ST. MARK'S.
§ I. "And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as the
shores of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had
entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his
hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of
Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the
work,[19] how wonderful would he have thought it, that by the lion
symbol in future ages he was to be represented among men! how woful,
that the war-cry of his name should so often reanimate the rage of the
soldier, on those very plains where he himself had failed in the courage
of the Christian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very
Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was following
the Son of Consolation!
§ II. That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the ninth
century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it was
principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose him
for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that before
he went into Egypt he had founded the Church at Aquileia, and was thus,
in some sort, the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I
believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of
St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome;[20] but, as usual, it is
enriched by various later additions and embellishments, much resembling
the stories told respecting the church of Murano. Thus we find it
recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the "Vite de' Santi spettanti
alle Chiese di Venezia,"[21] that "St. Mark having seen the people of
Aquileia well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St.
Peter, before setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and
went in a small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that period
some houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and the boat
being driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when St. Mark,
snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to him: 'Peace
be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel goes on to
foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne più veduta Città;" but the
fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther relation.
§ III. But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not, St.
Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be considered
as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue, standing on
a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar of
the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said to have occupied,
before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and the traveller,
dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to leave it
without endeavoring to imagine its aspect in that early time, when it
was a green field cloister-like and quiet,[22] divided by a small canal,
with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the two
churches of St. Theodore and St. Geminian, as the little piazza of
Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral.
§ IV. But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally
removed to the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the
present one stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it,[23] gave a very
different character to the Square of St. Mark; and fifteen years later,
the acquisition of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the
Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of
that chapel with all possible splendor. St. Theodore was deposed from
his patronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for the
aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, and
thenceforward known as "St. Mark's."[24]
§ V. This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the Ducal
Palace was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was partly
rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and, with
the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on under
successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building being
completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till
considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,[25]
according to Sansovino and the author of the "Chiesa Ducale di S.
Marco," in 1094 according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and
1096, those years being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I
incline to the supposition that it was soon after his accession to the
throne in 1085, though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead of
Vital Falier. But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh
century the great consecration of the church took place. It was again
injured by fire in 1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of
Venice there was probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree
embellish or alter the fabric, so that few parts of it can be
pronounced boldly to be of any given date. Two periods of interference
are, however, notable above the rest: the first, that in which the
Gothic school, had superseded the Byzantine towards the close of the
fourteenth century, when the pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window
traceries were added to the exterior, and the great screen, with various
chapels and tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the
Renaissance school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian and
Tintoret substituted, over one half of the church, their own
compositions for the Greek mosaics with which it was originally
decorated;[26] happily, though with no good will, having left enough to
enable us to imagine and lament what they destroyed. Of this irreparable
loss we shall have more to say hereafter; meantime, I wish only to fix
in the reader's mind the succession of periods of alteration as firmly
and simply as possible.
§ VI. We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly
stated to be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the
fourteenth, and the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no
difficulty in distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the
Byzantine; but there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how
long, during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
additions were made to the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily
distinguished from the work of the eleventh century, being purposely
executed in the same manner. Two of the most important pieces of
evidence on this point are, a mosaic in the south transept, and another
over the northern door of the façade; the first representing the
interior, the second the exterior, of the ancient church.
§ VII. It has just been stated that the existing building was
consecrated by the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to
that act of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what
appears to have been one of the best arranged and most successful
impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body
of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976;
but the revenues of the church depended too much upon the devotion
excited by these relics to permit the confession of their loss. The
following is the account given by Corner, and believed to this day by
the Venetians, of the pretended miracle by which it was concealed.
"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which
the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten; so
that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the
venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious
Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by
confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer
and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not now
depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore proclaimed,
and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the
people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent prayers
for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a
slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where the
altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth,
exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in which
the body of the Evangelist was laid."
§ VIII. Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They were
embellished afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as, for
instance, that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark extended
his hand out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he
permitted a noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint and
delightful story was further invented of this ring, which I shall not
repeat here, as it is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian
Nights. But the fast and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means
effected, are facts; and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved
mosaics of the north transept, executed very certainly not long after
the event had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of
the Bayeux tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the
interior of the church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in
prayer, then in thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and
the Doge, in the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet
embroidered with gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux"
over his head, as uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most
other pictorial works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely
represented, and the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in
order to form a background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of
picture history which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand
things besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or
two of the real or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague
background: the old workman crushed the church together that he might
get it all in, up to the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some
useful notes of its ancient form, though any one who is familiar with
the method of drawing employed at the period will not push the evidence
too far. The two pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day,
and the fringe of mosaic flower-work which then encompassed the whole
church, but which modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment
still left in the south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the
other mosaics on the roof, the scale being too small to admit of their
being represented with any success; but some at least of those mosaics
had been executed at that period, and their absence in the
representation of the entire church is especially to be observed, in
order to show that we must not trust to any negative evidence in such
works. M. Lazari has rashly concluded that the central archivolt of St.
