also that Greece took, while diminishing their huge size, its Doric and Ionic orders and its Corinthian capital, in which the acanthus takes the place of ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... far away for so many weeks past. Spring had come in her fairest shape to Italy. The Campagna had lost its brown and tawny hues and taken on a tinge of fresher color. The olive orchards were budding thickly. Almond boughs extended their dazzling shapes across the blue sky. Arums and acanthus and ivy filled every hollow, roses nodded from over every gate, while a carpet of violets and cyclamen and primroses stretched over the fields and freighted every ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... similar tower, and in each of the two sides are three large windows separated by buttresses like square towers. Round the top of the building as well as of the towers extends a balustrade of stiff sculpture resembling acanthus leaves. The large buildings in the neighbourhood are convents. Alittle eastward is the "Observatoire Gay," from which a steep path, the Monte des Carmes Dchausses, 536 yards long, descends to the city, reaching it by the side of the station of ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... productions of the various workshops. It is possible thus that he had a hand in much metal and relief work of the Pollaiolos, and perhaps even in the embroidering and tapestries of which they were undertakers; also in certain ornaments, friezes of Cupids and dolphins, and exquisite shell and acanthus carving of the monuments of Santa Croce; and it may be surmised that he occasionally assisted Botticelli in his perspective and anatomy, since that master took him to Rome when commissioned to paint in the chapel of Pope Sixtus. Indeed, in certain little-known studies for ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... VII. The Windblown Acanthus.—This is found in the churches of Salonica and Ravenna. Three examples are mentioned as seen in Constantinople, two near the Diaconissa, forming bases for the posts of a wooden porch to a house; one is the cistern commonly known as the cistern ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... entablature rises the second stage or story, or order. Here the coupled pilasters have that slight difference in base and more particularly in capital which constitutes the Composite order. The capitals have the larger scrolls or volutes of the Ionic above the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian proper. In reality the difference is, here, but slight; and the best authorities maintain that there is less difference between the Corinthian and the Composite than between different examples of the Corinthian itself. The ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... the last and fairest of all—the divine Proserpine. Not the form, for it is but a bust rising from a capital of acanthus leaves, which curve around the breast and arms and turn gracefully outward, but the face, whose modest maiden beauty can find no peer among goddesses or mortals. So looked she on the field of Ennae—that "fairer flower," so soon to be gathered by "gloomy Dis." A slender crown of green wheatblades, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... colour, covered with scales, and firmer than a melon. Its flavour excels all other fruits.[1] This fruit, which the King prefers to all others, does not grow upon a tree but upon a plant, similar to an artichoke or an acanthus. I myself have not tasted it, for it was the only one which had arrived unspoiled, the others having rotted during the long voyage. Spaniards who have eaten them fresh plucked where they grow, speak with the highest appreciation of their delicate flavour. There are ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of the most important public works. Roman art is, consequently, but a development or adaptation of the Greek. It is noticeable, however, that it almost completely ignored the most characteristic and popular of the Greek forms—for example, the anthemion—and adapted those, such as the acanthus and the scroll, which had been considered of minor importance among the Greeks. They added another to the three orders of the Greek architecture, viz., the Composite, the most elaborate of all, being a combination of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... of Rhodopis was as full of sound, and scent and blossom as a night in fairy-land. It was one labyrinth of acanthus shrubs, yellow mimosa, the snowy gelder-rose, jasmine and lilac, red roses and laburnums, overshadowed by tall palm-trees, acacias and balsam trees. Large bats hovered softly on their delicate wings over the whole, and sounds of mirth and song ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... another, and that some of them were inscribed with the names and praises of Titus, Trajan, Gallienus, and others. On each side of the first gateway, at the foot of the steps, were two granite columns, with composite capitals, representing the bust of the emperor Hadrian framed in acanthus leaves. ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... I told you about the second indentation of the acanthus," said the elder workman, without looking round; "a light, light hand—no holes ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panels representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work of the fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde |
