Renaissance, is now in its natural state. All these marvellous
fantasies of free and savage art would be out of harmony in these halls
when treaties of peace or war were signed here, when grave princes
dreamed here, and when queens were married and German emperors created
here. Could these Vertumnuses, Pomonas, or Ganymedes have understood
anything about the ideas that came into the heads of Frederick IV. or
Frederick V., by the grace of God Count Palatine of the Rhine, Vicar of
the Holy Roman Empire, Elector and Duke of Upper and Lower Bavaria? A
grand _seigneur_ slept in this chamber beside a king’s daughter, under
a ducal baldaquin; now there is neither _seigneur_, king’s daughter,
baldaquin, nor even ceiling to this chamber; it is now the home of the
bind-weed, and the wild mint is its perfume. It is well. It is better
thus. This adorable sculpture was made to be kissed by the flowers and
looked upon by the stars....
The night had fallen, the clouds were spread over the sky, and the moon
had mounted nearly to the zenith, while I was still sitting on the same
stone, gazing into the darkness which had gathered around me and into
the shadows which I had within me. Suddenly the town-clock far below
me sounded the hour; it was midnight: I rose and descended. The road
leading to Heidelberg passes the ruins. At the moment when I arrived
before them, the moon, veiled by the diffused clouds and surrounded
by an immense halo, threw a weird light upon this magnificent mass of
mouldering ruins....
The ruin, always open, is deserted at this hour. The idea of entering
it possessed me. The two stone giants, who guard the stone court,
allowed me to pass. I crossed the dark porch, upon which the iron
portcullis still hangs, and entered the court. The moon had almost
disappeared beneath the clouds. There was only a pallid light in the
sky.
Nothing is grander than that which has fallen. This ruin, illuminated
in such a way, at such an hour, was indescribably sad, gentle, and
majestic. I fancied that in the scarcely perceptible rustling of the
trees and foliage there was something grave and respectful. I heard no
footstep, no voice, no breath. In the court there was neither light,
nor shadow; a sort of dreamful twilight outlined everything and veiled
everything. The confused gaps and rifts allowed the feeble rays of
moonlight to penetrate the most remote corners; and in the black depths
of the inaccessible arches and corridors, I saw white figures, slowly
gliding.
It was the hour when the façades of old abandoned buildings are no
longer façades, but faces. I walked over the uneven pavement without
daring to make any noise, and I experienced between the four walls of
this enclosure that strange disquietude, that undefined sentiment which
the ancients called “the horror of the sacred woods.” There is a kind
of insurmountable terror in the sinister mingled with the superb.
However, I climbed up the green and damp steps of the old stairway
without rails and entered the old roofless dwelling of Otho-Heinrich.
Perhaps you will laugh; but I assure you that to walk at night
through chambers which have been inhabited by people, whose doors are
dismantled, whose apartments each have their peculiar signification,
saying to yourself: “Here is the dining-room, here is the bedroom, here
is the alcove, here is the mantel-piece,”--and to feel the grass under
your feet and to see the sky above your head, is terrifying. A room
which has still the form of a room and whose ceiling has been lifted
off, as it were like the lid of a box, becomes a mournful and nameless
thing. It is not a house, it is not a tomb. In a tomb you feel the
_soul_ of a man; in this place you feel his shadow.
As soon as I passed the Knights’ Hall I stopped. Here there was a
singular noise, the more distinct because a sepulchral silence filled
the rest of the ruin. It was a weak, prolonged, strident rattle,
mingled at moments with a little, dry and rapid hammering, which at
times seemed to come from the depths of the darkness, from a far-away
copse, or the edifice itself; at times, from beneath my feet between
the rifts in the pavement. Whence came this noise? Of what nocturnal
creature was it the cry, or the knocking? I am not acquainted with
it, but as I listen to it, I cannot help thinking of that hideous,
legendary spinner who weaves rope for the gibbet.
However, nothing, nobody, not a living person is here. This hall,
like the rest of the Palace, is deserted. I struck the pavement with
my cane, the noise ceased, only to begin again a moment afterwards.
I knocked again, it ceased, then it began again. Yet I saw nothing
but a large frightened bat, which the blow of my cane on the stones
had scared from one of the sculptured corbels of the wall, and which
circled around my head in that funereal flight which seems to have been
made for the interior of ruined towers....
At the moment I descended the flight of stairs the moon shone forth,
large and brilliant, from a rift in the clouds; the Palace of Frederick
IV., with its double pediment, suddenly appeared, magnificent and
clear as daylight with its sixteen pale and formidable giants; while,
at my right, Otho’s façade, a black silhouette against the luminous
sky, allowed a few dazzling rays of moonlight to escape through its
twenty-four windows.
I said clear as daylight--I am wrong. The moon upon ruins is more than
a light,--it is a harmony. It hides no detail, it exaggerates no
wounds, it throws a veil on broken objects and adds an indescribable,
misty aureole of majesty to ancient buildings. It is better to see
a palace, or an old cloister, at night than in the day. The hard
brilliancy of the sunlight is severe upon the ruins and intensifies the
sadness of the statues....
I went out of the Palace through the garden, and, descending, I stopped
once more for a moment on one of the lower terraces. Behind me the
ruin, hiding the moon, made, half down the slope, a large mass of
shadow, where in all directions were thrown out long, dark lines, and
long, luminous lines, which striped the vague and misty background of
the landscape. Below me lay drowsy Heidelberg, stretched out at the
bottom of the valley, the length of the mountain; all the lights were
out; all the doors were shut; below Heidelberg I heard the murmur of
the Neckar, which seemed to be whispering to the hill and valley; and
the thoughts which filled me all the evening,--the nothingness of man
in the Past, the infirmity of man in the Present, the grandeur of
Nature, and the eternity of God,--came to me altogether, in a triple
figure, whilst I descended with slow steps into the darkness between
this river awake and living, this sleeping town, and this dead Palace.
_Le Rhin_ (Paris, 1842).
THE DUCAL PALACE.
JOHN RUSKIN.
The charm which Venice still possesses, and which for the last fifty
years has rendered it the favourite haunt of all the painters of
picturesque subject, is owing to the effect of the palaces belonging
to the period we have now to examine, mingled with those of the
Renaissance.
The effect is produced in two different ways. The Renaissance palaces
are not more picturesque in themselves than the club-houses of Pall
Mall; but they become delightful by the contrast of their severity and
refinement with the rich and rude confusion of the sea life beneath
them, and of their white and solid masonry with the green waves. Remove
from beneath them the orange sails of the fishing boats, the black
gliding of the gondolas, the cumbered decks and rough crews of the
barges of traffic, and the fretfulness of the green water along their
foundations, and the Renaissance palaces possess no more interest
than those of London or Paris. But the Gothic palaces are picturesque
in themselves, and wield over us an independent power. Sea and sky,
and every other accessory might be taken away from them, and still
they would be beautiful and strange. They are not less striking in
the loneliest streets of Padua and Vicenza (where many were built
during the period of the Venetian authority in those cities) than in
the most crowded thoroughfares of Venice itself; and if they could be
transported into the midst of London, they would still not altogether
lose their power over the feelings.
The best proof of this is in the perpetual attractiveness of all
pictures, however poor in skill, which have taken for their subject the
principal of these Gothic buildings, the Ducal Palace. In spite of all
architectural theories and teachings, the paintings of this building
are always felt to be delightful; we cannot be wearied by them, though
often sorely tried; but we are not put to the same trial in the case
of the palaces of the Renaissance. They are never drawn singly, or as
the principal subject, nor can they be. The building which faces the
Ducal Palace on the opposite side of the Piazzetta is celebrated among
architects, but it is not familiar to our eyes; it is painted only
incidentally, for the completion, not the subject, of a Venetian scene;
and even the Renaissance arcades of St. Mark’s Place, though frequently
painted, are always treated as a mere avenue to its Byzantine church
and colossal tower. And the Ducal Palace itself owes the peculiar
charm which we have hitherto felt, not so much to its greater size as
compared with other Gothic buildings, or nobler design (for it never
yet has been rightly drawn), as to its comparative isolation. The other
Gothic structures are as much injured by the continual juxtaposition of
the Renaissance palaces, as the latter are aided by it; they exhaust
their own life by breathing it into the Renaissance coldness: but the
Ducal Palace stands comparatively alone, and fully expresses the Gothic
power....
The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built
successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace,
a Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second
superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much)
are all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only,
and the existing building is formed by the union of the two. We shall
review the history of each in succession.
1st. The BYZANTINE PALACE.
The year of the death of Charlemagne, 813,--the Venetians determined
to make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital
of their state. Their Doge, Angelo or Agnello Participazio, instantly
took vigorous means for the enlargement of the small group of buildings
which were to be the nucleus of the future Venice. He appointed persons
to superintend the rising of the banks of sand, so as to form more
secure foundations, and to build wooden bridges over the canals. For
the offices of religion he built the Church of St. Mark; and on, or
near, the spot where the Ducal Palace now stands, he built a palace for
the administration of the government.