Mark's _must_ be posterior to the year 1205, because it does not appear
in the representation of the exterior of the church over the northern
door;[27] but he justly observes that this mosaic (which is the other
piece of evidence we possess respecting the ancient form of the
building) cannot itself be earlier than 1205, since it represents the
bronze horses which were brought from Constantinople in that year. And
this one fact renders it very difficult to speak with confidence
respecting the date of any part of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we
have above seen that it was consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet
here is one of its most important exterior decorations assuredly
retouched, if not entirely added, in the thirteenth, although its style
would have led us to suppose it had been an original part of the fabric.
However, for all our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to
remember that the earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh,
twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions
to the fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the
fifteenth and sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the
seventeenth.
§ IX. This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I may
speak generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without
leading him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated
by Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the
seventeenth century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to
the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a Byzantine
building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary,
direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the reader with
anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the eye, or affects
the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine
influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits need not
therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or arrested
by the obscurities of chronology.
§ X. And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St. Mark's
Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English
cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let
us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can
see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low grey
gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the
centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing
goes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the
chapter, and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by
neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and
excessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out
here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color
and white, and small porches to their doors in the shape of
cockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables
warped a little on one side; and so forward till we come to larger
houses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and with gardens behind
them, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines,
the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on
the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smooth grass
and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially on the sunny side where
the canons' children are walking with their nurserymaids. And so, taking
care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the straight walk to
the west front, and there stand for a time, looking up at its
deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their pillars where
there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, of a
stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of a king,
perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long ago in
heaven; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall of
rugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, and grisly
with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling
winds into yet unseemlier shape, and colored on their stony scales by
the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to
the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the
bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only
sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scattering,
and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and
flowers, the crowed of restless birds that fill the whole square with
that strange clangor of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the
cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea.
§ XI. Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of all its
small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its
secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense
and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by the
cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who
have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries, and
on all who have seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or
catching on their square masses the last rays of the sunset, when the
city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at the bend of the
river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land
at the extremity of the Calle Lunga San Moisè, which may be considered
as there answering to the secluded street that led us to our English
cathedral gateway.
§ XII. We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide where it
is widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant
salesmen,--a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of
brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high
houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over-head an
inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and
chimney flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows
with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here
and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some
inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high
over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be,
occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about
eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one is
narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable
shops, wainscoted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but in
those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares
laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases
entering at the front only, and fading away in a few feet from the
threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but
which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the
back of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less pious
shop-keeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented with a
penny print; the more religious one has his print colored and set in a
little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a faded
flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here at
the fruiterer's, where the dark-green water-melons are heaped upon the
counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of fresh laurel
leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, and there is
nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the studded
patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the darkness. Next
comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori," where the Virgin, enthroned in a
very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a back shelf, presides over
certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to be defined or
enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at the regular wine-shop of the
calle, where we are offered "Vino Nostrani a Soldi 28·32," the Madonna
is in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red casks of
three-year-old vintage, and flanked by goodly ranks of bottles of
Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and for the evening, when the
gondoliers will come to drink out, under her auspices, the money they
have gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier.
§ XIII. A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle,
and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply
moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines
resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side;
and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence to the
entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of the
square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the
frightful façade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another time to
examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the
piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging
groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into the
shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and then we
forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great light,
and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of St.
Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of
chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong
themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses
that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back
into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and
broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly
sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone.
§ XIV. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered
arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square
seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far
away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low
pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and
partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great
vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of
alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture fantastic
and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates,
and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined
together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst
of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and
leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among
the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them,
interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the
branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And
round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated
stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with
flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the
sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow, as
it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation,
as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with
interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of
acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the
Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of
language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of
men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these,
another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged
with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts
of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden
strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with
stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break
into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes
and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore
had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid
them with coral and amethyst.
Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There
is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the
restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak
upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among
the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living
plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely,
that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years.
§ XV. And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath it?
You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of
St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance
brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and
poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the
porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, the
foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them that
sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and caricatures.
Round the whole square in front of the church there is almost a
continuous line of cafés, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes
lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the Austrian bands play
during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ
notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd
thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its will, would
stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the
porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed
and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded
children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation
and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing,--gamble,
and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised
centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the images of
Christ and His angels look down upon it continually.
That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this,
let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and
passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean
d'Acre, we shall find the gate of the Baptistery; let us enter there.
The heavy door closes behind us instantly, and the light, and the
turbulence of the Piazzetta, are together shut out by it.
§ XVI. We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted, not with arches, but with
small cupolas starred with gold, and chequered with gloomy figures: in
the centre is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs, a small
figure of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light that
glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high in
the wall, and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing that
it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb indeed;
for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low-roofed and
curtained, so that it might seem, but that it has some height above the
pavement, to have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might
be wakened early;--only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain
back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look also, and thank that
gentle light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies away upon
his breast.
The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows
right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a tower:
the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal cap. The
rest of the features are singularly small and delicate, the lips sharp,
perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the natural lines;
but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep serenity upon the whole
countenance. The roof of the canopy above has been blue, filled with
stars; beneath, in the centre of the tomb on which the figure rests, is
a seated figure of the Virgin, and the border of it all around is of
flowers and soft leaves, growing rich and deep, as if in a field in
summer.
It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo, a man early great among the great of
Venice; and early lost. She chose him for her king in his 36th year; he
died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to which we owe
half of what we know of her former fortunes.
§ XVII. Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it is of
rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble, and its walls are
of alabaster, but worn and shattered, and darkly stained with age,
almost a ruin,--in places the slabs of marble have fallen away
altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents, but all
beautiful; the ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands
and channelled zones of the alabaster, and the time-stains on its
translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the
color of seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light
fades away into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye
can hardly trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of
Christ: but on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and
there are seen upon it two great circles, one surrounded by the
"Principalities and powers in heavenly places," of which Milton has
expressed the ancient division in the single massy line,
"Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,"
and around the other, the Apostles; Christ the centre of both; and upon
the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in
every circumstance of his life and death; and the streams of the Jordan
running down between their cloven rocks; the axe laid to the root of a
fruitless tree that springs upon their shore. "Every tree that bringeth
not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire." Yes,
verily: to be baptized with fire, or to be cast therein; it is the
choice set before all men. The march-notes still murmur through the
grated window, and mingle with the sounding in our ears of the sentence
of judgment, which the old Greek has written on that Baptistery wall.
Venice has made her choice.
§ XVIII. He who lies under that stony canopy would have taught her
another choice, in his day, if she would have listened to him; but he
and his counsels have long been forgotten by her, and the dust lies upon
his lips.
Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his
rest, let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper
twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before
the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a
vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy
aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters
only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray
or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts
a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall
in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is
from torches, or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of
the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered
with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming
to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints
flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under
foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one
picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and
terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of
prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running
fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures
of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption;
for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at
last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every
stone; sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes
with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its
feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the
church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of
the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when
the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure
traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes
raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, "Mother of God," she is
not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and
always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow
of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised
in power, or returning in judgment.
§ XIX. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people.
At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various
shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the darker places of
the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for the
most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number of
the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed
prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the step of the
stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark's;
and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in which we
may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch,
cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then
rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and
clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps
burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if comforted.
§ XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler
characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a
devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to
their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever
there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more
than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of
the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its
architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories
embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight,
on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number
of worshippers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the
Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left
comparatively empty.[28] But this effect is altogether to be ascribed to
its richer assemblage of those sources of influence which address
themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind, and which, in
all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in the support
of superstition. Darkness and mystery; confused recesses of building;
artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained with a
constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness; preciousness of
material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye; close air loaded with a
sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious services, solemn
music, and tangible idols or images having popular legends attached to
them,--these, the stage properties of superstition, which have been from
the beginning of the world, and must be to the end of it, employed by
all nations, whether openly savage or nominally civilized, to produce a
false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the true nature of the
Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as far as I know,
unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the Magus and the
Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed Christianity; and
the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be regarded by us
with no more respect than we should have considered ourselves justified
in rendering to the devotion of the worshippers at Eleusis, Ellora, or
Edfou.[29]
§ XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion were
employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not employed
alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the torchlight
illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye traced and
every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole residence in
Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I never heard
from any one the most languid expression of interest in any feature of
the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their understanding
the meaning of its architecture; and while, therefore, the English
cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services for which
it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many of its
characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now surrounded,
retains yet so much of its religious influence that no prominent feature
of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in vain, we have in
St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the ceremonies for
which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive attributes have
altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries. The beauty which
it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is forgotten; and in the
midst of the city to whose service it has so long been consecrated, and
still filled by crowds of the descendants of those to whom it owes its
magnificence, it stands, in reality, more desolate than the ruins
through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our English valleys; and
the writing on its marble walls is less regarded and less powerful for
the teaching of men, than the letters which the shepherd follows with
his finger, where the moss is lightest on the tombs in the desecrated
cloister.
§ XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its present
usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and meaning of
the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only be after
we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on abstract
grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the present
neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the Venetian
character, or how far this church is to be considered as the relic of a
barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or influencing
the feelings of a civilized community.
The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I
carefully kept the study of _expression_ distinct from that of abstract
architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we
should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its
construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of
art; and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its
expressional purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's
merely as a piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to
estimate its fitness for its special duty as a place of worship, and the
relation in which it stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that
still retain so much of the power over the human heart, which the
Byzantine domes appear to have lost for ever.
§ XXIII. In the two succeeding sections of this work, devoted
respectively to the examination of the Gothic and Renaissance buildings
in Venice, I have endeavored to analyze and state, as briefly as
possible, the true nature of each school,--first in Spirit, then in
Form. I wished to have given a similar analysis, in this section, of the
nature of Byzantine architecture; but could not make my statements
general, because I have never seen this kind of building on its native
soil. Nevertheless, in the following sketch of the principles
exemplified in St. Mark's, I believe that most of the leading features
and motives of the style will be found clearly enough distinguished to
enable the reader to judge of it with tolerable fairness, as compared
with the better known systems of European architecture in the middle
ages.
§ XXIV. Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and the root
nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its confessed
_incrustation_. It is the purest example in Italy of the great school of
architecture in which the ruling principle is the incrustation of brick
with more precious materials; and it is necessary before we proceed to
criticise any one of its arrangements, that the reader should carefully
consider the principles which are likely to have influenced, or might
legitimately influence, the architects of such a school, as
distinguished from those whose designs are to be executed in massive
materials.
It is true, that among different nations, and at different times, we may
find examples of every sort and degree of incrustation, from the mere
setting of the larger and more compact stones by preference at the
outside of the wall, to the miserable construction of that modern brick
cornice, with its coating of cement, which, but the other day, in
London, killed its unhappy workmen in its fall.[30] But just as it is
perfectly possible to have a clear idea of the opposing characteristics
of two different species of plants or animals, though between the two
there are varieties which it is difficult to assign either to the one or
the other, so the reader may fix decisively in his mind the legitimate
characteristics of the incrusted and the massive styles, though between
the two there are varieties which confessedly unite the attributes of
both. For instance, in many Roman remains, built of blocks of tufa and
incrusted with marble, we have a style, which, though truly solid,
possesses some of the attributes of incrustation; and in the Cathedral
of Florence, built of brick and coated with marble, the marble facing is
so firmly and exquisitely set, that the building, though in reality
incrusted, assumes the attributes of solidity. But these intermediate
examples need not in the least confuse our generally distinct ideas of
the two families of buildings: the one in which the substance is alike
throughout, and the forms and conditions of the ornament assume or prove
that it is so, as in the best Greek buildings, and for the most part in
our early Norman and Gothic; and the other, in which the substance is of
two kinds, one internal, the other external, and the system of
decoration is founded on this duplicity, as pre-eminently in St. Mark's.
§ XXV. I have used the word duplicity in no depreciatory sense. In
chapter ii. of the "Seven Lamps," § 18, I especially guarded this
incrusted school from the imputation of insincerity, and I must do so
now at greater length. It appears insincere at first to a Northern
builder, because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he
is in the habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of
masonry to be some criterion of its thickness. But, as soon as he gets
acquainted with the incrusted style, he will find that the Southern
builders had no intention to deceive him. He will see that every slab of
facial marble is fastened to the next by a confessed _rivet_, and that
the joints of the armor are so visibly and openly accommodated to the
contours of the substance within, that he has no more right to complain
of treachery than a savage would have, who, for the first time in his
life seeing a man in armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel.
