CHAPTER VII.

GOTHIC PALACES.

§ I. The buildings out of the remnants of which we have endeavored to

recover some conception of the appearance of Venice during the Byzantine

period, contribute hardly anything at this day to the effect of the

streets of the city. They are too few and too much defaced to attract

the eye or influence the feelings. The charm which Venice still

possesses, and which for the last fifty years has rendered it the

favorite haunt of all the painters of picturesque subject, is owing to

the effect of the palaces belonging to the period we have now to

examine, mingled with those of the Renaissance.

This effect is produced in two different ways. The Renaissance palaces

are not more picturesque in themselves than the club-houses of Pall

Mall; but they become delightful by the contrast of their severity and

refinement with the rich and rude confusion of the sea life beneath

them, and of their white and solid masonry with the green waves. Remove

from beneath them the orange sails of the fishing boats, the black

gliding of the gondolas, the cumbered decks and rough crews of the

barges of traffic, and the fretfulness of the green water along their

foundations, and the Renaissance palaces possess no more interest than

those of London or Paris. But the Gothic palaces are picturesque in

themselves, and wield over us an independent power. Sea and sky, and

every other accessory might be taken away from them, and still they

would be beautiful and strange. They are not less striking in the

loneliest streets of Padua and Vicenza (where many were built during the

period of the Venetian authority in those cities) than in the most

crowded thoroughfares of Venice itself; and if they could be

transported into the midst of London, they would still not altogether

lose their power over the feelings.

§ II. The best proof of this is in the perpetual attractiveness of all

pictures, however poor in skill, which have taken for their subject the

principal of these Gothic buildings, the Ducal Palace. In spite of all

architectural theories and teachings, the paintings of this building are

always felt to be delightful; we cannot be wearied by them, though often

sorely tried; but we are not put to the same trial in the case of the

palaces of the Renaissance. They are never drawn singly, or as the

principal subject, nor can they be. The building which faces the Ducal

Palace on the opposite side of the Piazzetta is celebrated among

architects, but it is not familiar to our eyes; it is painted only

incidentally, for the completion, not the subject, of a Venetian scene;

and even the Renaissance arcades of St. Mark's Place, though frequently

painted, are always treated as a mere avenue to its Byzantine church and

colossal tower. And the Ducal Palace itself owes the peculiar charm

which we have hitherto felt, not so much to its greater size as compared

with other Gothic buildings, or nobler design (for it never yet has been

rightly drawn), as to its comparative isolation. The other Gothic

structures are as much injured by the continual juxtaposition of the

Renaissance palaces, as the latter are aided by it; they exhaust their

own life by breathing it into the Renaissance coldness: but the Ducal

Palace stands comparatively alone, and fully expresses the Gothic power.

[Illustration: Fig. XXI.]

§ III. And it is just that it should be so seen, for it is the original

of nearly all the rest. It is not the elaborate and more studied

developement of a national style, but the great and sudden invention of

one man, instantly forming a national style, and becoming the model for

the imitation of every architect in Venice for upwards of a century. It

was the determination of this one fact which occupied me the greater

part of the time I spent in Venice. It had always appeared to me most

strange that there should be in no part of the city any incipient or

imperfect types of the form of the Ducal Palace; it was difficult to

believe that so mighty a building had been the conception of one man,

not only in disposition and detail, but in style; and yet impossible,

had it been otherwise, but that some early examples of approximate

Gothic form must exist. There is not one. The palaces built between the

final cessation of the Byzantine style, about 1300, and the date of the

Ducal Palace (1320-1350), are all completely distinct in character, so

distinct that I at first intended the account of them to form a separate

section of this volume; and there is literally _no_ transitional form

between them and the perfection of the Ducal Palace. Every Gothic

building in Venice which resembles the latter is a copy of it. I do not

mean that there was no Gothic in Venice before the Ducal Palace, but

that the mode of its application to domestic architecture had not been

determined. The real root of the Ducal Palace is the apse of the church

of the Frari. The traceries of that apse, though earlier and ruder in

workmanship, are nearly the same in mouldings, and precisely the same in

treatment (especially in the placing of the lions' heads), as those of

the great Ducal Arcade; and the originality of thought in the architect

of the Ducal Palace consists in his having adapted those traceries, in a

more highly developed and finished form, to civil uses. In the apse of

the church they form narrow and tall window lights, somewhat more

massive than those of Northern Gothic, but similar in application: the

thing to be done was to adapt these traceries to the forms of domestic

building necessitated by national usage. The early palaces consisted, as

we have seen, of arcades sustaining walls faced with marble, rather

broad and long than elevated. This form was kept for the Ducal Palace;

but instead of round arches from shaft to shaft, the Frari traceries

were substituted, with two essential modifications. Besides being

enormously increased in scale and thickness, that they might better bear

the superincumbent weight, the quatrefoil, which in the Frari windows is

above the arch, as at _a_, Fig. XXI., on previous page, was, in the

Ducal Palace, put between the arches, as at _b_; the main reason for

this alteration being that the bearing power of the arches, which was

now to be trusted with the weight of a wall forty feet high,[75] was

thus thrown _between_ the quatrefoils, instead of under them, and

thereby applied at far better advantage. And, in the second place, the

joints of the masonry were changed. In the Frari (as often also in St.

John and St. Paul's) the tracery is formed of two simple cross bars or

slabs of stone, pierced into the requisite forms, and separated by a

horizontal joint, just on a level with the lowest cusp of the

quatrefoils, as seen in Fig. XXI., _a_. But at the Ducal Palace the

horizontal joint is in the centre of the quatrefoils, and two others are

introduced beneath it at right angles to the run of the mouldings, as

seen in Fig. XXI., _b_.[76] The Ducal Palace builder was sternly

resolute in carrying out this rule of masonry. In the traceries of the

large upper windows, where the cusps are cut through as in the

quatrefoil Fig. XXII., the lower cusp is left partly solid, as at _a_,

merely that the joint _a b_ may have its right place and direction.

[Illustration: Fig. XXII.]

§ IV. The ascertaining the formation of the Ducal Palace traceries from

those of the Frari, and its priority to all other buildings which

resemble it in Venice, rewarded me for a great deal of uninteresting

labor in the examination of mouldings and other minor features of the

Gothic palaces, in which alone the internal evidence of their date was

to be discovered, there being no historical records whatever respecting

them. But the accumulation of details on which the complete proof of the

fact depends, could not either be brought within the compass of this

volume, or be made in anywise interesting to the general reader. I shall

therefore, without involving myself in any discussion, give a brief

account of the developement of Gothic design in Venice, as I believe it

to have taken place. I shall possibly be able at some future period so

to compress the evidence on which my conviction rests, as to render it

intelligible to the public, while, in the meantime, some of the more

essential points of it are thrown together in the Appendix, and in the

history of the Ducal Palace given in the next chapter.

§ V. According, then, to the statement just made, the Gothic

architecture of Venice is divided into two great periods: one, in which,

while various irregular Gothic tendencies are exhibited, no consistent

type of domestic building was developed; the other, in which a formed

and consistent school of domestic architecture resulted from the direct

imitation of the great design of the Ducal Palace. We must deal with

these two periods separately; the first of them being that which has

been often above alluded to, under the name of the transitional period.

We shall consider in succession the general form, the windows, doors,

balconies, and parapets, of the Gothic palaces belonging to each of

these periods.

§ VI. First. General Form.

We have seen that the wrecks of the Byzantine palaces consisted merely

of upper and lower arcades surrounding cortiles; the disposition of the

interiors being now entirely changed, and their original condition

untraceable. The entrances to these early buildings are, for the most

part, merely large circular arches, the central features of their

continuous arcades: they do not present us with definitely separated

windows and doors.

But a great change takes place in the Gothic period. These long arcades

break, as it were, into pieces, and coagulate into central and lateral

windows, and small arched doors, pierced in great surfaces of brick

wall. The sea story of a Byzantine palace consists of seven, nine, or

more arches in a continuous line; but the sea story of a Gothic palace

consists of a door and one or two windows on each side, as in a modern

house. The first story of a Byzantine palace consists of, perhaps,

eighteen or twenty arches, reaching from one side of the house to the

other; the first story of a Gothic palace consists of a window of four

or five lights in the centre, and one or two single windows on each

side. The germ, however, of the Gothic arrangement is already found in

the Byzantine, where, as we have seen, the arcades, though continuous,

are always composed of a central mass and two wings of smaller arches.

The central group becomes the door or the middle light of the Gothic

palace, and the wings break into its lateral windows.

