CHAPTER VIII.

“Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.”

_Tennyson._

Padua and Venice Railway--Venice: Piazza and Church of S.

Mark--Torcello--The Lagoon--Murano--Sta. Maria dei Frari--SS.

Giovanni e Paolo--Sta. Maria dell’ Orto--Other Churches--Domestic

Architecture--Fondaco de’ Turchi--Other Byzantine Palaces--The

Ducal Palace--Foscari Palace--Ca’ d’Oro--Other Gothic

Palaces--Balconies--Venetian Architecture--A Festival--Paintings.

Little is to be seen as one leaves Padua to distinguish the city at all

vividly, save the oriental-looking cupolas of Sant’ Antonio, and the

great roof of the Sala della Ragione, looking like the inverted hull of

some great ship, with its convex sides towering up above the otherwise

not remarkable-looking city.

And now our destination was Venice, and anxiously we looked out ever and

anon, impatient, long before the time, to see the tall outline of S.

Mark’s campanile against the horizon. The view was too contracted to be

really beautiful; on each side of the railway rank and luxuriant hedges

of acacia sprouted their tall branches above the carriages, and beyond

them might be seen plantations of maize, flax, and other crops, all

remarkable for their prodigious growth and size, and watered by

countless small canals, and here and there with turgid, muddy-looking

streams rushing on from the mountains to discharge themselves into the

Adriatic, and gliding between great artificial banks which gave them the

appearance rather of large canals than rivers. Nothing breaks the dead

monotony of the scene, for it is misty, and the Tyrolese Alps, which

ought to show their jagged peaks to the north, are invisible. The

stations follow each other in quick succession, and at each stands some

diligence or carriage whose ingrained panoply of white dust, added to

that which rises here and there white and cloud-like in the dry glare of

the Italian sun which beams overhead, makes one feel grateful

that--however unpoetical such a mode of approach may be--a railroad

carries us to Venice. Nor is such a country as this along which one

passes from Padua to Venice without its moral. I suppose there is

nothing more certain than that, ordinarily, the appreciation of high

art, and success in its practice, have never been so marked in countries

whose natural features are lovely as in those in which the devoutest

student of nature’s beauties can see nothing to admire or love. So

Venice, surrounded by waters, and then by a country which would be

entirely tame and uninteresting, were it not for the exquisite distant

views of the Friulan Alps, fell back on her own resources, and provided

herself with that substitute for the loveliness of nature which--alone

of man’s works--the loveliness of beautiful art can be. And perhaps, it

is better for the traveller, that no interest should be felt save in the

end of the journey, where the journey has so brave an end!

At last, however, the broad watery level of the Lagoon is reached;

Venice rises out of the water at a distance of some two miles; and then

across an almost endless bridge the railway takes us into the outskirts

of the city; a confused idea of steeples and domes is all that is

obtained, and one finds oneself going through that most painful of

processes to an excitable man, the usual examination of luggage; at

last, however, we are outside the station, the Grand Canal lies before

us, and we are vehemently urged to get at once into an omnibus-gondola.

But no, this is too absurd a bathos for our first act on entering

Venice, and we step therefore into a private gondola, and, propelled

rapidly and lightly over the still, unruffled water, sink at once into

that dreamy kind of happiness which of all conveyances in the world the

gondola is best calculated to encourage. A short reach of the Grand

Canal is soon passed, and then, with the picturesque cry of warning,

“Ah, stalì!” we turn sharply into a narrow canal to the right, and,

shooting down the tortuous street of water, presently cross the Grand

Canal again midway between the Rialto and the Foscari palace, dive into

another canal still narrower than the former, and at last, after

frequent glimpses of mediæval houses and palaces, find ourselves safely

housed at our hotel close to the Grand Canal, and within two or three

minutes’ walk of the Piazza San Marco.

We stopped but a short time here, so impatient were we to obtain our

first glimpse of the church and palace of S. Mark, to which Venice owes

so much of her fame. We passed along some narrow winding alleys, lined

on either side with open shops, on the counters of which lie exposed for

sale not over dainty-looking edibles, and in whose dim interiors little

light of day seems ever to enter to help the busy workmen who may always

be seen there plying their trade; and then, going under an archway

crowded with busy folk in rather noisy consultation, we found ourselves,

in four or five minutes, standing under the arcade at the upper end of

the great Piazza San Marco. Long lines of regular architecture, arcaded

below, heavy with cornices and elaborated windows above, carry the eye

not unpleasantly down to the lower end of the piazza, at the right-hand

angle of which towers up into the air a vast campanile, simple and

unbroken in its outline, without visible window or any buttress-like

projection, until its upper stage, where it has a very simple open

arcaded belfry, capped with a pyramidal roof; and then across nearly the

whole width of the piazza, and partly concealed by the curiously

irregular position of its campanile, stretches the low singular and

Eastern-looking church of S. Mark. Before it rise the masts from which

of yore hung waving in the wind the banners of the old Venetian state,

and crowds of pigeons, fed here by civic liberality, cover the pavement

with their pleasant fluttering presence. The charm of the west front is

certainly most indescribable; and I confess to feeling a doubt, as I

looked at it, whether it was not more akin to some fairy-like vision,

such as one might see in dreams, than to any real and substantial

erection of stone and mortar; for, indeed, to a mind educated in and

accustomed to the traditions of northern Gothic, there is something so

very _outré_ in the whole idea, something so startling in its novelty,

that it is hard at first to know whether to admire or not. It is far

from imposing in size, but yet, as it is looked at more and more

carefully, it grows much and rapidly on one’s love, and at last imprints

itself on the mind as a real work of art of a very beautiful and unusual

kind, wrought out with an abundance of beautiful detail, but in such a

way as to prevent its being possible that it could ever be absolutely

reproduced or taken as a model.

As you pace down the broad level space of the Piazza, the feeling of the

strangeness of the whole scene increases. There are of course no horses,

and no vehicles of any kind; it is a large square in which all the space

is footpath, and on which, in addition to the many men who pace it

rapidly with busy brow, or idly lounge whilst enjoying the weather and

the place, hundreds of pigeons are constantly fluttering or walking

about in quiet confidence, sure that they will not be molested by any

one. And then, as one draws near to the church, it is easy to understand

rather better than at first in what its real charm lies; this is no

doubt before anything else in its beautiful colour; the whole front is

shafted to a greater extent than almost any building I know, the shafts

all rather heavy, but of marble of the richest kind; the groining of the

seven entrance arches is filled with mosaics, and the walls are

encrusted everywhere with marble. Instead of ordinary gables masking the

roof, the front is finished with great ogee gables most extravagantly

crocketed, and obviously a modern alteration of the original Romanesque

finish; behind these a cluster of fourteenth-century cupolas completes

the view. Of the seven arches which compose the façade, four have

doorways; the outer arches on either side are very narrow, and answer in

width to the kind of cloister which masks the church on the south, west,

and north sides; and the central arch is much wider and loftier than the

others, rising indeed so high as to break through the line of

balustrading which runs across the front just above the other arches.

Within this central arch is a grand doorway, the stilted semicircular

arch of which is of three orders, the central plain, the others covered

with carvings. The piers supporting the main arches have tiers of shafts

in two heights; the lower tier corresponding in height with those of the

doors pierced within the arches, and the others, which are smaller in

diameter, and more numerous than those which support them, rising to the

springing-line of the main arches. The side doorways have very

Eastern-looking arches, the semi-circular line being carried on nearly

to the centre, and then turned up into an ogee. These and some other

portions as, e.g., the windows over two of the doors, and the pinnacles

between the gables, belong to the fourteenth century, whilst the finish

of the gables themselves--great ogee crocketed gables with figures at

the apex of each--is probably of the fifteenth century. All these

archways open into the cloister, or narthex already mentioned. Here,

where the roofs still glow with the most precious early mosaics, and the

walls with marble, either used as inlays or for shafts, one gets a first

and not unworthy hint of the beauty which awaits one in the interior.

And then, on entering the nave, the deep tones of an organ are heard

reverberating through the old building; many people kneel devoutly at

their prayers around us; the hot glare of the sun has gone, and in its

place a cool, quiet, dim light reveals the whole magnificence of the

design. It is quite in vain to describe this in formal architectural

terms. The colour is so magnificent that one troubles oneself but little

about the architecture, and thinks only of gazing upon the expanse of

gold and deep richly-tinted mosaic all harmonized together into one

glorious whole. The mosaics commence throughout the church at the level

of the crown of the main arches dividing the nave from the aisles, and

are continued up the remainder of the wall and into the domes; even the

angles or arrises of the walls and arches are covered with gold mosaic;

so that all architectural lines of moulding are entirely lost, and

nothing but a soft swelling and undulating sea of colour is perceived.