Acquaint him with the customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat
of mail, and he ceases to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the
knight.
These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must
be our business to develope.
§ XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise to
such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any quarries
of available stone, and having precarious access to the mainland where
they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely with brick, or
to import whatever stone they use from great distances, in ships of
small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on the oar
rather than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as great,
whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the natural
tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as possible.
But in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the limitation of
its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by cost, but by
the physical conditions of the material, for of many marbles, pieces
above a certain size are not to be had for money. There would also be a
tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone as possible ready
sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if the traffic of
their merchants led them to places where there were ruins of ancient
edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out of this
supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a quality
that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and partly
of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the island
architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his edifice. It
is at his choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious marble here
and there among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the sculptured
fragments such new forms as may be necessary for the observance of fixed
proportions in the new building; or else to cut the colored stones into
thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole surface of the
walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular enough to admit
the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a view of
displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting them to any regular
service in the support of the building.
An architect who cared only to display his own skill, and had no respect
for the works of others, would assuredly have chosen the former
alternative, and would have sawn the old marbles into fragments in order
to prevent all interference with his own designs. But an architect who
cared for the preservation of noble work, whether his own or others',
and more regarded the beauty of his building than his own fame, would
have done what those old builders of St. Mark's did for us, and saved
every relic with which he was entrusted.
§ XXVII. But these were not the only motives which influenced the
Venetians in the adoption of their method of architecture. It might,
under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with
other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or
twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with
porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in
freestone. But with the Venetians it could not be a question for an
instant; they were exiles from ancient and beautiful cities, and had
been accustomed to build with their ruins, not less in affection than in
admiration: they had thus not only grown familiar with the practice of
inserting older fragments in modern buildings, but they owed to that
practice a great part of the splendor of their city, and whatever charm
of association might aid its change from a Refuge into a Home. The
practice which began in the affections of a fugitive nation, was
prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and beside the memorials of
departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of returning victory. The
ship of war brought home more marble in triumph than the merchant vessel
in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's became rather a shrine at
which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous spoil, than the
organized expression of any fixed architectural law, or religious
emotion.
§ XXVIII. Thus far, however, the justification of the style of this
church depends on circumstances peculiar to the time of its erection,
and to the spot where it arose. The merit of its method, considered in
the abstract, rests on far broader grounds.
In the fifth chapter of the "Seven Lamps," § 14, the reader will find
the opinion of a modern architect of some reputation, Mr. Wood, that the
chief thing remarkable in this church "is its extreme ugliness;" and he
will find this opinion associated with another, namely, that the works
of the Caracci are far preferable to those of the Venetian painters.
This second statement of feeling reveals to us one of the principal
causes of the first; namely, that Mr. Wood had not any perception of
color, or delight in it. The perception of color is a gift just as
definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, as an ear for
music; and the very first requisite for true judgment of St. Mark's, is
the perfection of that color-faculty which few people ever set
themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. For it is
on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that the
claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested; and a deaf man
might as well pretend to pronounce judgment on the merits of a full
orchestra, as an architect trained in the composition of form only, to
discern the beauty of St. Mark's. It possesses the charm of color in
common with the greater part of the architecture, as well as of the
manufactures, of the East; but the Venetians deserve especial note as
the only European people who appear to have sympathized to the full with
the great instinct of the Eastern races. They indeed were compelled to
bring artists from Constantinople to design the mosaics of the vaults of
St. Mark's, and to group the colors of its porches; but they rapidly
took up and developed, under more masculine conditions, the system of
which the Greeks had shown them the example: while the burghers and
barons of the North were building their dark streets and grisly castles
of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice were covering their
palaces with porphyry and gold; and at last, when her mighty painters
had created for her a color more priceless than gold or porphyry, even
this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls whose
foundations were beaten by the sea; and the strong tide, as it runs
beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the
frescoes of Giorgione.
§ XXIX. If, therefore, the reader does not care for color, I must
protest against his endeavor to form any judgment whatever of this
church of St. Mark's. But, if he both cares for and loves it, let him
remember that the school of incrusted architecture is _the only one in
which perfect and permanent chromatic decoration is possible_; and let
him look upon every piece of jasper and alabaster given to the architect
as a cake of very hard color, of which a certain portion is to be ground
down or cut off, to paint the walls with. Once understand this
thoroughly, and accept the condition that the body and availing strength
of the edifice are to be in brick, and that this under muscular power
of brickwork is to be clothed with the defence and the brightness of the
marble, as the body of an animal is protected and adorned by its scales
or its skin, and all the consequent fitnesses and laws of the structure
will be easily discernible: These I shall state in their natural order.