§ VII. But the most essential difference in the entire arrangement, is

the loss of the unity of conception which, regulated Byzantine

composition. How subtle the sense of gradation which disposed the

magnitudes of the early palaces we have seen already, but I have not

hitherto noticed that the Byzantine work was centralized in its

ornamentation as much as in its proportions. Not only were the lateral

capitals and archivolts kept comparatively plain, while the central ones

were sculptured, but the midmost piece of sculpture, whatever it might

be,--capital, inlaid circle, or architrave,--was always made superior to

the rest. In the Fondaco de' Turchi, for instance, the midmost capital

of the upper arcade is the key to the whole group, larger and more

studied than all the rest; and the lateral ones are so disposed as to

answer each other on the opposite sides, thus, A being put for the

central one,

F E B C +A+ C B E F,

a sudden break of the system being admitted in one unique capital at the

extremity of the series.

§ VIII. Now, long after the Byzantine arcades had been contracted into

windows, this system of centralization was more or less maintained; and

in all the early groups of windows of five lights the midmost capital is

different from the two on each side of it, which always correspond. So

strictly is this the case, that whenever the capitals of any group of

windows are not centralized in this manner, but are either entirely like

each other, or all different, so as to show no correspondence, it is a

certain proof, even if no other should exist, of the comparative

lateness of the building.

In every group of windows in Venice which I was able to examine, and

which were centralized in this manner, I found evidence in their

mouldings of their being _anterior_ to the Ducal Palace. That palace did

away with the subtle proportion and centralization of the Byzantine. Its

arches are of equal width, and its capitals are all different and

ungrouped; some, indeed, are larger than the rest, but this is not for

the sake of proportion, only for particular service when more weight is

to be borne. But, among other evidences of the early date of the sea

façade of that building, is one subtle and delicate concession to the

system of centralization which is finally closed. The capitals of the

upper arcade are, as I said, all different, and show no arranged

correspondence with each other; but _the central one is of pure Parian

marble_, while all the others are of Istrian stone.

The bold decoration of the central window and balcony above, in the

Ducal Palace, is only a peculiar expression of the principality of the

central window, which was characteristic of the Gothic period not less

than of the Byzantine. In the private palaces the central windows become

of importance by their number of lights; in the Ducal Palace such an

arrangement was, for various reasons, inconvenient, and the central

window, which, so far from being more important than the others, is

every way inferior in design to the two at the eastern extremity of the

façade, was nevertheless made the leading feature by its noble canopy

and balcony.

§ IX. Such being the principal differences in the general conception of

the Byzantine and Gothic palaces, the particulars in the treatment of

the latter are easily stated. The marble facings are gradually removed

from the walls; and the bare brick either stands forth confessed boldly,

contrasted with the marble shafts and archivolts of the windows, or it

is covered with stucco painted in fresco, of which more hereafter. The

Ducal Palace, as in all other respects, is an exact expression of the

middle point in the change. It still retains marble facing; but instead

of being disposed in slabs as in the Byzantine times, it is applied in

solid bricks or blocks of marble, 11½ inches long, by 6 inches high.

The stories of the Gothic palaces are divided by string courses,

considerably bolder in projection than those of the Byzantines, and more

highly decorated; and while the angles of the Byzantine palaces are

quite sharp and pure, those of the Gothic palaces are wrought into a

chamfer, filled by small twisted shafts which have capitals under the

cornice of each story.

§ X. These capitals are little observed in the general effect, but the

shafts are of essential importance in giving an aspect of firmness to

the angle; a point of peculiar necessity in Venice, where, owning to the

various convolutions of the canals, the angles of the palaces are not

only frequent, but often necessarily _acute_, every inch of ground being

valuable. In other cities, the appearance as well as the assurance of

stability can always be secured by the use of massy stones, as in the

fortress palaces of Florence; but it must have been always desirable at

Venice to build as lightly as possible, in consequence of the

comparative insecurity of the foundations. The early palaces were, as we

have seen, perfect models of grace and lightness, and the Gothic, which

followed, though much more massive in the style of its details, never

admitted more weight into its structure than was absolutely necessary

for its strength, Hence, every Gothic palace has the appearance of

enclosing as many rooms, and attaining as much strength, as is possible,

with a minimum quantity of brick and stone. The traceries of the

windows, which in Northern Gothic only support the _glass_, at Venice

support the _building_; and thus the greater ponderousness of the

_traceries_ is only an indication of the greater lightness of the

_structure_. Hence, when the Renaissance architects give their opinions

as to the stability of the Ducal Palace when injured by fire, one of

them, Christofore Sorte, says, that he thinks it by no means laudable

that the "Serenissimo Dominio" of the Venetian senate "should live in a

palace built in the air."[77] And again, Andrea della Valle says,

that[78] "the wall of the saloon is thicker by fifteen inches than the

shafts below it, projecting nine inches within, and six without,

_standing as if in the air_, above the piazza;"[79] and yet this wall is

so nobly and strongly knit together, that Rusconi, though himself

altogether devoted to the Renaissance school, declares that the fire

which had destroyed the whole interior of the palace had done this wall

no more harm than the bite of a fly to an elephant. "Troveremo che el

danno che ha patito queste muraglie sarà conforme alla beccatura d' una

mosca fatta ad un elefante."[80]

§ XI. And so in all the other palaces built at the time, consummate

strength was joined with a lightness of form and sparingness of material

which rendered it eminently desirable that the eye should be convinced,

by every possible expedient, of the stability of the building; and these

twisted pillars at the angles are not among the least important means

adopted for this purpose, for they seem to bind the walls together as a

cable binds a chest. In the Ducal Palace, where they are carried up the

angle of an unbroken wall forty feet high, they are divided into

portions, gradually diminishing in length towards the top, by circular

bands or rings, set with the nail-head or dog-tooth ornament, vigorously

projecting, and giving the column nearly the aspect of the stalk of a

reed; its diminishing proportions being exactly arranged as they are by

Nature in all jointed plants. At the top of the palace, like the

wheat-stalk branching into the ear of corn, it expands into a small

niche with a pointed canopy, which joins with the fantastic parapet in

at once relieving, and yet making more notable by its contrast, the

weight of massy wall below. The arrangement is seen in the woodcut,

Chap. VIII.; the angle shafts being slightly exaggerated in thickness,

together with their joints, as otherwise they would hardly have been

intelligible on so small a scale.

The Ducal Palace is peculiar in these niches at the angles, which

throughout the rest of the city appear on churches only; but some may

perhaps have been removed by restorations, together with the parapets

with which they were associated.

[Illustration: Fig. XXIII.]

§ XII. Of these roof parapets of Venice, it has been already noticed

that the examples which remain differ from those of all other cities of

Italy in their purely ornamental character. (Chap. I. § XII.) They are

not battlements, properly so-called; still less machicolated cornices,

such as crown the fortress palaces of the great mainland nobles; but

merely adaptations of the light and crown-like ornaments which crest the

walls of the Arabian mosque. Nor are even these generally used on the

main walls of the palaces themselves. They occur on the Ducal Palace,

on the Casa d' Oro, and, some years back, were still standing on the

Fondaco de' Turchi; but the majority of the Gothic Palaces have the

plain dog-tooth cornice under the tiled projecting roof (Vol. I. Chap.

XIV. § IV.); and the highly decorated parapet is employed only on the

tops of walls which surround courts or gardens, and which, without such

decoration, would have been utterly devoid of interest. Fig. XXIII.

represents, at _b_, part of a parapet of this kind which surrounds the

courtyard of a palace in the Calle del Bagatin, between San G.

Grisostomo, and San Canzian: the whole is of brick, and the mouldings

peculiarly sharp and varied; the height of each separate pinnacle being

about four feet, crowning a wall twelve or fifteen feet high: a piece of

the moulding which surrounds the quatrefoil is given larger in the

figure at _a_, together with the top of the small arch below, having the

common Venetian dentil round it, and a delicate little moulding with

dog-tooth ornament to carry the flanks of the arch. The moulding of the

brick is throughout sharp and beautiful in the highest degree. One of

the most curious points about it is the careless way in which the curved

outlines of the pinnacles are cut into the plain brickwork, with no

regard whatever to the places of its joints. The weather of course wears

the bricks at the exposed joints, and jags the outline a little; but the

work has stood, evidently from the fourteenth century, without

sustaining much harm.