There is nothing violent or garish in all this profuse decoration. The

gold mosaic, used as it always is in early works, set irregularly in,

and surrounded by a white line or joint of plaster, is never

conspicuously bright; the drawing of the figures and subjects may be

criticized, but at any rate it is always direct, simple, and

intelligible, and the colours of the draperies bright and harmonious,

whilst the arcading and wall-lining which fills the lower part of the

walls is all of marble, which has now a rich, warm, but quiet tint,

singularly suitable as a base to the more gorgeous colouring of the

upper part of the walls and domes.

Altogether this is a church beyond most others suggestive of worship.

Other churches sometimes suggest the same feeling either by enormous

size or vast height. At Köln or Milan man feels so small and so

contemptible in comparison with the vastness of his own work that he is

subdued in spite of himself. In countless other great Gothic minsters

the same feeling is produced. But at S. Mark’s it is produced in an

intensified degree, and by a building the scale of which is in every way

small, if not almost insignificant. There is no long vista of arches, no

complicated perspective, and no vast height to awe the beholder, yet the

mystery of colour does for it even more than the mystery of size does

for Köln or Beauvais, Milan, Toledo, or Bourges. It is, therefore,

emphatically a church for worship, one in which even the most careless

treads with hushed footstep and bated breath, and where, in spite of

crowds, an aweful silence seems always to reign supreme save when it is

broken by the religious sound of the services of the church.

The ground plan is no doubt known to most of my readers. It is a typical

example of the Greek or Eastern church as distinguished from the

Romanesque, a cross whose arms are not far from equal, covered by a

series of cupolas, one in the centre, one to each of the three eastern

arms, and two to the western--with aisles to the nave and choir, and a

cloister round the north, west, and south sides of the nave, of which

the two former are the porches, and the latter the baptistery of the

church.[29]

Under the eastern limb of the cross is a crypt, which has in recent

years been opened and drained, and is now always open to inspection.

This is divided under the choir into five aisles in width by a

multitude of small shafts carrying quadripartite vaults, and in the

centre of which just under the choir altar, is the shrine of S. Mark.

Another apse is formed under the south aisle of the choir, and under the

north aisle is a corresponding crypt save that there is no apse to it.

Much modernized as this has been in the course of repair, and entirely

devoid of all colour or decoration as it is, it is still full of

character, and adds largely to the interest of the church.

[Illustration: GROUND PLAN--S. MARK, VENICE.]

If we return to the nave, we shall find that it is not only in general

effect it is so very worthy of admiration; it still retains much of its

old furniture, and in spite of a few modern mosaics, and one or two more

modern altars, is less altered in its general effect since the

fourteenth century than any great church that I have ever seen. The

screen between the nave and choir with the ambons on either side of it

first deserve notice. The screen is mainly a work of A. D. 1394.[30] It

consists of a series of columns carrying a flat lintel or cornice on the

top of which is a row of extremely good statues of the apostles. They

have that grand sweep of the figure which one knows so well in early

fourteenth century work in France, and are free from the somewhat heavy

and clumsy treatment which marks so much of the work of the Pisani. The

screen has been raised on the base of the older Byzantine screen, which

consisted of a simple continuous arcade now nearly hidden by the more

modern steps to the choir. The ambons are probably of the same age as

this older screen; the gospel ambon being of two stages in height, with

a good staircase to it from the choir aisle, that for the epistle being

comparatively low and simple, but still large enough to contain two or

three modern pulpits. The screens to the choir aisles are of the same

sort as the main screen, but are placed one bay to the east of it. They

are all three interesting as showing that a Gothic architect could use

with good effect a common Classic arrangement, and indeed lend fresh

grace to it by the detail of the sculpture and inlaying with which he

adorned it.

Dimly seen from the nave through the Rood-screen, but far more

interesting than even it, is the great baldacchin or canopy over the

altar in the choir. Here we have the simplest form--four columns

carrying round arches and the wall above them finished with a plain

horizontal capping. The arches may be modern; though if they are so,

they are copied from the old, as is evidenced by the painting at the

back of the Pala d’Oro, which shows the placing of the shrine of S. Mark

under a similar baldacchin; but the groining is old, and the alabaster

columns are of extreme interest, being covered all over with most

elaborate sculptures of Scripture subjects. The subjects in the

north-east column give the history of Joachim and Anna, and the birth of

the Blessed Virgin Mary; the north-west has the nativity of Our Lord,

the marriage in Cana, &c.; the south-west subjects from the Passion; and

the south-east the miracles of Our Lord. Few modes of decorating an

altar are altogether so fitting and beautiful as this, and I hope the

day is not far distant when we shall see many of our English altars

standing under canopies of the same sort. St. Paul’s cathedral may well

prepare the way for us in this, by reviving what was usually accepted as

the best kind of reredos by our English church-builders in the

eighteenth century.

Here, too, is a brass eagle so like one of our own, that one might

almost give it credit for coming from an English smith or founder.

Returning to the nave, one finds nothing more worthy of admiration than

another smaller baldachin over an altar between it and the north aisle.

This is hexagonal, carried on shafts with stilted arches and roofed with

a steep roof. Its dimensions render a small altar a necessity--a matter

of common occurrence in old examples. Another reredos and altar in a

chapel at the north end of the north transept, dating from 1430, may

also be noticed. Here the altar is panelled in front and carved with two

angels censing a cross, and low open screens with arcades carried on

shafts are placed a few inches from the ends of the altar. The footpace

is not carried round the altar, so that it can only be approached from

the front.

Of another sort of furniture--monuments of the dead--S. Mark’s has, as

might be expected, a good many examples. The earliest are the probably

Roman sarcophagi,[31] which lie in the outer aisle or cloister right

and left of the entrance; the next, near them,[32] where the sarcophagus

is still retained, but adorned with Christian emblems and sculpture; and

of considerably later date, and much more artistic interest, are the

tombs of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, and of Sant’Isidoro. Here the

sarcophagus is surmounted by a canopy, reverent angels stand on either

side drawing back partially the curtains from the front of the effigy,

and in the centre of the tomb is a bas-relief of the Madonna, and at the

ends the Annunciation, S. Gabriel on one side, the B. V. Mary at the

other. This is the type of monumental memorial on which so much of the

time of Venetian sculptors seems to have been spent. Here, indeed, and

on the very similar figures of the Virgin on so many of the tympana of

doorways throughout the city, we have to study the sculptor’s art from

the time of the Byzantine carvers who wrought the still numerous early

capitals, until the artist of the Ducal Palace came to revive the art

with his original and splendid series of capitals.

But of all the features of this grand church, that which next to the

gorgeous colour of the walls most attracted me was the wild beauty of

the pavement. I know not what other word to use which quite describes

the effect it produces. It is throughout arranged in the patterns common

in most Opus Alexandrinum, but instead of being laid level and even, it

swells up and down as though its surface were the petrified waves of the

sea, on which those who embark in the ship of the church may kneel in

prayer with safety, the undulating surface serving only to remind them

of the stormy sea of life, and of the sea actually washing the walls of

the streets and houses throughout their city. It cannot be supposed that

this undulation is accidental, for had it been the consequence of a

settlement of the ground we should see some marks of it in the crypt and

in the walls, and some tokens of disruption in the pavement itself. And

the corresponding example of Sta. Sofia, Constantinople, where we have

it on record that there was an intentional symbolism in just such a

floor, is conclusive as to the intention of its imitators here.

Of the mosaics with which the church is richly adorned I cannot pretend

to give a complete account. They deserve a volume to themselves. As

regards choice of subjects, it is noticeable that the most prominent

figure is that of Our Lord, who is seated and surrounded by prophets.