§ XXX. LAW I. _That the plinths and cornices used for binding the armor
are to be light and delicate._ A certain thickness, at least two or
three inches, must be required in the covering pieces (even when
composed of the strongest stone, and set on the least exposed parts), in
order to prevent the chance of fracture, and to allow for the wear of
time. And the weight of this armor must not be trusted to cement; the
pieces must not be merely glued to the rough brick surface, but
connected with the mass which they protect by binding cornices and
string courses; and with each other, so as to secure mutual support,
aided by the rivetings, but by no means dependent upon them. And, for
the full honesty and straight-forwardness of the work, it is necessary
that these string courses and binding plinths should not be of such
proportions as would fit them for taking any important part in the hard
work of the inner structure, or render them liable to be mistaken for
the great cornices and plinths already explained as essential parts of
the best solid building. They must be delicate, slight, and visibly
incapable of severer work than that assigned to them.
§ XXXI. LAW II. _Science of inner structure is to be abandoned._ As the
body of the structure is confessedly of inferior, and comparatively
incoherent materials, it would be absurd to attempt in it any expression
of the higher refinements of construction. It will be enough that by its
mass we are assured of its sufficiency and strength; and there is the
less reason for endeavoring to diminish the extent of its surface by
delicacy of adjustment, because on the breadth of that surface we are to
depend for the better display of the color, which is to be the chief
source of our pleasure in the building. The main body of the work,
therefore, will be composed of solid walls and massive piers; and
whatever expression of finer structural science we may require, will be
thrown either into subordinate portions of it, or entirely directed to
the support of the external mail, where in arches or vaults it might
otherwise appear dangerously independent of the material within.
§ XXXII. LAW III. _All shafts are to be solid._ Wherever, by the
smallness of the parts, we may be driven to abandon the incrusted
structure at all, it must be abandoned altogether. The eye must never be
left in the least doubt as to what is solid and what is coated. Whatever
appears _probably_ solid, must be _assuredly_ so, and therefore it
becomes an inviolable law that no shaft shall ever be incrusted. Not
only does the whole virtue of a shaft depend on its consolidation, but
the labor of cutting and adjusting an incrusted coat to it would be
greater than the saving of material is worth. Therefore the shaft, of
whatever size, is always to be solid; and because the incrusted
character of the rest of the building renders it more difficult for the
shafts to clear themselves from suspicion, they must not, in this
incrusted style, be in any place jointed. No shaft must ever be used but
of one block; and this the more, because the permission given to the
builder to have his walls and piers as ponderous as he likes, renders it
quite unnecessary for him to use shafts of any fixed size. In our Norman
and Gothic, where definite support is required at a definite point, it
becomes lawful to build up a tower of small stones in the shape of a
shaft. But the Byzantine is allowed to have as much support as he wants
from the walls in every direction, and he has no right to ask for
further license in the structure of his shafts. Let him, by generosity
in the substance of his pillars, repay us for the permission we have
given him to be superficial in his walls. The builder in the chalk
valleys of France and England may be blameless in kneading his clumsy
pier out of broken flint and calcined lime; but the Venetian, who has
access to the riches of Asia and the quarries of Egypt, must frame at
least his shafts out of flawless stone.
§ XXXIII. And this for another reason yet. Although, as we have said, it
is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with color, except
on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there is always a
certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the procedure. It is
necessary that the builder should justify himself from this suspicion;
and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but in the real
impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his walls so
thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the portion of
the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in this respect.
For if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the walls, the
spectator cannot tell their thickness, and cannot judge of the
costliness of the sacrifice. But the shaft he can measure with his eye
in an instant, and estimate the quantity of treasure both in the mass of
its existing substance, and in that which has been hewn away to bring it
into its perfect and symmetrical form. And thus the shafts of all
buildings of this kind are justly regarded as an expression of their
wealth, and a form of treasure, just as much as the jewels or gold in
the sacred vessels; they are, in fact, nothing else than large
jewels,[31] the block of precious serpentine or jasper being valued
according to its size and brilliancy of color, like a large emerald or
ruby; only the bulk required to bestow value on the one is to be
measured in feet and tons, and on the other in lines and carats. The
shafts must therefore be, without exception, of one block in all
buildings of this kind; for the attempt in any place to incrust or joint
them would be a deception like that of introducing a false stone among
jewellery (for a number of joints of any precious stone are of course
not equal in value to a single piece of equal weight), and would put an
end at once to the spectator's confidence in the expression of wealth in
any portion of the structure, or of the spirit of sacrifice in those who
raised it.