§ XIII. This parapet may be taken as a general type of the

_wall_-parapet of Venice in the Gothic period; some being much less

decorated, and others much more richly: the most beautiful in Venice is

in the little Calle, opening on the Campo and Traghetto San Samuele; it

has delicately carved devices in stone let into each pinnacle.

The parapets of the palaces themselves were lighter and more fantastic,

consisting of narrow lance-like spires of marble, set between the

broader pinnacles, which were in such cases generally carved into the

form of a fleur-de-lis: the French word gives the reader the best idea

of the form, though he must remember that this use of the lily for the

parapets has nothing to do with France, but is the carrying out of the

Byzantine system of floral ornamentation, which introduced the outline

of the lily everywhere; so that I have found it convenient to call its

most beautiful capitals, the _lily_ capitals of St. Mark's. But the

occurrence of this flower, more distinctly than usual, on the

battlements of the Ducal Palace, was the cause of some curious political

speculation in the year 1511, when a piece of one of these battlements

was shaken down by the great earthquake of that year. Sanuto notes in

his diary that "the piece that fell was just that which bore the lily,"

and records sundry sinister anticipations, founded on this important

omen, of impending danger to the adverse French power. As there happens,

in the Ducal Palace, to be a joint in the pinnacles which exactly

separates the "part which bears the lily" from that which is fastened to

the cornice, it is no wonder that the omen proved fallacious.

§ XIV. The decorations of the parapet were completed by attaching gilded

balls of metal to the extremities of the leaves of the lilies, and of

the intermediate spires, so as literally to form for the wall a diadem

of silver touched upon the points with gold; the image being rendered

still more distinct in the Casa d' Oro, by variation in the height of

the pinnacles, the highest being in the centre of the front.

Very few of these light roof parapets now remain; they are, of course,

the part of the building which dilapidation first renders it necessary

to remove. That of the Ducal Palace, however, though often, I doubt not,

restored, retains much of the ancient form, and is exceedingly

beautiful, though it has no appearance from below of being intended for

protection, but serves only, by its extreme lightness, to relieve the

eye when wearied by the breadth of wall beneath; it is nevertheless a

most serviceable defence for any person walking along the edge of the

roof. It has some appearance of insecurity, owing to the entire

independence of the pieces of stone composing it, which, though of

course fastened by iron, look as if they stood balanced on the cornice

like the pillars of Stonehenge; but I have never heard of its having

been disturbed by anything short of an earthquake; and, as we have

seen, even the great earthquake of 1511, though it much injured the

Gorne, or battlements at the Casa d' Oro, and threw down several statues

at St. Mark's,[81] only shook one lily from the brow of the Ducal

Palace.

[Illustration: Fig. XXIV.]

§ XV. Although, however, these light and fantastic forms appear to have

been universal in the battlements meant primarily for decoration, there

was another condition of parapet altogether constructed for the

protection of persons walking on the roofs or in the galleries of the

churches, and from these more substantial and simple defences, the

BALCONIES, to which the Gothic palaces owe half of their picturesque

effect, were immediately derived; the balcony being, in fact, nothing

more than a portion of such roof parapets arranged round a projecting

window-sill sustained on brackets, as in the central example of the

annexed figure. We must, therefore, examine these defensive balustrades

and the derivative balconies consecutively.

§ XVI. Obviously, a parapet with an unbroken edge, upon which the arm

may rest (a condition above noticed, Vol. I. p. 157., as essential to

the proper performance of its duty), can be constructed only in one of

three ways. It must either be (1) of solid stone, decorated, if at all,

by mere surface sculpture, as in the uppermost example in Fig. XXIV.,

above; or (2) pierced into some kind of tracery, as in the second; or

(3) composed of small pillars carrying a level bar of stone, as in the

third; this last condition being, in a diseased and swollen form,

familiar to us in the balustrades of our bridges.[82]

§ XVII. (1.) Of these three kinds, the first, which is employed for the

pulpit at Torcello and in the nave of St. Mark's, whence the uppermost

example is taken, is beautiful when sculpture so rich can be employed

upon it; but it is liable to objection, first, because it is heavy and

unlike a parapet when seen from below; and, secondly, because it is

inconvenient in use. The position of leaning over a balcony becomes

cramped and painful if long continued, unless the foot can be sometimes

advanced _beneath_ the ledge on which the arm leans, i. e. between the

balusters or traceries, which of course cannot be done in the solid

parapet: it is also more agreeable to be able to see partially down

through the penetrations, than to be obliged to lean far over the edge.

The solid parapet was rarely used in Venice after the earlier ages.

§ XVIII. (2.) The Traceried Parapet is chiefly used in the Gothic of the

North, from which the above example, in the Casa Contarini Fasan, is

directly derived. It is, when well designed, the richest and most

beautiful of all forms, and many of the best buildings of France and

Germany are dependent for half their effect upon it; its only fault

being a slight tendency to fantasticism. It was never frankly received

in Venice, where the architects had unfortunately returned to the

Renaissance forms before the flamboyant parapets were fully developed in

the North; but, in the early stage of the Renaissance, a kind of pierced

parapet was employed, founded on the old Byzantine interwoven

traceries; that is to say, the slab of stone was pierced here and there

with holes, and then an interwoven pattern traced on the surface round

them. The difference in system will be understood in a moment by

comparing the uppermost example in the figure at the side, which is a

Northern parapet from the Cathedral of Abbeville, with the lowest, from

a secret chamber in the Casa Foscari. It will be seen that the Venetian

one is far more simple and severe, yet singularly piquant, the black

penetrations telling sharply on the plain broad surface. Far inferior in

beauty, it has yet one point of superiority to that of Abbeville, that

it proclaims itself more definitely to be stone. The other has rather

the look of lace.

[Illustration: Fig. XXV.]

The intermediate figure is a panel of the main balcony of the Ducal

Palace, and is introduced here as being an exactly transitional

condition between the Northern and Venetian types. It was built when the

German Gothic workmen were exercising considerable influence over those

in Venice, and there was some chance of the Northern parapet introducing

itself. It actually did so, as above shown, in the Casa Contarini Fasan,

but was for the most part stoutly resisted and kept at bay by the

Byzantine form, the lowest in the last figure, until that form itself

was displaced by the common, vulgar, Renaissance baluster; a grievous

loss, for the severe pierced type was capable of a variety as endless as

the fantasticism of our own Anglo-Saxon manuscript ornamentation.

§ XIX. (3.) The Baluster Parapet. Long before the idea of tracery had

suggested itself to the minds either of Venetian or any other

architects, it had, of course, been necessary to provide protection for

galleries, edges of roofs, &c.; and the most natural form in which such

protection could be obtained was that of a horizontal bar or hand-rail,

sustained upon short shafts or balusters, as in Fig. XXIV. p. 243. This

form was, above all others, likely to be adopted where variations of

Greek or Roman pillared architecture were universal in the larger masses

of the building; the parapet became itself a small series of columns,

with capitals and architraves; and whether the cross-bar laid upon them

should be simply horizontal, and in contact with their capitals, or

sustained by mimic arches, round or pointed, depended entirely on the

system adopted in the rest of the work. Where the large arches were

round, the small balustrade arches would be so likewise; where those

were pointed, these would become so in sympathy with them.

§ XX. Unfortunately, wherever a balcony or parapet is used in an

inhabited house, it is, of course, the part of the structure which first

suffers from dilapidation, as well as that of which the security is most

anxiously cared for. The main pillars of a casement may stand for

centuries unshaken under the steady weight of the superincumbent wall,

but the cement and various insetting of the balconies are sure to be

disturbed by the irregular pressures and impulses of the persons leaning

on them; while, whatever extremity of decay may be allowed in other

parts of the building, the balcony, as soon as it seems dangerous, will

assuredly be removed or restored. The reader will not, if he considers

this, be surprised to hear that, among all the remnants of the Venetian

domestic architecture of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth

centuries, there is not a single instance of the original balconies

being preserved. The palace mentioned below (§ XXXII.), in the piazza of

the Rialto, has, indeed, solid slabs of stone between its shafts, but I

cannot be certain that they are of the same period; if they are, this is

the only existing example of the form of protection employed for

casements during this transitional period, and it cannot be reasoned

from as being the general one.

§ XXI. It is only, therefore, in the churches of Torcello, Murano, and

St. Mark's, that the ancient forms of gallery defence may still be seen.

