Among the original capitals removed from the outer colonnade of the
ducal palace at Venice there is a series devoted to the teaching of
natural history, and another to that of such general facts about the
races of man, his various moral attributes and activities, as the
Venetians of the fourteenth century considered especially important.
First, botany, illustrated by the fruits most commonly in use, piled
up in baskets which constitute the funnel-shaped capital; each kind
separate, with the name underneath in funny Venetian spelling: _Huva_,
grapes; _Fici_, figs; _Moloni_, melons; _Zuche_, pumpkins; and
_Persici_, peaches. Then, with Latin names, the various animals:
_Ursus_, holding a honeycomb with bees on it; _Chanis_, mumbling only
a large bone, while his cousins, wolf and fox, have secured a duck and
a cock; _Aper_, the wild boar, munching a head of millet or similar
grain.
Now had these beautiful carvings been made with no aim besides their
own beauty, had they represented and taught nothing, they would have
received only a few casual glances, quite insufficient to make their
excellence familiar or even apparent; at best the occasional
discriminative examination of some art student; while the pleased,
spontaneous attentiveness which carries beauty deep into the soul and
the soul's storehouse would have been lacking. But consider these
capitals to have been what they undoubtedly were meant for: the
picture books and manuals off which young folks learned, and older
persons refreshed, their notions of natural history, of geography,
ethnology, and even of morals, and you will realise at once how much
attention, and of how constant and assimilative a kind, they must have
received. The child learns off them that figs (which he never sees
save packed in baskets in the barges at Rialto) have leaves like funny
gloves, while _huva_, grapes, have leaves all ribbed and looking like
tattered banners; that the bear is blunt-featured and eats honeycomb;
that foxes and wolves, who live on the mainland, are very like the
dogs we keep in Venice, but that they steal poultry instead of being
given bones from the kitchen. Also that there are in the world,
besides these clean-shaved Venetians in armour or doge's cap, bearded
Asiatics and thick-lipped negroes--the sort of people with whom uncle
and cousins traffic in the big ships, or among whom grandfather helped
the Doge to raise the standard of St. Mark. Also that carpenters work
with planes and vices, and stonemasons with mallets and chisels; and
that good and wise men are remembered for ever: for here is the story
of how Solomon discovered the true mother, and here again the Emperor
Trajan going to the wars, and reining in his horse to do justice first
to the poor widow. The child looks at the capitals in order to see
with his eyes all these interesting things of which he has been told;
and, during the holiday walk, drags his parents to the spot, to look
again, and to beg to be told once more. And later, he looks at the
familiar figures in order to show them to his children; or, perhaps,
more wistfully, loitering along the arcade in solitude, to remember
the days of his own childhood. And in this manner, the things
represented, fruit, animals and persons, and the exact form in which
they are rendered: the funnel shape of the capitals, the cling and
curl of the leafage, the sharp black undercutting, the clear, lightly
incised surfaces, the whole pattern of line and curve, light and
shade, the whole pattern of the eye's progress along it, of the rhythm
of expansion and restraint, of pressure and thrust, in short, the real
work of art, the visible form--become well-known, dwelling in the
memory, cohabiting with the various moods, and haunting the fancy; a
part of life, familiar, everyday, liked or disliked, discriminated in
every particular, become part and parcel of ourselves, for better or
for worse, like the tools we handle, the boats we steer, the horses we
ride and groom, and the furniture and utensils among which and through
whose help we live our lives.