Below are the emblems of the four Evangelists, and the four rivers of

Paradise. Whilst again in the west dome He is surrounded by the apostles

and the Evangelists, and everywhere the general scheme is a lesson to

those who now-a-days too often forget the relative importance or the

proper order and arrangement of the divine story in the schemes they

adopt for stained glass and mural decoration. As regards colour, I need

not repeat what I have already said; but it may be observed that

wherever modern mosaics have taken the place of old ones there at once

we see a complete collapse, and a loss of all good effect. This is

mainly owing, beyond doubt, to the attempt which their designers made to

produce the effect of pictures, instead of thinking first and mainly of

the decorative effect of their work on the building. But at the same

time it is obvious that their eyes had lost all feeling for good colour,

and that in attempting to draw with a certain amount of academical

accuracy, they had equally lost all sense of the prime necessity in such

works of simplicity of arrangement, and directness in the telling of

their story. There is no part of the church in which some of the best of

this sort of decoration can be studied with more ease and advantage than

in the cloister on the north side of the nave. Here the mosaics are so

near the eye, and the details of design and colour so fine that one is

never tired of admiring them.

I never leave S. Mark’s without taking one look at least at the four

bronze horses, which, placed as they are on columns high above the

ground, add so much to the strange character of the west front, and are

in themselves such exquisite examples of their kind. Strange ornaments

these for the façade of the chief church of a city where horses’ feet

have hardly ever trod! Equally strange, if you are to have horses in

such a position at all, is the way in which these are supported. They

stand balancing themselves nicely on the caps of small columns. Extremes

meet; and I am not so sure but that this extraordinary arrangement is

not better than that which is usually adopted. If horses are to be

supported above the ground, they may almost as well be so in this way as

on the ordinary pedestal, which looks equally unsafe if the bronze is

instinct with life. These horses were brought from Constantinople after

the fourth Crusade, circa 1203. They are of admirable character, and are

probably of Greek workmanship. With every other moveable thing worth

moving, they were taken to Paris, and returned after the Peace in 1815.

There is a picture in the Accademia by Gentile Bellini, which ought to

be looked at after a visit to S. Mark’s. In it we see the church much as

it is at present; but an enormous procession which winds its tortuous

way about the piazza, defiles before houses every one of which seems to

be ancient, and I never look at the now uninteresting lines of houses

which surround it without wishing for the resuscitation of the buildings

which G. Bellini saw and drew.

We went into the treasury to see the treasures and plate belonging to

the church, but I was much disappointed to find that, in an artistic

point of view, there was really very little to admire, or else what was

admirable was not shewn. The treasury is a dark room lighted up by a few

wax candles, but so badly that it was difficult to see at all

satisfactorily.

I was unable to obtain a sight of the Pala d’Oro, as the altar-piece

behind the high altar is called; it is only uncovered on feast days, and

I have never happened to be in Venice when it was visible. I was very

anxious to have seen it, as it is a most magnificent piece of

workmanship in gold and enamel. It was executed in Constantinople, and

brought to Venice in 1102. Some Italian writers have claimed it for

their forefathers as an Italian work; but the documentary evidence of

its Eastern origin is supported by the details of the design and

execution of the earliest portions of the work. M. Durand has published

a very careful description of it in the ‘Annales Archéologiques,’ vol.

xx. He gives a list of no less than one hundred and sixty-nine panels or

figures, in a considerable number of which the accompanying inscriptions

are in Greek characters. The Pala was “restored” in the thirteenth

century and again in the fourteenth, when no doubt considerable

additions were made to it. The painting at the back has fourteen

subjects on a gold ground, and is dated 1345.

Over and over again when at Venice must one go into S. Mark’s, not to

criticize but to admire; and if ever in any building in which the main

object is the study of art, assuredly here one must go for worship also.

I think I never saw an interior so thoroughly religious and

religion-inspiring as this, and it is well, therefore, not lightly to

pass it by as useless for our general purposes. It seems to shew, as

strongly as any one example can, how much awefulness and grandeur of

character even a small building may attain to by the lavish expenditure

of art and precious materials throughout its fabric; for it is to this

that S. Mark’s owes its grandeur, and to this only. There is nothing

imposing either in its size or in its architecture; on the contrary,

they appear to me to be both moderate, and the former rather mean; and

yet this grand display of mosaics upon a gold ground makes the building

appear to be both larger and better than it is, and fully atones for all

other defects. Could we but place one of our cold, bare places of

worship by the side of S. Mark’s, and let the development of Christian

art in the construction of the fabric be ten times as great in our

Northern church as in the Venetian, we may yet rest assured that every

religious mind would turn at once to the latter, and scarce deign to

think of the former as a place of worship at all. If this is so, does it

not point most forcibly to the absolute necessity for the introduction

of more colour in the interior of our buildings, either in their

construction, or afterwards by the hand of the painter? And architects

must remember that this ought all to be within their province as

directors or designers, and therefore that they must not, as now,

venture to design cold shells which may or may not afterwards receive

these necessary and indispensable decorations, but from the very first

must view them as part and parcel of the work in which they are

personally concerned; and then, but not till then, shall we see a

satisfactory school of architects in England.

The interest of S. Mark’s is not, however, only religious and artistic;

on other grounds it is certainly one of the buildings most worthy of

study in all Europe. Its architecture is purely Byzantine; and whether

its design was derived from Constantinople or from Alexandria, it

presents us with an almost unique example of the architecture of the

Eastern church transplanted almost without alteration to the domains of

the Western. Nor is this all. It played no small part in modifying the

distinctly Roman influence by which otherwise the whole of Northern

Europe would have been affected. When we see a church so far from S.

Mark’s as that of S. Front at Périgueux modelled after it, and in its

turn influencing a vast number of churches in that and the neighbouring

districts, we may realize what S. Mark’s did towards the development of

Romanesque into new forms and combinations, and may then value properly

every portion of its fabric. Byzantine architecture was the development

of Greek art in the hands of the then vigorous and active Eastern

Church. It is not a direct reproduction therefore of Classic art which

is to be seen in S. Mark’s, but one stage of a development the influence

of which--partly owing to the effect of commerce, partly to her

isolation--was largely felt, down to the very last days of active

Venetian artistic life. This has been well condensed in a short sentence

by Mr. Ruskin. “All European architecture,” he says, “good and bad, old

and new, is derived from Greece through Rome, and coloured and perfected

from the East. The Doric and Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of

all Romanesque buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine; the other of all

Gothic--Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. The old Greeks gave

the shaft, Rome gave the arch. The Arabs pointed and foliated the arch.”

But in the colouring and perfecting the church of S. Mark had the lion’s

share, just as in the ground-plan it is to Venice and the East that we

owe the cruciform arrangement of so many of our buildings, instead of

the basilican form to which we might otherwise have been condemned.

There is another respect in which S. Mark’s is extremely Eastern. This

is in the almost entire absence of figure-sculpture in its original

construction. The subjects and figures on the columns of the baldachin

are too delicate to be noticed from a distance, and it was not until

A.D. 1394 that the choir-screen was introduced, with figures of the

Apostles on either side of the rood, erected no doubt to supply a want

which had been long felt before it was gratified. At the same time

figures were added in niches between the gables of the exterior, but

even now they form a small and inconsiderable part of the decoration of

the church.

I have lingered on paper as I did in reality about S. Mark’s; but if we

wish to see Venice we must tear ourselves away from it. We will go out

by the baptistery, and here we are at once on the Piazzetta, the noble

façade of the Ducal Palace on one side, and a great work of

Sansovino’s--the library of S. Mark--on the other; at the end of the

Piazzetta are two monolithic granite columns, one of which bears the

lion of S. Mark, the other the figure of the ancient patron saint of

Venice, S. Theodore; between them is seen the dark-blue line of the sea

rippled into a thousand twinkling waves, and beyond this the Isola San

Giorgio, remarkable for one of Palladio’s churches--a building, as I

think, irredeemably ugly, but, nevertheless, much admired by many. If

you walk down to the strand, where a hundred gondolas wait for

hire--some black and funereal-like, others dressed up with gay awnings,

and all of them proud and swan-like with their bright steel prows rising

lightly and high out of the water--and then, turning round, look first

down the Riva dei Schiavoni, towards the sea, taking in the long

sea-front of the Ducal Palace, then the narrow gap bridged by the famous

Bridge of Sighs, and on again, noting bridge after bridge, and the

Gothic palace now turned into the Hôtel Danieli, and then on to the

promontory running out towards the Adriatic, occupied by the Public

Gardens and planted with the only trees that Venice boasts--how lovely

is the scene! or if, looking back up the Piazzetta to S. Mark’s, noting

the tall campanile and the quaint clock and clock-tower beyond, and the

domes and turrets, niches and figures, which crown the church, how much

more vividly does it not impress the mind!