At Murano, between the pillars of the apse, a beautiful balustrade is

employed, of which a single arch is given in the Plate opposite, fig. 4,

with its section, fig. 5.; and at St. Mark's, a noble round-arched

parapet, with small pillars of precisely the same form as those of

Murano, but shorter, and bound at the angles into groups of four by the

serpentine knot so often occurring in Lombardic work, runs round the

whole exterior of the lower story of the church, and round great part of

its interior galleries, alternating with the more fantastic form, fig.

6. In domestic architecture, the remains of the original balconies begin

to occur first in the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the

round arch had entirely disappeared; and the parapet consists, almost

without exception, of a series of small trefoiled arches, cut boldly

through a bar of stone which rests upon the shafts, at first very

simple, and generally adorned with a cross at the point of each arch, as

in fig. 7 in the last Plate, which gives the angle of such a balcony on

a large scale; but soon enriched into the beautiful conditions, figs. 2

and 3, and sustained on brackets formed of lions' heads, as seen in the

central example of their entire effect, fig. 1.

[Illustration: Plate XIII.

BALCONIES.]

§ XXII. In later periods, the round arches return; then the interwoven

Byzantine form; and finally, as above noticed, the common English or

classical balustrade; of which, however, exquisite examples, for grace

and variety of outline, are found designed in the backgrounds of Paul

Veronese. I could willingly follow out this subject fully, but it is

impossible to do so without leaving Venice; for the chief city of Italy,

as far as regards the strict effect of the balcony, is Verona; and if we

were once to lose ourselves among the sweet shadows of its lonely

streets, where the falling branches of the flowers stream like fountains

through the pierced traceries of the marble, there is no saying whether

we might soon be able to return to our immediate work. Yet before

leaving the subject of the balcony[83] altogether, I must allude, for a

moment, to the peculiar treatment of the iron-work out of which it is

frequently wrought on the mainland of Italy--never in Venice. The iron

is always wrought, not cast, beaten first into thin leaves, and then cut

either into strips or bands, two or three inches broad, which are bent

into various curves to form the sides of the balcony, or else into

actual leafage, sweeping and free, like the leaves of nature, with which

it is richly decorated. There is no end to the variety of design, no

limit to the lightness and flow of the forms, which the workman can

produce out of iron treated in this manner; and it is very nearly as

impossible for any metal-work, so handled, to be poor, or ignoble in

effect, as it is for cast metal-work to be otherwise.

§ XXIII. We have next to examine those features of the Gothic palaces in

which the transitions of their architecture are most distinctly

traceable; namely, the arches of the windows and doors.

It has already been repeatedly stated, that the Gothic style had formed

itself completely on the mainland, while the Byzantines still retained

their influence at Venice; and that the history of early Venetian Gothic

is therefore not that of a school taking new forms independently of

external influence, but the history of the struggle of the Byzantine

manner with a contemporary style quite as perfectly organized as itself,

and far more energetic. And this struggle is exhibited partly in the

gradual change of the Byzantine architecture into other forms, and

partly by isolated examples of genuine Gothic taken prisoner, as it

were, in the contest; or rather entangled among the enemy's forces, and

maintaining their ground till their friends came up to sustain them. Let

us first follow the steps of the gradual change, and then give some

brief account of the various advanced guards and forlorn hopes of the

Gothic attacking force.

[Illustration: Plate XIV.

THE ORDERS OF VENETIAN ARCHES.]

§ XXIV. The uppermost shaded series of six forms of windows in Plate

XIV., opposite, represents, at a glance, the modifications of this

feature in Venetian palaces, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.

Fig. 1 is Byzantine, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; figs. 2

and 3 transitional, of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries;

figs. 4 and 5 pure Gothic, of the thirteenth, fourteenth and early

fifteenth; and fig. 6. late Gothic, of the fifteenth century,

distinguished by its added finial. Fig. 4 is the longest-lived of all

these forms: it occurs first in the thirteenth century; and, sustaining

modifications only in its mouldings, is found also in the middle of the

fifteenth.

I shall call these the six orders[84] of Venetian windows, and when I

speak of a window of the fourth, second, or sixth order, the reader will

only have to refer to the numerals at the top of Plate XIV.

Then the series below shows the principal forms found in each period,

belonging to each several order; except 1 _b_ to 1 _c_, and the two

lower series, numbered 7 to 16, which are types of Venetian doors.

§ XXV. We shall now be able, without any difficulty, to follow the

course of transition, beginning with the first order, 1 and 1 _a_, in

the second row. The horse-shoe arch, 1 _b_, is the door-head commonly

associated with it, and the other three in the same row occur in St.

Mark's exclusively; 1 _c_ being used in the nave, in order to give a

greater appearance of lightness to its great lateral arcades, which at

first the spectator supposes to be round-arched, but he is struck by a

peculiar grace and elasticity in the curves for which he is unable to

account, until he ascends into the galleries whence the true form of the

arch is discernible. The other two--1 _d_, from the door of the

southern transept, and 1 _c_, from that of the treasury,--sufficiently

represent a group of fantastic forms derived from the Arabs, and of

which the exquisite decoration is one of the most important features in

St. Mark's. Their form is indeed permitted merely to obtain more fantasy

in the curves of this decoration.[85] The reader can see in a moment,

that, as pieces of masonry, or bearing arches, they are infirm or

useless, and therefore never could be employed in any building in which

dignity of structure was the primal object. It is just because structure

is _not_ the primal object in St. Mark's, because it has no severe

weights to bear, and much loveliness of marble and sculpture to exhibit,

that they are therein allowable. They are of course, like the rest of

the building, built of brick and faced with marble, and their inner

masonry, which must be very ingenious, is therefore not discernible.

They have settled a little, as might have been expected, and the

consequence is, that there is in every one of them, except the upright

arch of the treasury, a small fissure across the marble of the flanks.

[Illustration: Fig. XXVI.]

§ XXVI. Though, however, the Venetian builders adopted these Arabian

forms of arch where grace of ornamentation was their only purpose, they

saw that such arrangements were unfit for ordinary work; and there is no

instance, I believe, in Venice, of their having used any of them for a

dwelling-house in the truly Byzantine period. But so soon as the Gothic

influence began to be felt, and the pointed arch forced itself upon

them, their first concession to its attack was the adoption, in

preference to the round arch, of the form 3 _a_ (Plate XIV., above); the

point of the Gothic arch forcing itself up, as it were, through the top

of the semicircle which it was soon to supersede.

§ XXVII. The woodcut above, Fig. XXVI., represents the door and two of

the lateral windows of a house in the Corte del Remer, facing the Grand

Canal, in the parish of the Apostoli. It is remarkable as having its

great entrance on the first floor, attained by a bold flight of steps,

sustained on pure _pointed_ arches wrought in brick. I cannot tell if

these arches are contemporary with the building, though it must always

have had an access of the kind. The rest of its aspect is Byzantine,

except only that the rich sculptures of its archivolt show in combats of

animals, beneath the soffit, a beginning of the Gothic fire and energy.

The moulding of its plinth is of a Gothic profile,[86] and the windows

are pointed, not with a reversed curve, but in a pure straight gable,

very curiously contrasted with the delicate bending of the pieces of

marble armor cut for the shoulders of each arch. There is a two-lighted

window, such as that seen in the vignette, on each side of the door,

sustained in the centre by a basket-worked Byzantine capital: the mode

of covering the brick archivolt with marble, both in the windows and

doorway, is precisely like that of the true Byzantine palaces.

[Illustration: Fig. XXVII.]

§ XXVIII. But as, even on a small scale, these arches are weak, if

executed in brickwork, the appearance of this sharp point in the outline

was rapidly accompanied by a parallel change in the method of building;

and instead of constructing the arch of brick and coating it with

marble, the builders formed it of three pieces of hewn stone inserted

in the wall, as in Fig. XXVII. Not, however, at first in this perfect

form. The endeavor to reconcile the grace of the reversed arch with the

strength of the round one, and still to build in brick, ended at first

in conditions such as that represented at _a_, Fig. XXVIII., which is a

window in the Calle del Pistor, close to the church of the Apostoli, a

very interesting and perfect example. Here, observe, the poor round arch

is still kept to do all the hard work, and the fantastic ogee takes its

pleasure above, in the form of a moulding merely, a chain of bricks cast

to the required curve. And this condition, translated into stone-work,

becomes a window of the second order (_b_5, Fig. XXVIII., or 2, in Plate

XIV.); a form perfectly strong and serviceable, and of immense

importance in the transitional architecture of Venice.

[Illustration: Fig. XXVIII.]