The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of
Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last
representation of her power....
[Illustration: THE DUCAL PALACE]
In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by fire, but
repaired before 1116, when it received another emperor Henry V. (of
Germany), and was again honoured by imperial praise. Between 1173 and
the close of the century, it seems to have been again repaired and
much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani....
2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE.
The reader, doubtless, recollects that the important change in the
Venetian government which gave stability to the aristocratic power
took place about the year 1297, under the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, a
man thus characterized by Sansovino:--“A prompt and prudent man, of
unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who laid, so to speak,
the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by the admirable
regulations which he introduced into the government.”...
We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that “in 1301 another
saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo _under the Doge Gradenigo_, and
finished in 1309, _in which year the Grand Council first sat in it_.”
In the first year, therefore, of the Fourteenth Century, the Gothic
Ducal Palace of Venice was begun; and as the Byzantine Palace, was, in
its foundation, coeval with that of the state, so the Gothic Palace,
was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the aristocratic power.
Considered as the principal representation of the Venetian school
of architecture, the Ducal Palace is the Parthenon of Venice, and
Gradenigo its Pericles....
Its decorations and fittings, however, were long in completion; the
paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400. They represented the
heavens covered with stars, this being, says Sansovino, the bearings of
the Doge Steno.... The Grand Council sat in the finished chamber for
the first time in 1423. In that year the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice
was completed. It had taken, to build it, the energies of the entire
period which I have above described as the central one of her life.
3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE.
I must go back a step or two, in order to be certain that the reader
understands clearly the state of the palace in 1423. The works of
addition or renovation had now been proceeding, at intervals, during a
space of a hundred and twenty-three years. Three generations at least
had been accustomed to witness the gradual advancement of the form
of the Ducal Palace into more stately symmetry, and to contrast the
works of sculpture and painting with which it was decorated,--full
of the life, knowledge, and hope of the Fourteenth Century,--with
the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of the Doge Ziani. The
magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new Council Chamber
was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as the “Palazzo
Nuovo;” and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and more manifest
in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the building
which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the “Palazzo
Vecchio.” That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position
in Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it
towards the Sea; but there was not the wide quay in front, the Riva
dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Façade as important as that
of the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and
the water; and the _old_ palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta,
and interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square
where the nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new
palace rendered the discrepancy between it and the companion building
more painful; and then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague
idea of the necessity of destroying the old palace, and completing the
front of the Piazzetta with the same splendour as the Sea Façade....
The Great Council Chamber was used for the first time on the day when
Foscari entered the Senate as Doge,--the 3rd of April, 1423, ... and
the following year, on the 27th of March, the first hammer was lifted
up against the old palace of Ziani.
That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly called the
“Renaissance.” It was the knell of the architecture of Venice,--and of
Venice herself....
The whole work must have been completed towards the middle of the
Sixteenth Century.... But the palace was not long permitted to remain
in this finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great
fire, burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the
precious pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper
rooms on the Sea Façade, and most of those on the Rio Façade, leaving
the building a mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames.... The
repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were however extensive, and
interfere in many directions with the earlier work of the palace: still
the only serious alteration in its form was the transposition of the
prisons, formerly at the top of the palace, to the other side of the
Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of Sighs, to connect
them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The completion of this work
brought the whole edifice into its present form....
The traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the corridor, and examine
with great care the series of capitals which extend on the Piazzetta
side from the Fig-tree angle to the pilaster which carries the
party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples of graceful
composition in massy capitals meant for hard service and distant
effect, these are among the finest things I know in Gothic Art; and
that above the fig-tree is remarkable for its sculptures of the four
winds; each on the side turned towards the wind represented. Levante,
the east wind; a figure with rays round its head, to show that it is
always clear weather when that wind blows, raising the sun out of the
sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned, holding the sun in its right hand:
Ponente, the west wind; plunging the sun into the sea: and Tramontana,
the north wind; looking up at the north star. This capital should be
carefully examined, if for no other reason than to attach greater
distinctness of idea to the magnificent verbiage of Milton:
“Thwart of these, as fierce,
Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise,
Sirocco and Libecchio.”
I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones
on the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to
the fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe
them all carefully, until he comes to the great pilaster or complicated
pier which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is
to say, the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from
the pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower
arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but
they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the
lower arcade; the first new lion’s head with smooth ears, cut in the
time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with
its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the
Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the Fourteenth and
the other of the Fifteenth Century....