§ XXXIV. LAW IV. _The shafts may sometimes be independent of the
construction._ Exactly in proportion to the importance which the shaft
assumes as a large jewel, is the diminution of its importance as a
sustaining member; for the delight which we receive in its abstract
bulk, and beauty of color, is altogether independent of any perception
of its adaptation to mechanical necessities. Like other beautiful things
in this world, its end is to _be_ beautiful; and, in proportion to its
beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame
emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers.
Nay, so far from our admiration of the jewel shaft being dependent on
its doing work for us, it is very possible that a chief part of its
preciousness may consist in a delicacy, fragility, and tenderness of
material, which must render it utterly unfit for hard work; and
therefore that we shall admire it the more, because we perceive that if
we were to put much weight upon it, it would be crushed. But, at all
events, it is very clear that the primal object in the placing of such
shafts must be the display of their beauty to the best advantage, and
that therefore all imbedding of them in walls, or crowding of them into
groups, in any position in which either their real size or any portion
of their surface would be concealed, is either inadmissible altogether,
or objectionable in proportion to their value; that no symmetrical or
scientific arrangements of pillars are therefore ever to be expected in
buildings of this kind, and that all such are even to be looked upon as
positive errors and misapplications of materials: but that, on the
contrary, we must be constantly prepared to see, and to see with
admiration, shafts of great size and importance set in places where
their real service is little more than nominal, and where the chief end
of their existence is to catch the sunshine upon their polished sides,
and lead the eye into delighted wandering among the mazes of their azure
veins.
§ XXXV. LAW V. _The shafts may be of variable size._ Since the value of
each shaft depends upon its bulk, and diminishes with the diminution of
its mass, in a greater ratio than the size itself diminishes, as in the
case of all other jewellery, it is evident that we must not in general
expect perfect symmetry and equality among the series of shafts, any
more than definiteness of application; but that, on the contrary, an
accurately observed symmetry ought to give us a kind of pain, as proving
that considerable and useless loss has been sustained by some of the
shafts, in being cut down to match with the rest. It is true that
symmetry is generally sought for in works of smaller jewellery; but,
even there, not a perfect symmetry, and obtained under circumstances
quite different from those which affect the placing of shafts in
architecture. First: the symmetry is usually imperfect. The stones that
seem to match each other in a ring or necklace, appear to do so only
because they are so small that their differences are not easily measured
by the eye; but there is almost always such difference between them as
would be strikingly apparent if it existed in the same proportion
between two shafts nine or ten feet in height. Secondly: the quantity of
stones which pass through a jeweller's hands, and the facility of
exchange of such small objects, enable the tradesman to select any
number of stones of approximate size; a selection, however, often
requiring so much time, that perfect symmetry in a group of very fine
stones adds enormously to their value. But the architect has neither the
time nor the facilities of exchange. He cannot lay aside one column in a
corner of his church till, in the course of traffic, he obtain another
that will match it; he has not hundreds of shafts fastened up in
bundles, out of which he can match sizes at his ease; he cannot send to
a brother-tradesman and exchange the useless stones for available ones,
to the convenience of both. His blocks of stone, or his ready hewn
shafts, have been brought to him in limited number, from immense
distances; no others are to be had; and for those which he does not
bring into use, there is no demand elsewhere. His only means of
obtaining symmetry will therefore be, in cutting down the finer masses
to equality with the inferior ones; and this we ought not to desire him
often to do. And therefore, while sometimes in a Baldacchino, or an
important chapel or shrine, this costly symmetry may be necessary, and
admirable in proportion to its probable cost, in the general fabric we
must expect to see shafts introduced of size and proportion continually
varying, and such symmetry as may be obtained among them never
altogether perfect, and dependent for its charm frequently on strange
complexities and unexpected rising and falling of weight and accent in
its marble syllables; bearing the same relation to a rigidly chiselled
and proportioned architecture that the wild lyric rhythm of Æschylus or
Pindar bears to the finished measures of Pope.