§ XXIX. At _b_, Fig. XXVIII., as above, is given one of the earliest and

simplest occurrences of the second order window (in a double group,

exactly like the brick transitional form _a_), from a most important

fragment of a defaced house in the Salizzada San Liò, close to the

Merceria. It is associated with a fine _pointed_ brick arch,

indisputably of contemporary work, towards the close of the thirteenth

century, and it is shown to be later than the previous example, _a_, by

the greater developement of its mouldings. The archivolt profile,

indeed, is the simpler of the two, not having the sub-arch; as in the

brick example; but the other mouldings are far more developed. Fig.

XXIX. shows at 1 the arch profiles, at 2 the capital profiles, at 3 the

basic-plinth profiles, of each window, _a_ and _b_.

[Illustration: Fig. XXIX.]

§ XXX. But the second order window soon attained nobler developement. At

once simple, graceful, and strong, it was received into all the

architecture of the period, and there is hardly a street in Venice which

does not exhibit some important remains of palaces built with this form

of window in many stories, and in numerous groups. The most extensive

and perfect is one upon the Grand Canal in the parish of the Apostoli,

near the Rialto, covered with rich decoration, in the Byzantine manner,

between the windows of its first story; but not completely

characteristic of the transitional period, because still retaining the

dentil in the arch mouldings, while the transitional houses all have the

simple roll. Of the fully established type, one of the most extensive

and perfect examples is in a court in the Calle di Rimedio, close to the

Ponte dell' Angelo, near St. Mark's Place. Another looks out upon a

small square garden, one of the few visible in the centre of Venice,

close by the Corte Salviati (the latter being known to every cicerone as

that from which Bianca Capello fled). But, on the whole, the most

interesting to the traveller is that of which I have given a vignette

opposite.

But for this range of windows, the little piazza SS. Apostoli would be

one of the least picturesque in Venice; to those, however, who seek it

on foot, it becomes geographically interesting from the extraordinary

involution of the alleys leading to it from the Rialto. In Venice, the

straight road is usually by water, and the long road by land; but the

difference of distance appears, in this case, altogether inexplicable.

Twenty or thirty strokes of the oar will bring a gondola from the foot

of the Rialto to that of the Ponte SS. Apostoli; but the unwise

pedestrian, who has not noticed the white clue beneath his feet,[87] may

think himself fortunate, if, after a quarter of an hour's wandering

among the houses behind the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, he finds himself

anywhere in the neighborhood of the point he seeks. With much patience,

however, and modest following of the guidance of the marble thread, he

will at last emerge over a steep bridge into the open space of the

Piazza, rendered cheerful in autumn by a perpetual market of

pomegranates, and purple gourds, like enormous black figs; while the

canal, at its extremity, is half-blocked up by barges laden with vast

baskets of grapes as black as charcoal, thatched over with their own

leaves.

Looking back, on the other side of this canal, he will see the windows

represented in Plate XV., which, with the arcade of pointed arches

beneath them, are the remains of the palace once belonging to the

unhappy doge, Marino Faliero.

The balcony is, of course, modern, and the series of windows has been of

greater extent, once terminated by a pilaster on the left hand, as well

as on the right; but the terminal arches have been walled up. What

remains, however, is enough, with its sculptured birds and dragons, to

give the reader a very distinct idea of the second order window in its

perfect form. The details of the capitals, and other minor portions, if

these interest him, he will find given in the final Appendix.

[Illustration: Plate XV.

WINDOWS OF THE SECOND ORDER.

CASA FALIER.]

§ XXXI. The advance of the Gothic spirit was, for a few years, checked

by this compromise between the round and pointed arch. The truce,

however, was at last broken, in consequence of the discovery that the

keystone would do duty quite as well in the form _b_ as in the form _a_,

Fig. XXX., and the substitution of _b_, at the head of the arch, gives

us the window of the third order, 3 _b_, 3 _d_, and 3 _e_, in Plate XIV.

The forms 3 _a_ and 3 _c_ are exceptional; the first occurring, as we

have seen, in the Corte del Remer, and in one other palace on the Grand

Canal, close to the Church of St. Eustachio; the second only, as far as

I know, in one house on the Canna-Reggio, belonging to the true Gothic

period. The other three examples, 3 _b_, 3 _d_, 3 _e_, are generally

characteristic of the third order; and it will be observed that they

differ not merely in mouldings, but in slope of sides, and this latter

difference is by far the most material. For in the example 3 _b_ there

is hardly any true Gothic expression; it is still the pure Byzantine

arch, with a point thrust up through it: but the moment the flanks

slope, as in 3 _d_, the Gothic expression is definite, and the entire

school of the architecture is changed.

[Illustration: Fig. XXX.]

This slope of the flanks occurs, first, in so slight a degree as to be

hardly perceptible, and gradually increases until, reaching the form 3

_e_ at the close of the thirteenth century, the window is perfectly

prepared for a transition into the fifth order.

§ XXXII. The most perfect examples of the third order in Venice are the

windows of the ruined palace of Marco Querini, the father-in-law of

Bajamonte Tiepolo, in consequence of whose conspiracy against the

government this palace was ordered to be razed in 1310; but it was only

partially ruined, and was afterwards used as the common shambles. The

Venetians have now made a poultry market of the lower story (the

shambles being removed to a suburb), and a prison of the upper, though

it is one of the most important and interesting monuments in the city,

and especially valuable as giving us a secure date for the central form

of these very rare transitional windows. For, as it was the palace of

the father-in-law of Bajamonte, and the latter was old enough to assume

the leadership of a political faction in 1280,[88] the date of the

accession to the throne of the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, we are secure of

this palace having been built not later than the middle of the

thirteenth century. Another example, less refined in workmanship, but,

if possible, still more interesting, owing to the variety of its

capitals, remains in the little piazza opening to the Rialto, on the St.

Mark's side of the Grand Canal. The house faces the bridge, and its

second story has been built in the thirteenth century, above a still

earlier Byzantine cornice remaining, or perhaps introduced from some

other ruined edifice, in the walls of the first floor. The windows of

the second story are of pure third order; four of them are represented

above, with their flanking pilaster, and capitals varying constantly in

the form of the flower or leaf introduced between their volutes.

[Illustration: Fig. XXXI.]

§ XXXIII. Another most important example exists in the lower story of

the Casa Sagredo, on the Grand Canal, remarkable as having the early

upright form (3 _b_, Plate XIV.) with a somewhat late moulding. Many

others occur in the fragmentary ruins in the streets: but the two

boldest conditions which I found in Venice are those of the

Chapter-House of the Frari, in which the Doge Francesco Dandolo was

buried circa 1339; and those of the flank of the Ducal Palace itself

absolutely corresponding with those of the Frari, and therefore of

inestimable value in determining the date of the palace. Of these more

hereafter.

[Illustration: Plate XVI.

WINDOWS OF THE FOURTH ORDER.]

[Illustration: Fig. XXXII.]

§ XXXIV. Contemporarily with these windows of the second and third

orders, those of the fourth (4 _a_ and 4 _b_, in Plate XIV.) occur, at

first in pairs, and with simple mouldings, precisely similar to those of

the second order, but much more rare, as in the example at the side,

Fig. XXXII., from the Salizada San Liò; and then, enriching their

mouldings as shown in the continuous series 4 _c_, 4 _d_, of Plate XIV.,

associate themselves with the fifth order windows of the perfect Gothic

period. There is hardly a palace in Venice without some example, either

early or late, of these fourth order windows; but the Plate opposite

(XVI.) represents one of their purest groups at the close of the

thirteenth century, from a house on the Grand Canal, nearly opposite the

Church of the Scalzi. I have drawn it from the side, in order that the

great depth of the arches may be seen, and the clear detaching of the

shafts from the sheets of glass behind. The latter, as well as the

balcony, are comparatively modern; but there is no doubt that if glass

were used in the old window, it was set behind the shafts, at the same

depth. The entire modification of the interiors of all the Venetian

houses by recent work has however prevented me from entering into any

inquiry as to the manner in which the ancient glazing was attached to

the interiors of the windows.

The fourth order window is found in great richness and beauty at Verona,

down to the latest Gothic times, as well as in the earliest, being then

more frequent than any other form. It occurs, on a grand scale, in the

old palace of the Scaligers, and profusely throughout the streets of the

city. The series 4 _a_ to 4 _e_, Plate XIV., shows its most ordinary

conditions and changes of arch-line: 4 _a_ and 4 _b_ are the early

Venetian forms; 4 _c_, later, is general at Venice; 4 _d_, the best and

most piquant condition, owing to its fantastic and bold projection of

cusp, is common to Venice and Verona; 4 _e_ is early Veronese.