I can only say that, in the winter of 1851 the “Paradise” of Tintoret
was still comparatively uninjured, and that the Camera di Collegio,
and its antechamber, and the Sala de’ Pregadi were full of pictures by
Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as precious as so many
kingdoms, so precious indeed, and so full of majesty, that sometimes
when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the great chain of the
Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen rising above the front
of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe in gazing on the
building as on the hills, and could believe that God had done a greater
work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the mighty spirits
by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its burning legends
written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher than the clouds of
heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of purple flower and
shadowy pine.
_Stones of Venice_ (London, 1851–’3).
THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA.
EDMONDO DE AMICIS.
The Mosque of Cordova, which was converted into a cathedral when the
Moors were expelled but which has, notwithstanding, always remained
a Mosque, was built on the ruins of the primitive cathedral not far
from the Guadalquiver. Abd-er-Rahman began to build it in the year 785
or 786. “Let us build a Mosque,” said he, “which will surpass that
of Bagdad, that of Damascus, and that of Jerusalem, which shall be
the greatest temple of Islam and become the Mecca of the Occident.”
The work was begun with ardour; and Christian slaves were made to
carry the stones of razed churches for its foundation. Abd-er-Rahman,
himself, worked an hour every day; in a few years the Mosque was built,
the Caliphs who succeeded Abd-er-Rahman embellished it, and it was
completed after a century of continuous labour.
“Here we are,” said one of my hosts, as we suddenly stopped before a
vast edifice. I thought it was a fortress; but it was the wall that
surrounded the Mosque, in which formerly opened twenty large bronze
doors surrounded by graceful arabesques and arched windows supported by
light columns; it is now covered with a triple coat of plaster. A trip
around the boundary-wall is a nice little walk after dinner: you can
judge then of the extent of the building.
The principal door of this enclosure is at the north, on the spot
where Abd-er-Rahman’s minaret rose, from whose summit fluttered the
Mohammedan standard; I expected to see the interior of the Mosque at
once, and I found myself in a garden full of orange-trees, cypresses,
and palms, enclosed on three sides by a very light portico, and shut
in on the fourth side by the façade of the Mosque. In the time of the
Arabs there was a fountain in the centre for their ablutions, and
the faithful gathered under the shade of these trees before entering
the temple. I remained there for some moments looking around me and
breathing the fresh and perfumed air with a very lively sensation; my
heart was beating rapidly at the thought of being so near the famous
Mosque, and I felt myself impelled with a great curiosity and yet held
back by an indescribable childish trembling. “Let us go in!” said my
companions. “Another moment!” I replied. “Let me taste the pleasure of
anticipation.” Finally I stepped forward, and without glancing at the
marvellous door, which my companions showed me, I entered.
I do not know what I did, or said when I entered; but certainly some
strange exclamation must have escaped me, or I must have made some
extraordinary gesture, for several people who were near me at that
moment began to laugh and turned around to look about them, as if they
wanted to discover what caused the excitement I manifested.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA]
Imagine a forest, and imagine that you are in the depths of this
forest, and that you can see nothing but the trunks of the trees.
Thus, no matter on what side of the Mosque you look, the eye sees
nothing but columns. It is a limitless forest of marble. Your glance
wanders down the long rows of columns, one by one, which every now
and then are intersected by other interminable rows, until it reaches
a twilight background where you seem to see the white gleam of still
other columns. Nineteen naves extend before the visitor; they are
intersected by thirty-three other naves, and the whole building is
supported by more than nine hundred columns of porphyry, jasper,
_breccia_, and marbles of every colour. The central nave, much larger
than the others, leads to the Maksurah, the most sacred spot in the
temple, where they read the Koran. A pale ray of light falls from the
high windows here and shines upon a row of columns; beyond, there is a
dark spot; and, still further away, another ray of light illuminates
another nave. It is impossible to describe the mystical feeling and
admiration that this sight evokes in your soul. It is like the sudden
revelation of an unknown religion, nature, and life, which carries
your imagination to the delights of that Paradise, so full of love
and voluptuousness, where the blessed ones seated under the shadow of
thick-leaved plane-trees and thornless rose-bushes drink from crystal
vases that wine, sparkling like jewels, which is mixed by immortal
virgins, and sleep in the arms of houris with large black eyes. All
these pictures of eternal pleasure, which the Koran promises to the
faithful, rush upon the mind at this first sight of the Mosque in
such a vital, intense, and bewildering manner that for an instant
they give you a sweet intoxication which leaves your heart in a
state of indescribable and gentle melancholy. Confusion in the mind
and a rushing fire through the veins--that is your first sensation on
entering the Cathedral of Cordova.