Venice is full to excess of striking pictures, and it would be endless

to say in how very many respects it has a character of its own which can

never be forgotten. The strange silence of its watery streets, broken

only by the cry of the gondolier or the delicate plash of his oar in the

water, is not the least impressive thing to the stranger; and when,

after trying in vain to thread on foot the labyrinth of passages which

confuse him irrecoverably in a few minutes, he commits himself to the

dark recesses of a gondola, how delightful is the quiet, smooth, and yet

rapid way in which, without more labour than is necessary in looking

about, he finds himself now following the narrow winding of some small

canal, awakening the echoes between the high walls of palaces or

warehouses on either side of the way, or anon, upon turning with a

graceful sweep into the smooth broad reach of the Grand Canal, making

his gondolier move gently and slowly, as one by one the great palaces

which grace its banks and form its retaining walls are carefully

scanned, whilst the various and ever-changing perspective of the whole

is dwelt upon, to be remembered afterwards with such intense pleasure!

From S. Mark’s I remember trying to find my way to San Stefano; and,

taking a map of Venice, and calculating upon the orientation of the

churches being fairly correct, I flattered myself that I might without

difficulty make my way: the result was simply that for half an hour I

was threading the mazes of all the passages around the church, and at

last reached it only by chance; and I found afterwards that it would not

at all do to take the churches as marking the cardinal points of the

compass, for, as may be seen from the campanile of S. Mark, there are

scarcely two churches in the city exactly alike in their orientation.

But pleasant as it is to recall one’s recollections of highways and

byways in Venice, I think, if we wish to understand her architecture

thoroughly, we shall do well first of all to make a pilgrimage to

Torcello, that sad and weird cathedral, standing forlorn and deserted on

a wretched island in the lagoon, wherein we see the handiwork of the

earliest Venetians, and the prototype of much of the later work in

Venice itself. The story of Torcello has been told often--by no one with

more feeling or more pathos than by Mr. Ruskin, and I need not attempt

to repeat it. Suffice it to say that about A.D. 641 the church was first

built, whilst in 864 it was restored, and being nearly decayed by age,

was again most studiously repaired in 1008;[33] whilst in 1361,

according to the testimony of Cornaro,[34] there were still standing on

the same island divers churches (forty-two in number) adorned with

columns of pietra dura, and with mosaics. Strange indeed is the

difference here between then and now!

My first visit to Torcello was sad and sombre enough to begin with. We

started early from Venice in a thick mist, making our way first to the

cemetery, where there is a good tall campanile, then to Murano, and

through its shabby water streets, passing the end of San Donato (which

shall be described later), and then on through long canals edged on

either side by miles of green mud, and thronged with market boats and

noisy boatmen. Here and there across the lagoon we saw a tall campanile

marking the position of each settlement or island in this waste of sea

and mud, and, last of all, that of the cathedral of Torcello, some five

minutes’ walk among decaying walls and unmown grass from the half-ruined

landing-place to which our gondolier tied his boat. All that remains of

the city is before us in small compass. On the left a fourteenth-century

building, said to have been the Palazzo Publico; in front a stone seat

or throne in the centre of what was once the market-place; on the right,

the Byzantine church of Sta. Fosca; and beyond, and connected with Sta.

Fosca by a cloister, the modernized-looking cathedral, plain, bare, and

uninteresting on the outside, with a detached campanile near the east

end. This is all Torcello has to shew; but, forlorn and decayed as

everything in the place is, it is precious in the highest degree to the

architect who cares about the growth of his art. The cathedral is full

of interest, though much damaged by extensive repairs, carried on in a

reckless mood by the Austrians, not long before they lost Venetia, when

new roofs were put on, and the mosaics were so much damaged that I

remember collecting a handful of fragments from a barrow of rubbish

before it was shot into the canal; at the same time a scaffold was

erected for a proposed restoration of the great western mosaic which,

though threatened and indeed commenced in 1857, had not in 1872 been

proceeded with. The exterior has been completely modernized. In plan the

cathedral consists of three parallel naves of ten bays, all finished

with apses. The columns dividing the nave from the aisles are of veined

marble, with capitals of exquisite workmanship, founded, indeed, on

Corinthian examples, but modified by Byzantine influence and by study of

nature. The arches are stilted and high; above them is a small

clerestory of very simple windows. The central apse retains its raised

rows of seats, though their brickwork alone is left; the throne for the

bishop is placed in the centre, and retains some of its marble inlay.

Under this raised east end a descending passage is formed, connecting

the two smaller apses, and with a small apse formed in the thickness of

the east wall opening into it. Three bays of the church are given to the

choir, which is fenced round with richly sculptured marble screens. On

the west the screen has marble columns carrying a flat entablature, and

below them is a solid portion some four feet high covered with panels of

flat sculpture, one having two peacocks drinking out of the same vase,

another two lions at the foot of a branching tree, and another a

complicated interlacing pattern of foliage. Such a screen is the obvious

prototype of that in S. Mark’s, and the sculptures with which it is

adorned are evidently the work of some early Byzantine workman--whether

brought from Aquileja from

[Illustration: 22. DUOMO. TORCELLO. p. 168.]

the ruins created by Attila’s invasion, or wrought on the spot, I cannot

say, but of a character which we still see in some of the nearly

corresponding screens in the existing cathedral of Aquileja. North-west

of this rood-screen stands the marble ambon--a pulpit of two divisions,

one (circular) facing south, the other (square) facing west. This and

the staircase leading to it are full of delicate and good carved work.

The arrangement has an absurd likeness to many a modern English scheme

of pulpit and reading pew, and there is certainly force in an

observation which Mr. Webb makes,[35] that such an arrangement would

never have been thought of, unless the Gospel was to be understood by

the people. Now they do not understand it, it is no longer said from an

ambon, and ambons seem to be much less useful to Romans than

rood-screens are to us!

The screens north and south of the choir do not seem to be so old as the

other, and are simple low screens.

In the mosaics of the apse and western wall we have, perhaps, the finest

examples of Venetian mosaics. The apse is lined with slabs of veined

marble below, and has above a mosaic of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Our

Lord and the twelve Apostles, and the patron of the church, S.

Heliodorus. The whole west wall is covered with a grand mosaic of the

Crucifixion at the top, the Descent into Hell under it, and a Last

Judgment at the base, which is carried down on each side of the west

door, in the tympanum of which is a half figure of Our Lady. A mosaic at

the end of the south aisle has Our Lord with SS. Michael and Gabriel,

and below them S. Gregory, S. Martin, S. Ambrose, and S. Austin.[36]

Save where these mosaics occur, the walls have been persistently

whitewashed, so that the appearance of the church is now far from

attractive. It is not the less of great interest, as an example of a

very early church founded on a Roman basilica, but with Byzantine

influence most conspicuous in the sculpture of its ornaments. Here, as

in S. Mark’s, the floor is paved with Opus Alexandrinum, of which, in

spite of damage done during the late repairs, it is a fine example.

There is nothing to admire on the exterior, though the large stone

shutters to the windows--single slabs of stone about four inches thick,

working on stone pivots--have a most primitive air. The campanile has

not much to distinguish it from others, but the top affords an

interesting view of the lagoon and the sea with Venice in the distance,

and the Alps of Friuli far away to the north.

A few yards through the cloister bring us to the church of Sta. Fosca.

Here by the side of the Romanesque we have a capital example of a

Byzantine plan, which seems to me to be of the greatest value in

connection with the whole of the round-arched palaces of Venice of which

so many remains still exist. Sta. Fosca is a square church with small

projections on the north, south, and west sides, and a deeper projection

for the altar on the east. There are three eastern apses, and the

western side is screened by an open cloister, which is octagonal in

plan. The square centre is domed on very simple pendentives, and the

capitals are similar in character to those in the cathedral. The best

detail is to be seen outside the east end, where there is some good

arcading and an enriched band of chevron ornament, formed by recessing

the brickwork, and a mixture of red and buff brickwork, which is very

effective.

The last time I was here, I found myself, in the middle of making a

sketch of the west front of Sta. Fosca, suddenly struck by the strange

likeness of its octagonal cloister to the most typical elevations of

the Byzantine palaces in Venice. These always have a centre and wings

divided by piers; and whilst the arches in the centre are of ordinary

proportions, those in the wings are narrow and considerably stilted. In

Sta. Fosca precisely the same effect is produced by the elevation of the

three sides of the octagonal cloister, two of them being reduced in

width and seeming to have narrow stilted arches, owing to their being

canted and not seen in true elevation. I confess I could hardly help

thinking that here I saw the accidental germ of an arrangement which,

commenced in Romanesque or Byzantine buildings, was imitated in many of

the finest of the Gothic palaces, and was revived with invariable

persistency in the Renaissance.