§ XXXV. The reader will see at once, in descending to the fifth row in

Plate XIV., representing the windows of the fifth order, that they are

nothing more than a combination of the third and fourth. By this union

they become the nearest approximation to a perfect Gothic form which

occurs characteristically at Venice; and we shall therefore pause on the

threshold of this final change, to glance back upon, and gather

together, those fragments of purer pointed architecture which were above

noticed as the forlorn hopes of the Gothic assault.

[Illustration: Fig. XXXIII.]

[Illustration: Fig. XXXIV.]

The little Campiello San Rocco is entered by a sotto-portico behind the

church of the Frari. Looking back, the upper traceries of the

magnificent apse are seen towering above the irregular roofs and

chimneys of the little square; and our lost Prout was enabled to bring

the whole subject into an exquisitely picturesque composition, by the

fortunate occurrence of four quaint trefoiled windows in one of the

houses on the right. Those trefoils are among the most ancient efforts

of Gothic art in Venice. I have given a rude sketch of them in Fig.

XXXIII. They are built entirely of brick, except the central shaft

and capital, which are of Istrian stone. Their structure is the simplest

possible; the trefoils being cut out of the radiating bricks which form

the pointed arch, and the edge or upper limit of that pointed arch

indicated by a roll moulding formed of cast bricks, in length of about a

foot, and ground at the bottom so as to meet in one, as in Fig. XXXIV.

The capital of the shaft is one of the earliest transitional forms;[89]

and observe the curious following out, even in this minor instance, of

the great law of centralization above explained with respect to the

Byzantine palaces. There is a central shaft, a pilaster on each side,

and then the wall. The pilaster has, by way of capital, a square flat

brick, projecting a little, and cast, at the edge, into the form of the

first type of all cornices (_a_, p. 63, Vol. I.; the reader ought to

glance back at this passage, if he has forgotten it); and the shafts and

pilasters all stand, without any added bases, on a projecting plinth of

the same simple profile. These windows have been much defaced; but I

have not the least doubt that their plinths are the original ones: and

the whole group is one of the most valuable in Venice, as showing the

way in which the humblest houses, in the noble times, followed out the

system of the larger palaces, as far as they could, in their rude

materials. It is not often that the dwellings of the lower orders are

preserved to us from the thirteenth century.

[Illustration: Plate XVII.

WINDOWS OF THE EARLY GOTHIC PALACES.]

§ XXXVI. In the two upper lines of the opposite Plate (XVII.), I have

arranged some of the more delicate and finished examples of Gothic work

of this period. Of these, fig. 4 is taken from the outer arcade of San

Fermo of Verona, to show the condition of mainland architecture, from

which all these Venetian types were borrowed. This arch, together with

the rest of the arcade, is wrought in fine stone, with a band of inlaid

red brick, the whole chiselled and fitted with exquisite precision, all

Venetian work being coarse in comparison. Throughout the streets of

Verona, arches and windows of the thirteenth century are of continual

occurrence, wrought, in this manner, with brick and stone; sometimes

the brick alternating with the stones of the arch, as in the finished

example given in Plate XIX. of the first volume, and there selected in

preference to other examples of archivolt decoration, because furnishing

a complete type of the master school from which the Venetian Gothic is

derived.

§ XXXVII. The arch from St. Fermo, however, fig. 4, Plate XVII.,

corresponds more closely, in its entire simplicity, with the little

windows from the Campiello San Rocco; and with the type 5 set beside it

in Plate XVII., from a very ancient house in the Corte del Forno at

Santa Marina (all in brick); while the upper examples, 1 and 2, show the

use of the flat but highly enriched architrave, for the connection of

which with Byzantine work see the final Appendix, Vol. III., under the

head "Archivolt." These windows (figs. 1 and 2, Plate XVII.) are from a

narrow alley in a part of Venice now exclusively inhabited by the lower

orders, close to the arsenal;[90] they are entirely wrought in brick,

with exquisite mouldings, not cast, but _moulded in the clay by the

hand_, so that there is not one piece of the arch like another; the

pilasters and shafts being, as usual, of stone.

§ XXXVIII. And here let me pause for a moment, to note what one should

have thought was well enough known in England,--yet I could not perhaps

touch upon anything less considered,--the real use of brick. Our fields

of good clay were never given us to be made into oblong morsels of one

size. They were given us that we might play with them, and that men who

could not handle a chisel, might knead out of them some expression of

human thought. In the ancient architecture of the clay districts of

Italy, every possible adaptation of the material is found exemplified:

from the coarsest and most brittle kinds, used in the mass of the

structure, to bricks for arches and plinths, cast in the most perfect

curves, and of almost every size, strength, and hardness; and moulded

bricks, wrought into flower-work and tracery as fine as raised patterns

upon china. And, just as many of the finest works of the Italian

sculptors were executed in porcelain, many of the best thoughts of their

architects are expressed in brick, or in the softer material of terra

cotta; and if this were so in Italy, where there is not one city from

whose towers we may not descry the blue outline of Alp or Apennine,

everlasting quarries of granite or marble, how much more ought it to be

so among the fields of England! I believe that the best academy for her

architects, for some half century to come, would be the brick-field; for

of this they may rest assured, that till they know how to use clay, they

will never know how to use marble.

§ XXXIX. And now observe, as we pass from fig. 2 to fig. 3, and from

fig. 5 to fig. 6, in Plate XVII., a most interesting step of transition.

As we saw above, § XIV., the round arch yielding to the Gothic, by

allowing a point to emerge at its summit, so here we have the Gothic

conceding something to the form which had been assumed by the round; and

itself slightly altering its outline so as to meet the condescension of

the round arch half way. At page 137 of the first volume, I have drawn

to scale one of these minute concessions of the pointed arch, granted at

Verona out of pure courtesy to the Venetian forms, by one of the purest

Gothic ornaments in the world; and the small window here, fig. 6, is a

similar example at Venice itself, from the Campo Santa Maria Mater

Domini, where the reversed curve at the head of the pointed arch is just

perceptible and no more. The other examples, figs. 3 and 7, the first

from a small but very noble house in the Merceria, the second from an

isolated palace at Murano, show more advanced conditions of the reversed

curve, which, though still employing the broad decorated architrave of

the earlier examples, are in all other respects prepared for the

transition to the simple window of the fifth order.

§ XL. The next example, the uppermost of the three lower series in Plate

XVII., shows this order in its early purity; associated with

intermediate decorations like those of the Byzantines, from a palace

once belonging to the Erizzo family, near the Arsenal. The ornaments

appear to be actually of Greek workmanship (except, perhaps, the two

birds over the central arch, which are bolder, and more free in

treatment), and built into the Gothic fronts; showing, however, the

early date of the whole by the manner of their insertion, corresponding

exactly with that employed in the Byzantine palaces, and by the covering

of the intermediate spaces with sheets of marble, which, however,

instead of being laid over the entire wall, are now confined to the

immediate spaces between and above the windows, and are bounded by a

dentil moulding.

In the example below this the Byzantine ornamentation has vanished, and

the fifth order window is seen in its generic form, as commonly employed

throughout the early Gothic period. Such arcades are of perpetual

occurrence; the one in the Plate was taken from a small palace on the

Grand Canal, nearly opposite the Casa Foscari. One point in it deserves

especial notice, the increased size of the lateral window as compared

with the rest: a circumstance which occurs in a great number of the

groups of windows belonging to this period, and for which I have never

been able to account.

§ XLI. Both these figures have been most carefully engraved; and the

uppermost will give the reader a perfectly faithful idea of the general

effect of the Byzantine sculptures, and of the varied alabaster among

which they are inlaid, as well as of the manner in which these pieces

are set together, every joint having been drawn on the spot: and the

transition from the embroidered and silvery richness of this

architecture, in which the Byzantine ornamentation was associated with

the Gothic form of arch, to the simplicity of the pure Gothic arcade as

seen in the lower figure, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the

history of Venetian art. If it had occurred suddenly, and at an earlier

period, it might have been traced partly to the hatred of the Greeks,

consequent upon the treachery of Manuel Comnenus,[91] and the fatal war

to which it led; but the change takes place gradually, and not till a

much later period. I hoped to have been able to make some careful

inquiries into the habits of domestic life of the Venetians before and

after the dissolution of their friendly relations with Constantinople;

but the labor necessary for the execution of my more immediate task has

entirely prevented this: and I must be content to lay the succession of

the architectural styles plainly before the reader, and leave the

collateral questions to the investigation of others; merely noting this

one assured fact, that _the root of all that is greatest in Christian

art is struck in the thirteenth century_; that the temper of that

century is the life-blood of all manly work thenceforward in Europe; and

I suppose that one of its peculiar characteristics was elsewhere, as

assuredly in Florence, a singular simplicity in domestic life:

"I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad

In leathern girdle, and a clasp of bone;

And, with no artful coloring on her cheeks,

His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw

Of Verli and of Vecchio, well content

With unrobed jerkin, and their good dames handling

The spindle and the flax....