§ XXXVI. The application of the principles of jewellery to the smaller
as well as the larger blocks, will suggest to us another reason for the
method of incrustation adopted in the walls. It often happens that the
beauty of the veining in some varieties of alabaster is so great, that
it becomes desirable to exhibit it by dividing the stone, not merely to
economize its substance, but to display the changes in the disposition
of its fantastic lines. By reversing one of two thin plates successively
taken from the stone, and placing their corresponding edges in contact,
a perfectly symmetrical figure may be obtained, which will enable the
eye to comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins. And this is
actually the method in which, for the most part, the alabasters of St.
Mark are employed; thus accomplishing a double good,--directing the
spectator, in the first place, to close observation of the nature of the
stone employed, and in the second, giving him a farther proof of the
honesty of intention in the builder: for wherever similar veining is
discovered in two pieces, the fact is declared that they have been cut
from the same stone. It would have been easy to disguise the similarity
by using them in different parts of the building; but on the contrary
they are set edge to edge, so that the whole system of the architecture
may be discovered at a glance by any one acquainted with the nature of
the stones employed. Nay, but, it is perhaps answered me, not by an
ordinary observer; a person ignorant of the nature of alabaster might
perhaps fancy all these symmetrical patterns to have been found in the
stone itself, and thus be doubly deceived, supposing blocks to be solid
and symmetrical which were in reality subdivided and irregular. I grant
it; but be it remembered, that in all things, ignorance is liable to be
deceived, and has no right to accuse anything but itself as the source
of the deception. The style and the words are dishonest, not which are
liable to be misunderstood if subjected to no inquiry, but which are
deliberately calculated to lead inquiry astray. There are perhaps no
great or noble truths, from those of religion downwards, which present
no mistakeable aspect to casual or ignorant contemplation. Both the
truth and the lie agree in hiding themselves at first, but the lie
continues to hide itself with effort, as we approach to examine it; and
leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper lies; the truth reveals itself in
proportion to our patience and knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our
pleading, and leads us, as it is discovered, into deeper truths.
§ XXXVII. LAW VI. _The decoration must be shallow in cutting._ The
method of construction being thus systematized, it is evident that a
certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based on the primal
condition that over the greater part of the edifice there can be _no
deep cutting_. The thin sheets of covering stones do not admit of it; we
must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever ornaments we
engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an inch deep at the
utmost. Consider for an instant the enormous differences which this
single condition compels between the sculptural decoration of the
incrusted style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which may be
hacked and hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black recesses we
choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque projections, and
rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any form or thought
may be wrought out on any scale,--mighty statues with robes of rock and
crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous goblins and stealthy
dragons shrunk into lurking-places of untraceable shade: think of this,
and of the play and freedom given to the sculptor's hand and temper, to
smite out and in, hither and thither, as he will; and then consider what
must be the different spirit of the design which is to be wrought on
the smooth surface of a film of marble, where every line and shadow must
be drawn with the most tender pencilling and cautious reserve of
resource,--where even the chisel must not strike hard, lest it break
through the delicate stone, nor the mind be permitted in any impetuosity
of conception inconsistent with the fine discipline of the hand.
Consider that whatever animal or human form is to be suggested, must be
projected on a flat surface; that all the features of the countenance,
the folds of the drapery, the involutions of the limbs, must be so
reduced and subdued that the whole work becomes rather a piece of fine
drawing than of sculpture; and then follow out, until you begin to
perceive their endlessness, the resulting differences of character which
will be necessitated in every part of the ornamental designs of these
incrusted churches, as compared with that of the Northern schools. I
shall endeavor to trace a few of them only.
§ XXXVIII. The first would of course be a diminution of the builder's
dependence upon human form as a source of ornament: since exactly in
proportion to the dignity of the form itself is the loss which it must
sustain in being reduced to a shallow and linear bas-relief, as well as
the difficulty of expressing it at all under such conditions. Wherever
sculpture can be solid, the nobler characters of the human form at once
lead the artist to aim at its representation, rather than at that of
inferior organisms; but when all is to be reduced to outline, the forms
of flowers and lower animals are always more intelligible, and are felt
to approach much more to a satisfactory rendering of the objects
intended, than the outlines of the human body. This inducement to seek
for resources of ornament in the lower fields of creation was powerless
in the minds of the great Pagan nations, Ninevite, Greek, or Egyptian:
first, because their thoughts were so concentrated on their own
capacities and fates, that they preferred the rudest suggestion of human
form to the best of an inferior organism; secondly, because their
constant practice in solid sculpture, often colossal, enabled them to
bring a vast amount of science into the treatment of the lines, whether
of the low relief, the monochrome vase, or shallow hieroglyphic.