[Illustration: EAST END--STA. FOSCA, TORCELLO.]

The return to Venice was more pleasant than the journey out had been.

The water had risen enough to cover the mud everywhere, and now a vast

expanse of apparent sea was lighted up by the hot sun, and in the

far-off distance the horizon was lined with the long picturesque range

of the Alps, tender and transparent in hue, and sweet reminders to the

dwellers on this monotonous lagoon of the world which lay outside their

boundaries in the far north. On the road we stopped at Mazzorbo, where

there is a dated example of a Gothic doorway. This has a square-headed

opening, and above this an ogee canopy or label over a figure of Our

Lord, and some kneeling figures. The date inscribed on it is A.D. 1368.

Farther on Murano is passed, and a halt made for a visit to the church

of San Donato--once a building of the highest interest and well known to

all readers of Mr. Ruskin’s books. Unfortunately my first visit to this

church was after it had been in part “restored,” in the largest and

worst sense of the word. The old brickwork was being renewed, plastered,

and painted up, till most of its interest had vanished; and now, I fear,

only those who saw San Donato some ten years ago can have any idea of

its architectural value and interest. This was chiefly centred in the

east front, where there is a central apse with a lean-to end to the

aisle on either side. The wall is divided into two stages, by a bold

string-course and double line of chevrons formed by recessing the

brickwork and inserting panels of coloured and carved white marble. The

lower stage is arcaded mainly in red brick, whilst the upper has a wall

deeply recessed behind arcades under the eaves, with delicate

balustrades between the columns which carry the arcades. This upper part

of the building is mainly of buff-coloured bricks, with thin lines of

red to mark the pattern of arches, and it is curious that the light

bricks are much larger than the red.[37] The pavements here are very

fine examples of Opus Alexandrinum, with a more than usual proportion of

black marble, and there is a grand mosaic in the apse, of the B. V. Mary

and Our Lord on a gold ground.

One or two Gothic houses in semi-ruinous condition, and a very fine

fragment of late Byzantine work quite in ruins--the Palazzo da

Mula--remain in Murano, but of these there is such good store in Venice

itself that we may pass them by.

Most visitors, I suppose, go to Murano in order to visit Dr. Salviati’s

glass and mosaic manufactory. He has succeeded in reproducing a material

quite equal to that used in the old mosaics. Still more difficult

feat--he has succeeded also in making glass so like the old Venetian

glass in colour, texture, and design, as to puzzle all ordinary judges.

I cannot sufficiently admire or praise the singular power which Dr.

Salviati has shewn in the education of his men. A party of six or eight

made for me before my eyes, in a few minutes, a tall, delicate, and

richly adorned goblet, in which every part was done by eye and fancy; no

modern accuracy was attempted, and the result was a thoroughly beautiful

and artistic work. All artists know how difficult it is to get a workman

nowadays out of the hard mechanical groove of dull uniformity, and Dr.

Salviati’s success is an encouragement to all of us when we are tempted

to despair of making the attempt.

From Murano a few minutes take us again into the watery streets of

Venice. We have now seen the two buildings which ought first of all to

be studied--Torcello and S. Mark’s, and in them we have the key to

everything that follows. The Venetians commenced in their earliest

buildings with works which shewed but little original invention or

power. It was their fortune to have, by reason of their situation and

their commerce, a great connection with the East. They received,

therefore, a great impetus at the first from Byzantine art. Nowhere in

Europe was so great an influence of the kind exerted; and to us, whose

early architecture was almost entirely Romanesque in its origin, it has

a special interest and novelty. But if the early Venetians copied

Byzantine models, employed Byzantine workmen, and thought rather more of

the beautiful colours for which their Eastern acquaintances gave them a

taste than did their neighbours on the mainland, it must be frankly

conceded that in later times they developed a very original form of

Gothic out of these very materials, and owed comparatively little to any

external aid in their great works of the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries.

The first business of a tourist in Venice is to secure a gondolier with

intelligence enough to understand his proclivities, and patience enough

to humour them. I have more than once or twice had to thank my gondolier

for shewing me old work which otherwise I should never have seen, and I

am grateful accordingly. I am grateful, too, whenever I think of a

gondola, for the most luxurious machine for sketching from which has

ever been constructed; and the more so, when I recollect how for an hour

at a time I have been persecuted in most Italian towns by all the

idlest, dirtiest, and worst-behaved people of the place whilst I have

made my sketches of their buildings. In a gondola in Venice one knows no

such troubles, and the sketcher’s life, as long as he can work in it, is

as happy and undisturbedly serene as is possible. But no artist must

suppose that everything worth seeing can be seen from the water: a few

walks will convince him that, in the narrow _calli_ as well as on the

water-side, much that is interesting is to be found; and when he has

studied Venice both by boat and by pavement, he will find, as I do, that

the subject is too large for a chapter, and requires rather a volume for

its thorough elucidation.

The buildings of Venice divide themselves into two great classes--the

churches and the civil buildings; of these the former is the smaller

and the less interesting class. But as we have already seen at S. Mark’s

and Torcello the earliest examples of the churches, it will be best to

say all that has to be said about them here, and to take the palaces and

houses by themselves afterwards.

We have seen that S. Mark’s was built in the eleventh and twelfth, and

largely altered in the fourteenth century. Between these two periods

little if anything was done in church-building in Venice; or if it was,

it has disappeared. Just as in Germany, the thirteenth century seems

hardly to have existed for Venice, and we go at a bound from the simple

nervous round-arched work of S. Mark’s to the here somewhat poor and

tasteless churches of the fourteenth century. One or two small

campanili--San Polo, San Samuele, and San Barnaba are the best--remain

to show what the size and character of the earlier work were. They have

plain arcades in the walls, rising from the ground to the belfry, and

this has generally windows of two or three lights carried on shafts. At

San Barnaba[38] a spire with parapets and pinnacles was added to such a

steeple in the fourteenth century, the spire being circular in plan and

built of round-ended bricks. San Paterniano has an hexagonal brick tower

with two light belfry windows, also of Romanesque character. The whole

of these works are of brick, and usually the walls batter outward

towards the base. In this respect, as in the general design, the great

tower of S. Mark’s follows those early examples, as also in its means of

access to the top, which is a continuous slope in the thickness of the

wall in place of the newel staircase in use all over the North of

Europe. Finally, all these older works are very small and modest in

scale and design.

Let us now give up all thought of early works, and see what the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did for Venice in the way of

churches. Taking them in their order of merit, we will go first to the

Frari, the church of the Franciscans, thence to SS. Giovanni e Paolo,

that of the Dominicans, to the Madonna dell’ Orto, San Stefano, the

desecrated church of the Convent of La Carità, now forming part of the

Accademia, San Gregorio, Santa Zaccaria, San Giacomo del Rialto, and

some smaller fragments.

I must confess that on the whole, in spite of the grand size of some of

them, I was rather disappointed on first seeing these buildings. One

cannot but be impressed with the magnificent size of such a church as

the Frari, with its many interesting details, and its monuments and

woodwork. But in spite of all this, there is something wanting. I had

not expected larger churches, but I had imagined that their style would

be more pure, and at the same time more unlike what I was accustomed to

elsewhere. The impression they left on my mind was decidedly that they

were very inferior in almost every respect to churches of the same size

and degree of ornament in the North of Europe, whilst in scarcely any

point did they seem to me to have features which could with any

advantage be imitated by us. I had allowed myself to expect a very

different result, and was proportionately disappointed. There is no

church in Venice--(in what I am now saying I mean always to except S.

Mark’s)--comparable either to Sta. Anastasia or to the cathedral at

Verona in the interior; and the exteriors, though fine as examples of

the bold use of brick, are nevertheless not first-rate, nor at all

superior to what one sees elsewhere.

Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari ought first to be described, as being

certainly the finest of its class. The first stone is said to have been

laid on April 3rd, 1250, Nicola Pisano being the architect. The

campanile was begun in 1361

[Illustration: 23.--INTERIOR OF STA. MARIA GLORIOSA DEI FRARI. VENICE.