One waked to tend the cradle, hushing it

With sounds that lulled the parents' infancy;

Another, with her maidens, drawing off

The tresses from the distaff, lectured them

Old tales of Troy, and Fesole, and Rome."[92]

§ XLII. Such, then, is the simple fact at Venice, that from the

beginning of the thirteenth century there is found a singular increase

of simplicity in all architectural ornamentation; the rich Byzantine

capitals giving place to a pure and severe type hereafter to be

described,[93] and the rich sculptures vanishing from the walls, nothing

but the marble facing remaining. One of the most interesting examples of

this transitional state is a palace at San Severo, just behind the Casa

Zorzi. This latter is a Renaissance building, utterly worthless in every

respect, but known to the Venetian Ciceroni; and by inquiring for it,

and passing a little beyond it down the Fondamenta San Severo, the

traveller will see, on the other side of the canal, a palace which the

Ciceroni never notice, but which is unique in Venice for the

magnificence of the veined purple alabasters with which it has been

decorated, and for the manly simplicity of the foliage of its capitals.

Except in these, it has no sculpture whatever, and its effect is

dependent entirely on color. Disks of green serpentine are inlaid on the

field of purple alabaster; and the pillars are alternately of red marble

with white capitals, and of white marble with red capitals. Its windows

appear of the third order; and the back of the palace, in a small and

most picturesque court, shows a group of windows which are, perhaps, the

most superb examples of that order in Venice. But the windows to the

front have, I think, been of the fifth order, and their cusps have been

cut away.

§ XLIII. When the Gothic feeling began more decidedly to establish

itself, it evidently became a question with the Venetian builders, how

the intervals between the arches, now left blank by the abandonment of

the Byzantine sculptures, should be enriched in accordance with the

principles of the new school. Two most important examples are left of

the experiments made at this period: one at the Ponte del Forner, at San

Cassano, a noble house in which the spandrils of the windows are filled

by the emblems of the four Evangelists, sculptured in deep relief, and

touching the edges of the arches with their expanded wings; the other

now known as the Palazzo Cicogna, near the church of San Sebastiano, in

the quarter called "of the Archangel Raphael," in which a large space of

wall above the windows is occupied by an intricate but rude tracery of

involved quatrefoils. Of both these palaces I purposed to give drawings

in my folio work; but I shall probably be saved the trouble by the

publication of the beautiful calotypes lately made at Venice of both;

and it is unnecessary to represent them here, as they are unique in

Venetian architecture, with the single exception of an unimportant

imitation of the first of them in a little by-street close to the Campo

Sta. Maria Formosa. For the question as to the mode of decorating the

interval between the arches was suddenly and irrevocably determined by

the builder of the Ducal Palace, who, as we have seen, taking his first

idea from the traceries of the Frari, and arranging those traceries as

best fitted his own purpose, designed the great arcade (the lowest of

the three in Plate XVII.), which thenceforward became the established

model for every work of importance in Venice. The palaces built on this

model, however, most of them not till the beginning of the fifteenth

century, belong properly to the time of the Renaissance; and what little

we have to note respecting them may be more clearly stated in connexion

with other facts characteristic of that period.

§ XLIV. As the examples in Plate XVII. are necessarily confined to the

upper parts of the windows, I have given in the Plate opposite

(XVIII[94]) examples of the fifth order window, both in its earliest and

in its fully developed form, completed from base to keystone. The upper

example is a beautiful group from a small house, never of any size or

pretension, and now inhabited only by the poor, in the Campiello della

Strope, close to the Church of San Giacomo de Lorio. It is remarkable

for its excessive purity of curve, and is of very early date, its

mouldings being simpler than usual.[95] The lower example is from the

second story of a palace belonging to the Priuli family, near San

Lorenzo, and shows one feature to which our attention has not hitherto

been directed, namely, the penetration of the cusp, leaving only a

silver thread of stone traced on the darkness of the window. I need not

say that, in this condition, the cusp ceases to have any constructive

use, and is merely decorative, but often exceedingly beautiful. The

steps of transition from the early solid cusp to this slender thread are

noticed in the final Appendix, under the head "Tracery Bars;" the

commencement of the change being in the thinning of the stone, which is

not cut through until it is thoroughly emaciated. Generally speaking,

the condition in which the cusp is found is a useful test of age, when

compared with other points; the more solid it is, the more ancient: but

the massive form is often found associated with the perforated, as late

as the beginning of the fourteenth century. In the Ducal Palace, the

lower or bearing traceries have the solid cusp, and the upper traceries

of the windows, which are merely decorative., have the perforated cusp,

both with exquisite effect.

[Illustration: Plate XVIII.

WINDOWS OF THE FIFTH ORDER.]

§ XLV. The smaller balconies between the great shafts in the lower

example in Plate XVIII. are original and characteristic: not so the

lateral one of the detached window, which has been restored; but by

imagining it to be like that represented in fig. 1, Plate XIII., above,

which is a perfect window of the finest time of the fifth order, the

reader will be enabled to form a complete idea of the external

appearance of the principal apartments in the house of a noble of

Venice, at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

§ XLVI. Whether noble, or merchant, or, as frequently happened, both,

every Venetian appears, at this time, to have raised his palace or

dwelling-house upon one type. Under every condition of importance,

through every variation of size, the forms and mode of decoration of all

the features were universally alike; not servilely alike, but

fraternally; not with the sameness of coins cast from one mould, but

with the likeness of the members of one family. No fragment of the

period is preserved, in which the windows, be they few or many, a group

of three or an arcade of thirty, have not the noble cusped arch of the

fifth order. And they are especially to be noted by us at this day,

because these refined and richly ornamented forms were used in the

habitations of a nation as laborious, as practical, as brave, and as

prudent as ourselves; and they were built at a time when that nation was

struggling with calamities and changes threatening its existence almost

every hour. And, farther, they are interesting because perfectly

applicable to modern habitation. The refinement of domestic life appears

to have been far advanced in Venice from her earliest days; and the

remains of her Gothic palaces are, at this day, the most delightful

residences in the city, having undergone no change in external form, and

probably having been rather injured than rendered more convenient by the

modifications which poverty and Renaissance taste, contending with the

ravages of time, have introduced in the interiors. So that, in Venice,

and the cities grouped around it, Vicenza, Padua, and Verona, the

traveller may ascertain, by actual experience, the effect which would be

produced upon the comfort or luxury of daily life by the revival of the

Gothic school of architecture. He can still stand upon the marble

balcony in the soft summer air, and feel its smooth surface warm from

the noontide as he leans on it in the twilight; he can still see the

strong sweep of the unruined traceries drawn on the deep serenity of the

starry sky, and watch the fantastic shadows of the clustered arches

shorten in the moonlight on the chequered floor; or he may close the

casements fitted to their unshaken shafts against such wintry winds as

would have made an English house vibrate to its foundation, and, in

either case, compare their influence on his daily home feeling with that

of the square openings in his English wall.

§ XLVII. And let him be assured, if he find there is more to be enjoyed

in the Gothic window, there is also more to be trusted. It is the best

and strongest building, as it is the most beautiful. I am not now

speaking of the particular form of Venetian Gothic, but of the general

strength of the pointed arch as opposed to that of the level lintel of

the square window; and I plead for the introduction of the Gothic form

into our domestic architecture, not merely because it is lovely, but

because it is the only form of faithful, strong, enduring, and honorable

building, in such materials as come daily to our hands. By increase of

scale and cost, it is possible to build, in any style, what will last

for ages; but only in the Gothic is it possible to give security and

dignity to work wrought with imperfect means and materials. And I trust

that there will come a time when the English people may see the folly of

building basely and insecurely. It is common with those architects

against whose practice my writings have hitherto been directed, to call

them merely theoretical and imaginative. I answer, that there is not a

single principle asserted either in the "Seven Lamps" or here, but is of

the simplest, sternest veracity, and the easiest practicability; that

buildings, raised as I would have them, would stand unshaken for a

thousand years; and the buildings raised by the architects who oppose

them will not stand for one hundred and fifty, they sometimes do not

stand for an hour. There is hardly a week passes without some

catastrophe brought about by the base principles of modern building;

some vaultless floor that drops the staggering crowd through the jagged

rents of its rotten timbers; some baseless bridge that is washed away by

the first wave of a summer flood; some fungous wall of nascent

rottenness that a thunder-shower soaks down with its workmen into a heap

of slime and death.[96] These we hear of, day by day: yet these indicate

but the thousandth part of the evil. The portion of the national income

sacrificed in mere bad building, in the perpetual repairs, and swift

condemnation and pulling down of ill-built shells of houses, passes all

calculation. And the weight of the penalty is not yet felt; it will tell

upon our children some fifty years hence, when the cheap work, and

contract work, and stucco and plaster work, and bad iron work, and all

the other expedients of modern rivalry, vanity, and dishonesty, begin to

show themselves for what they are.