Page 177.]

under Jacopo Collega, and completed in 1396 by Pietro Paolo his son.

The first impression of the church on landing from the gondola on the

desolate-looking piece of pavement which here, as in many of the

Venetian churches, forms a court between the canal and the west front,

is not pleasing. The design of the west front is nothing short of being

positively ugly; it is finished with a great sham gable, with a curved

outline, somewhat akin to the degraded taste of our worst Jacobæan art,

and entirely without any beauty or even picturesqueness of appearance;

the doorways, too, are particularly poor, consisting of a succession of

twisted and reedy mouldings, thin and shadowless, like so many cords

stretched from cap to base and round the arch, without any proper

distinction of jamb and archivolt.

The internal effect of the church is much finer than its west front

would lead one to expect. The plan is simple; a nave and aisles of six

bays, transepts with three eastern chapels to each, and a choir of one

bay with an apse of four bays projecting beyond the others. The tower is

in the angle between the north transept and the nave, and a large

sacristy with an eastern apse is built against the south transept. The

nave and aisles measure about 230 feet by 104, and the transept 160 feet

by 48,--magnificent dimensions undoubtedly. The columns are simple,

cylindrical, and very lofty, their capitals carved with foliage, which

looks late and poor in its execution, though grouped in the old way in

regular tufts or balls of foliage. The arrangement of the wall above the

main arcade is very similar to that of the Veronese, and, indeed, to

that of most Italian Gothic churches; a plain wall being carried up to

the groining, relieved only by a small clerestory window at the highest

point. One is apt to compare this arrangement with the artistic

arrangement of clerestory and triforium in our own churches; but herein

we do not act quite fairly to Nicola Pisano, who is said to have

designed the Frari, and his brethren. They had to work in a country

where light must be admitted very sparingly, and where therefore it is

impossible for architects to revel in the rich traceries which fill the

bays of the churches of the North; they lived among a nation of

painters, and deemed, perhaps, that these plain surfaces of wall would

one day glow with colour and with Scripture story. For these reasons,

then, I defend them for the bareness and over-great plainness which are

certainly at first felt to be so remarkable in their work. The real

beauty of these interiors is owing, more than to anything else, I

believe, to the simplicity and purity of the quadripartite groining

which covers them in, and which, even where other features would seem to

tell of debasement and absence of pure feeling, invariably recalls us to

a proper recollection of the infinite value of simplicity in this

important feature--a point lost sight of in England after the thirteenth

century, to the incalculable detriment of the beauty of some of our

greatest churches. It is not difficult to prove that this must be the

case, for I take it for granted that we all feel that ornament for its

own sake is valueless; and equally, that doing in a troublesome, and

therefore costly way, that which may be done as well and as strongly in

a simpler manner, is unpleasant and distasteful as an exhibition of the

wasteful expenditure of human skill and energy; and therefore, as simple

quadripartite groining with diagonal and transverse ribs, and no lierne

or intermediate ribs, is quite sufficient for the construction, and as

the vaults are in no degree whatever strengthened by the multiplication

and ramification of perplexing ribs, such as we see in later days in fan

tracery and other contemporary modes of vaulting, that it is the truest

and most agreeable system of roofing in stone.

The simple groining of the Frari is entirely executed in brick, and

springs in the aisles from pilasters corbelled out of the walls midway

in height, just as in Sta. Anastasia at Verona, and in the nave and

choir from clusters of shafts rising from the caps of the columns.

The apse is the noblest feature of the whole church; its windows, with

their singular and not quite pleasing transome of tracery, are

refreshing because they have tracery, though indeed it is of a rude and

heavy kind.

There is something impressive about the arrangement of the church. The

choir is prolonged by the length of about one bay and a half into the

nave, and fenced off to the west by a great screen, surmounted by

figures of the Apostles, with a crucifix rising in the centre. The nave

is, of course, quite free from any fixed seats; and this, with the great

area of the transept and the fine perspective of the long range of seven

apsidal chapels on its east side, gives a grand air of spaciousness to

the whole interior. There are some fine monuments here, quite worth

notice as very characteristic of Italian art. They are generally high

tombs corbelled out from the walls, with arched canopies over them,

inclosing paintings. Here the south transept wall over the door to the

vestry contains a group of such monuments, which is extremely

picturesque. The monument of “Beatus Pacificus” (A.D. 1437) has a

graceful painting of the Annunciation over its arch, and sculptures

under it of the Baptism, and, on the tomb, of the Resurrection and the

Descent into Hell.[39] Another monument has a life-size figure on

horseback, and all have so much freshness to an English eye, and yet so

much identity in principle with our own old monuments, that they are

well worthy of study. Last, but not least, are two immense monuments

facing each other, near the west end of the nave, to Canova and Titian,

preposterous in size, heavy, ugly, and cold in character, quite

unsuitable to a church, and, so far at least as I could judge, entirely

devoid of merit as works of religious art. There is, too, a painting by

Giovanni Bellini of the Madonna and Saints, which ought to be visited,

in the grand and well-used sacristy--a room such as one never seems to

see save in Italy. It is still in its old frame over the sacristy altar.

Both in artistic interest and in religious effect it is perfectly fine;

the subject--a Madonna and Child, such as Gian Bellini alone could

paint. Angels playing instruments, sweet and pretty in character, and

saints full of reverence and awe for Our Lord, all treated with a colour

of exquisite depth and richness throughout, make this as worshipful a

picture as I know. There is also in the north transept a most

elaborately framed Gothic triptych, with figures well drawn and rich in

colour.

The stalls in the Frari are all placed in the nave west of the transept,

as in Westminster Abbey. They are of very rich Renaissance character,

but with some late Gothic features. In the north transept is some

elaborate Gothic panelling--very German in character--which looks as if

it had come from the back of the old choir stalls. Here, too, is a

crucifix, probably the original rood. Some fragments of stained glass

are still visible; they are coarse and rude in detail, but extremely

fine in colour; and one must picture the church full of rich glass in

order to do justice to the scheme of the mediæval architect.

To the south of the nave are large uninteresting cloisters, and it is

only at the east end that the exterior at all repays the ecclesiologist

for the pains he must take to get all round it. The view which I give

will best illustrate its general character. The windows are all

transomed, the tracery and portions of the arches being executed in

stone, the rest of the wall being entirely of brick or terra-cotta with

some

[Illustration: 24.--STA. MARIA GLORIOSA DEI FRARI. VENICE. Page 180.]

red marble in the eaves-arcading; the bricks are not particularly good,

and the terra-cotta borders, cornices, and ornaments are poor and meagre

in their design. The most observable point about the detail is the great

and ugly splay on the exterior of the windows, and the facts that the

window mouldings are returned round the sills and that all the apsidal

terminations in the church finish with an angle in the centre--a

peculiarity which is very seldom met with, but very much to be commended

as a variety.

There is a degree of clumsiness about the way in which the arches of the

windows are set upon the jambs which is very characteristic of Italian

Gothic; but this, and other points open to criticism, do not prevent the

east end of this church from being a very noble conception, broad and

grand, unbroken with the lines of buttresses which generally too much

confuse apsidal terminations, and yet very vertical in its effect. There

is no petty attempt at relieving or ornamenting plain wall where it

occurs, but it is left in the native rudeness of the rather

rough-looking red brick, which is in no respect better than the bricks

one may get anywhere in England. The cornices are very marked, and those

in the clerestory have the common and ungraceful corbelled arcading in

brick, to which I have a special antipathy. The clerestory windows of

the transepts and choir are, I need hardly say, quite modern, and of a

kind, unfortunately, most popular throughout the north of Italy. North

of the choir is a tall brick campanile, leaning rather dangerously to

the North, finished with an octagonal upper stage, and, though not very

remarkable, making a conspicuous feature in most of the views of this

part of Venice, and at any rate to be admired for its simplicity and the

absence of effort in its design.

Next in order of merit to this church are those of SS. Giovanni e Paolo

and of the Madonna dell’ Orto, both of them savouring most strongly of

the influence of the Pisani, and in very many points remarkably like the

church of the Frari.

We will take SS. Giovanni e Paolo first. The plan is of the same sort as

that of the Frari--nave with aisles, and transepts with two chapels

opening on each side of them. These are all apsidal, but planned in the

usual way and not as at the Frari. The east end is a fine composition,

having an apse of seven sides, and is the only part of the exterior to

which much praise can be given. It is divided into two stages by an

elaborate brick cornice and a good balustraded passage in front of the

upper windows. The traceries are all unskilfully designed, and set back

from the face of the wall with a bald plain splay of brickwork round

them; the lower windows here have two transoms, and the upper a single

band of heavy tracery which performs the part of a transom in an

ungainly fashion, though not so badly as in the great south-transept

window in the same church. Here, just as at the Frari, it is obvious

that the absence of buttresses to these many-sided apses is the secret

of the largeness and breadth which mark them; and, to say the truth, not

only are large buttresses to an apse often detrimental to its effect,

but at the same time they are very often not wanted for strength. The

interior is remarkable on account of the fine scale on which it is

built, and for the large number of interesting monuments corbelled out

from its walls. Many of them are mediæval and rich in sculpture of

figures, not only on the tombs themselves, but again in the face of the

wall, around their canopies. The effigy of the deceased is almost always

placed on the top of the high tomb or sarcophagus, which, in order that

it may be visible from below, is made with a slope towards the

spectator, the effect of which is most distressing. Much more beautiful

generally is the curtained tester often put above the figure, on either

side of which guardian angels, holding back the folds of the draperies,

allow us to join them in looking at the figure on the tomb. There is

here a very fine lectern--a double-headed eagle standing on a

scorpion--with a rich mediæval stand and base.

There are small two-light windows just over the arches in the nave which

take the place of a triforium, and which look almost as if they were the

clerestory windows of an earlier church whose arches were much less

lofty than those which now exist.

In the small piazza in front of the church stands one of the glories of

Venice--the monument of Bartolomeo Colleoni. As is the case with too

many equestrian statues the base seems dangerously small for the steed,

slow and stately as his movement is. What a grand air of valiant

determination this old warrior wears! what a serious purpose the artist

had in his work, and how carefully he has rendered every detail of

trapping and armour on both man and horse! We have already heard of this

famous condottiere in his chapel at Bergamo and in his castle of

Malpaga. His statue was the work of Andrea Verocchio, but was completed

by Alessandro Leopardi, between 1479 and 1488. Colleoni had left his

whole fortune to the republic of Venice on condition that his statue

should be placed in the Piazza of S. Mark. This being contrary to the

laws, an ingenious loophole for escape was discovered; the bequest was

secured by the erection of the statue in front of the Scuola di San

Marco, whose strange Renaissance front (built with coloured marble in a

horrible sort of perspective, which is the lowest depth to which

architecture ever reached) stands at right angles to the front of SS.

Giovanni e Paolo. For any one who wished to be remembered near S. Mark’s

church, the catastrophe would be as great, if he cared about art, to

find himself connected, instead, with such an abortion as the Scuola of

that ilk, as it would be to Bartolomeo Colleoni to find himself here in

the suburbs when he stipulated so carefully for a place in the very

centre of the city!

Next in order of merit to SS. Giovanni e Paolo I should place the church

of Sta. Maria dell’ Orto. This church is in a very bad state, and so far

ruinous as to require to be supported in its interior by a forest of

shores and scaffold-poles, which makes it quite impossible to get a good

idea of the general effect. It has fair pointed arcades resting upon

very Classic-looking columns, with capitals of poorly grouped and

executed foliage. It is decidedly inferior to the two churches just

described, in every respect save the treatment of its west front, which,

poor as it is, sins less against all acknowledged rules than do theirs;

its character is of a kind of pseudo-pointed, very flat, hard, and

awkward. The cornice, with the open Italian pinnacles above it, over the

central portion, is better in its effect than the singular row of niches

which stands in lieu of cornice for the ends of the aisles; but it is

worth while, nevertheless, to observe how simple is the design of these

niches, taken separately, and how far this simplicity and the genuine

beauty of their cusping and arching go towards redeeming the want of

taste which is shown in the choice of their location. The doorway and

rose window in the west front are of red and white marble, and in the

side windows the tracery and monials are of white marble, and the jambs

alternately red and white. The rest of the wall is brick, but has been

plastered and washed with pink. The windows at the end of the aisles are

remarkable for transoms of tracery supported upon two heights of

delicate marble shafts, and entirely independent of the glazing which is

fixed in frames within them. This kind of arrangement, incongruous and

unsatisfactory as it is here, is worth recollecting, as being suggestive

of an obvious opening for the use of traceried windows in domestic work;

and it is a plan of most frequent occurrence in the best Italian

ecclesiastical architecture. Many of the windows of Sta. Anastasia at

Verona are constructed in this way, showing on the outside elaborately

cusped and pierced plates of stone, against which on the inside the

glazing is fixed, surrounded only with a plain circle of stone.

San Stefano is another really striking Gothic church. Its interior,

notwithstanding the gaudy red damask with which the Venetians here and

elsewhere delight to clothe the columns of their churches, is very fine

and unlike what is common in the North of Europe. The dimensions are

very large. The nave is about forty-eight feet wide, and the whole

length about one hundred and seventy feet. There are a cloister and a

chapter-house north of the nave, and a campanile detached at some

distance to the east. The arcades of six pointed arches dividing the

nave from either aisle are very light, and supported on delicate marble

columns, whose capitals, with square abaci and foliage of Classical

character, hardly look like Gothic work. The masonry and mouldings of

the arches are not arranged in a succession of orders, as is the case in

almost all good pointed work, but have a broad, plain soffeit, with a

small and shallow moulding at the edge, finished with a dentil or billet

ornament, which, originally used by the architect of S. Mark’s in order

to form the lines of constructional stonework within which his encrusted

marbles were held, was afterwards, down to the very decline of pointed

architecture, used everywhere in Venice--not only in its original

position, but, as at San Stefano, in place of a label round the arch.

Its effect is much like that of the English dog-tooth ornament--a

succession of sharp hard lights and shades, useful as giving value and

force to a very small piece of stonework, and therefore exceedingly

valuable when used as it is at S. Mark’s, and equally contemptible, I am

bound to say, when used, as it is in later work at Venice, simply as an

ornament; for this it is not and cannot be, as it is the result of no

skill or taste on the part of the workman, but just such an enrichment

as might be rather better done by machine than by hand. The roof of the

nave is a painted timber roof, boarded in a series of cusped lines on

the under side of the constructional framework, so as to hide it. I must

not forget to add that the interior of San Stefano requires to be held

together by iron ties in every direction--a sin to which, in Italy, the

eye soon has to become accustomed.

The whole of the exterior is very carefully executed in brick, the

moulded work being well done, though very late in date and not good in

effect. The western doorway is of a favourite Venetian type. It is

square-headed, enriched with mouldings and carving, and above it is an

arched canopy with pinnacles on each side and with an ogee arched label

carrying enormous crockets. The finial is a three-quarter figure, and an

angel occupies the spandrel between the arch and the label. Above the

door is a large circular window, unadorned with tracery or filling-in of

any kind. The window from the east end of the church, of which I give an

engraving, is a very characteristic example, of great width, and utterly

unlike any example out of Venice.

[Illustration: WINDOW--SAN STEFANO.]

Perhaps the very worst traceries in Venice--which is saying a good

deal--are in the windows of the apse here, where the traceried arches of

the head are repeated over the transom, but inverted and standing on

their points. More worthy of admiration is a fine tomb corbelled out

from the cloister wall to Andreas Contarina, “MCCCLVII. Dux creatus

[Illustration: 25. SAN GIACOMO DEL RIALTO. VENICE. p. 187.]

MCCCLXXXII. in cœlumn sublatus;” the arched bridge under the choir

(which is carried over a canal) should also be noted, as well as the

very fine campanile, which, though not boasting of any Gothic detail, is

full of the spirit which made the earlier campanili so effective. But if

we wish to see the best campanile in Venice, I think we must go back to

the Rialto, and there, not far from the Grand Canal, we shall see in

that of San Giacomo a perfectly fine example.[40] It is almost entirely

of brick, and the fine long lines of its arcades give a great effect of

height, whilst the details are all good and quite Gothic in their

character.

The other churches in Venice are of less importance than those which I

have described, but the number of remains, of which only too many are

desecrated, is very large. The Accademia has attached to it the

desecrated church of the convent of La Carità. This has three parallel

aisles ended with apses, the usual traceries and cornices, and the

unusual (I am glad to say) feature of three western gables with arched

outlines[41] filled in with much small tracery in brick and terra-cotta.

Another desecrated church near this--that of San Gregorio--is more

interesting. It is of the same general design as La Carità and, like it,

is built of yellowish bricks. The window traceries are of white marble.

The most interesting feature here is the cloister, entered by a

remarkable doorway from the Grand Canal. The doorway is square-headed,

with an ogee trefoiled archway or window on either side, and a sitting

figure of a bishop under a slight canopy over the doorway. The cloister

has five bays on each side, divided by columns which rest on a marble

and brick base, and carry a wooden framework enriched with very good

mouldings.

Another desecrated church is that “dei Servi,” which has a fine lofty

brick front with a large rose window.

In the Campo Sta. Zaccaria is a portal much like that of San Stefano,

save that it has in the tympanum a good figure of the Blessed Virgin

with Our Lord with a saint on each side--the two Saints John, I think.

The Virgin is seated on a Gothic throne carved in very low relief, and

the whole composition is decidedly fine; comparing it with the doorway

at Mazzorbo, I should say this must be a work of A.D. 1380. The church

of Sta. Zaccaria is an early Renaissance building, with many of its

arches pointed. It has an aisle and chapels round the choir, an unusual

plan in Venice, but otherwise it has no interest.

The church of l’Abbazia has some fair detail in its cornices, with

pinnacles at its west end of the same type as those in the Madonna dell’

Orto, and has poor ogee-headed pointed windows; near it is another of

the canopied doorways--the gate of the Corte Vecchia--with an outer

arched canopy, within which under an ogee-shaped label stands the

Blessed Virgin with Our Lord in an aureole on her breast. Two saints

stand at her side, and groups of little figures kneel at her feet,

whilst from the upper finial Our Lord gives His blessing. This bears the

date of 1505.

I think I have now said enough about these late Gothic churches. I have

never been able to interest myself much about them. The work of which

they are specimens is so exceedingly poor, cold, and distasteful to me,

that I feel much inclined when I attempt to sketch them to give up

ecclesiology in despair. The truth is that, S. Mark’s excepted--and of

course it is a very wonderful exception--the churches in Venice do not

come up to the expectations of any one who has ever experienced the

delight of visiting the churches of much smaller cities in France,

Germany, and England. True, indeed, there are much interest and a great

breadth and dignity about the general effect of such a church as that

of the Frari; but for all those lovely points of detail which in every

direction amaze us by the art they display and the rich array of beauty

with which they clothe the walls of Northern cathedrals, there is here

no kind of equivalent.

When I had thoroughly come to this conclusion, and settled in my own

mind by repeated inspection that my judgment was not harsh or unfair, I

confess I felt a weight off my mind. I was now free to indulge myself to

the full in the search for what Venice really has in greater abundance,

perhaps, than any other city in Christendom--remains, namely, of

mediæval domestic work. Nothing can be conceived more delightful than

such a search. You seldom go a hundred yards--often it is much

less--without coming upon some remains, or perhaps some nearly perfect

example, of an old Venetian palace; and then, with the gondola fastened

to one of the great posts which line all the canals, the well-satisfied

gondolier lying stretched on his back behind the awning, your friends

laughing and talking within its dark recess, you sit most luxuriously,

and make your notes and sketches with a degree of quiet comfort which is

not a little conducive to accurate and careful sketching, and to

diligence in its pursuit.

Venetian palaces divide themselves naturally into two great classes--the

Byzantine and the Gothic; and it surprized me very much to find remains

so perfect and so extensive of the former class even on the banks of the

Grand Canal itself, where change has been ever so frequent and so rife.

Indeed, it is singular that nearly all the Byzantine palaces are

situated on its banks.

Of these palaces, certainly the most striking by far are the Ca’

Loredan, the Ca’ Farsetti, and the Fondaco de’ Turchi. They all agree

singularly in the general idea of their design, and consist of a grand

scheme of arcading over the entire front. Divided generally into two

stories in height, they are again divided in a marked manner in width

into a centre and wings. This division is effected solely by a great

difference in the spans of the arches forming the arcades, which in the

wings are much narrower than in the central division. In the upper

arcade the spaces between the columns, and indeed the whole arrangement,

are often studiously unlike those in the lower range; but, at the same

time, there is so very much similarity in the detail of the whole, that

this variety, far from being perceived as an irregularity or a fault,

does in truth just suffice to give force and vitality to what might

otherwise appear to be monotonous and too often repeated, and recalls to

mind not a little the very similar kind of difference between the upper

and lower order of shafts already described in the west front of S.

Mark’s.

We cannot do better than take, as an example of the finest type of a

Byzantine palace, the magnificent, though now desolate, decaying, and

ruined façade of the Fondaco de’ Turchi, once the palace of the Dukes of

Ferrara. The whole front of this was originally cased with a thin facing

of marble, like the coeval works at S. Mark’s--a kind of decoration

which, neglected as this fine relic has been for years, we cannot be

surprized to find almost altogether destroyed; small fragments do,

however, still here and there remain to tell of the original

magnificence of the work. The lower stage of the Fondaco consists of a

continuous arcade of ten open arches, with three narrower arches at

either end, forming the wings, so to speak; the upper stage has eighteen

arches in the centre, and four in each wing. In the wings the piers

supporting the arches are, I think, all moulded pilasters; in the centre

all the arches rest upon columns; and throughout the whole building the

arches, which are all semicircular, are considerably stilted. The entire

building is constructed in brick, which was originally, as I have

before said, covered all over with a thin veneer of marble; in the

spandrels of all the arches this is relieved by small circular

medallions delicately carved, and over the upper stage is a

string-course, above which there would seem to have been a long series

of slightly sunk panels with round-arched heads, filled in with

delicately arranged and beautifully sculptured patterns in marble. These

panels are immediately below the eaves of the roof. Many of the abaci

and string-courses, and all the thin pieces of marble which form the

soffeits of the arches, have their projections finished either with a

nail-head or dentil moulding, and between the shafts of the upper stage

there are traces of balconies.[42]

A very noticeable point in the general effect of the façade of the

Fondaco de’ Turchi is that, from the peculiar shape and great projection

of the capitals of the shafts and the narrow span of the arches, the

whole of the arcading has, at a small distance, almost the effect of a

series of trefoils, and so seems to pave the way for the continuous

traceries of the Ducal Palace and other later buildings.

There is a ruined fragment of a house of the same age as the Fondaco de’

Turchi in a canal behind the Foscari Palace. Here the centre arch is

very wide, has four stilted arches on the sides, the archivolts are all

delicately carved, and small sculptured medallions are introduced in the

spandrels. Here, I think, the red brick of the walls was always intended

to be seen. Of very similar character is a much larger fragment on the

right of the Grand Canal after passing under the Rialto. Here there are

two stories still remaining. The round-arched doorway has two open and

stilted arches on each side, and then a space of blank wall; and the

upper stage has a group of seven arches in the centre, and a single

arch at each end over the blank wall below. The labels of these upper

arches are turned up at the point into an ogee shape, which, strange as

it may seem, must be original, as the detail is early, and they are

surmounted by a collection of carved medallions and a carved

string-course of early style.[43]

The Ca’ Loredan has two stages in height, above which all is modern--but

all the Byzantine arrangements of these two stages are perfect. There

are five open arches in the centre, and an arcaded pier on each side;

and in the next stage, though the division of centre and wings is

preserved, the arches are increased in number, and consequently the

columns of this stage do not come above those of the lower stage. The

string-courses are formed with a billet mould; the capitals are some of

them genuine Byzantine, and some copies of Corinthian. The wall-faces

were all inlaid, but they were in part altered in the fourteenth

century, when some coats-of-arms and figures were added. Those at the

extreme angles are of David and Goliath, and on each side of the centre

sitting figures of Justice and Force.

Next to the Ca’ Loredan is the Ca’ Farsetti (now the Municipio), which

is, I think, slightly the older building of the two. Here there are

three arches resting on shafts in the centre, and an equal number

resting on piers on each side, and a continuous arcade of fifteen arches

on the upper stage resting on coupled shafts.

The Palazzo Businetto on the Grand Canal opposite the Ca’ Grimani, has

remains of Byzantine work in its two lower stages. Here the caps are

Byzantine in character, the archivolts flat inlays, with a billet mould

on each side, and a carved string-course of running foliage inclosed

between two lines of notched or billet mould.

[Illustration: 26. BYZANTINE WELL. VENICE. p. 193.]