[Illustration: Fig. XXXV.]

§ XLVIII. Indeed, dishonesty and false economy will no more build safely

in Gothic than in any other style: but of all forms which we could

possibly employ, to be framed hastily and out of bad materials, the

common square window is the worst; and its level head of brickwork (_a_,

Fig. XXXV.) is the weakest way of covering a space. Indeed, in the

hastily heaped shells of modern houses, there may be seen often even a

worse manner of placing the bricks, as at _b_, supporting them by a bit

of lath till the mortar dries; but even when worked with the utmost

care, and having every brick tapered into the form of a voussoir and

accurately fitted, I have seen such a window-head give way, and a wide

fissure torn through all the brickwork above it, two years after it was

built; while the pointed arch of the Veronese Gothic, wrought in brick

also, occurs at every corner of the streets of the city, untouched since

the thirteenth century, and without a single flaw.

§ XLIX. Neither can the objection, so often raised against the pointed

arch, that it will not admit the convenient adjustment of modern sashes

and glass, hold for an instant. There is not the smallest necessity,

because the arch is pointed, that the aperture should be so. The work of

the arch is to sustain the building above; when this is once done

securely, the pointed head of it may be filled in any way we choose. In

the best cathedral doors it is always filled by a shield of solid stone;

in many early windows of the best Gothic it is filled in the same

manner, the introduced slab of stone becoming a field for rich

decoration; and there is not the smallest reason why lancet windows,

used in bold groups, with each pointed arch filled by a sculptured

tympanum, should not allow as much light to enter, and in as convenient

a way, as the most luxuriously glazed square windows of our brick

houses. Give the groups of associated lights bold gabled canopies;

charge the gables with sculpture and color; and instead of the base and

almost useless Greek portico, letting the rain and wind enter it at

will, build the steeply vaulted and completely sheltered Gothic porch;

and on all these fields for rich decoration let the common workman carve

what he pleases, to the best of his power, and we may have a school of

domestic architecture in the nineteenth century, which will make our

children grateful to us, and proud of us, till the thirtieth.

§ L. There remains only one important feature to be examined, the

entrance gate or door. We have already observed that the one seems to

pass into the other, a sign of increased love of privacy rather than of

increased humility, as the Gothic palaces assume their perfect form. In

the Byzantine palaces the entrances appear always to have been rather

great gates than doors, magnificent semicircular arches opening to the

water, and surrounded by rich sculpture in the archivolts. One of these

entrances is seen in the small woodcut above, Fig. XXV., and another has

been given carefully in my folio work: their sculpture is generally of

grotesque animals scattered among leafage, without any definite meaning;

but the great outer entrance of St. Mark's, which appears to have been

completed some time after the rest of the fabric, differs from all

others in presenting a series of subjects altogether Gothic in feeling,

selection, and vitality of execution, and which show the occult entrance

of the Gothic spirit before it had yet succeeded in effecting any

modification of the Byzantine forms. These sculptures represent the

months of the year employed in the avocations usually attributed to them

throughout the whole compass of the middle ages, in Northern

architecture and manuscript calendars, and at last exquisitely versified

by Spenser. For the sake of the traveller in Venice, who should examine

this archivolt carefully, I shall enumerate these sculptures in their

order, noting such parallel representations as I remember in other work.

§ LI. There are four successive archivolts, one within the other,

forming the great central entrance of St. Mark's. The first is a

magnificent external arch, formed of obscure figures mingled among

masses of leafage, as in ordinary Byzantine work; within this there is a

hemispherical dome, covered with modern mosaic; and at the back of this

recess the other three archivolts follow consecutively, two sculptured,

one plain; the one with which we are concerned is the outermost.

It is carved both on its front and under-surface or soffit; on the front

are seventeen female figures bearing scrolls, from which the legends are

unfortunately effaced. These figures were once gilded on a dark blue

ground, as may still be seen in Gentile Bellini's picture of St. Mark's

in the Accademia delle Belle Arti. The sculptures of the months are on

the under-surface, beginning at the bottom on the left hand of the

spectator as he enters, and following in succession round the archivolt;

separated, however, into two groups, at its centre, by a beautiful

figure of the youthful Christ, sitting in the midst of a slightly

hollowed sphere covered with stars to represent the firmament, and with

the attendant sun and moon, set one on each side to rule over the day

and over the night.

§ LII. The months are personified as follows:--

1. JANUARY, _Carrying home a noble tree on his shoulders, the leafage of

which nods forwards, and falls nearly to his feet._ Superbly cut. This

is a rare representation of him. More frequently he is represented as

the two-headed Janus, sitting at a table, drinking at one mouth and

eating at the other. Sometimes as an old man, warming his feet at a

fire, and drinking from a bowl; though this type is generally reserved

for February. Spenser, however, gives the same symbol as that on St.

Mark's:

"Numbd with holding all the day

An hatchet keene, with which he felled wood."

His sign, Aquarius, is obscurely indicated in the archivolt by some wavy

lines representing water, unless the figure has been broken away.

2. FEBRUARY. _Sitting in a carved chair, warming his bare feet at a

blazing fire._ Generally, when he is thus represented, there is a pot

hung over the fire, from the top of the chimney. Sometimes he is pruning

trees, as in Spenser:

"Yet had he by his side

His plough and harnesse fit to till the ground,

And tooles to prune the trees."

Not unfrequently, in the calendars, this month is represented by a

female figure carrying candles, in honor of the Purification of the

Virgin.

His sign, Pisces, is prominently carved above him.

3. MARCH. Here, as almost always in Italy, _a warrior_: the Mars of the

Latins being of course, in mediæval work, made representative of the

military power of the place and period; and thus, at Venice, having the

winged Lion painted upon his shield. In Northern work, however, I think

March is commonly employed in pruning trees; or, at least, he is so

when that occupation is left free for him by February's being engaged

with the ceremonies of Candlemas. Sometimes, also, he is reaping a low

and scattered kind of grain; and by Spenser, who exactly marks the

junction of mediæval and classical feeling, his military and

agricultural functions are united, while also, in the Latin manner, he

is made the first of the months.

"First sturdy March, with brows full sternly bent,

And armed strongly, rode upon a Ram,

The same which over Hellespontus swam;

Yet in his hand a spade he also bent,

And in a bag all sorts of seeds ysame,[97]

Which on the earth he strowed as he went."

His sign, the Ram, is very superbly carved above him in the archivolt.

4. APRIL. Here, _carrying a sheep upon his shoulder_. A rare

representation of him. In Northern work he is almost universally

gathering flowers, or holding them triumphantly in each hand. The

Spenserian mingling of this mediæval image with that of his being wet

with showers, and wanton with love, by turning his zodiacal sign,

Taurus, into the bull of Europa, is altogether exquisite.

"Upon a Bull he rode, the same which led

Europa floting through the Argolick fluds:

His horns were gilden all with golden studs,

And garnished with garlonds goodly dight

Of all the fairest flowres and freshest buds

Which th' earth brings forth; and _wet he seemed in sight

With waves, through which he waded for his love's delight_."

5. MAY _is seated, while two young maidens crown him with flowers._ A

very unusual representation, even in Italy; where, as in the North, he

is almost always riding out hunting or hawking, sometimes playing on a

musical instrument. In Spenser, this month is personified as "the

fayrest mayd on ground," borne on the shoulders of the Twins.

In this archivolt there are only two heads to represent the zodiacal

sign.

The summer and autumnal months are always represented in a series of

agricultural occupations, which, of course, vary with the locality in

which they occur; but generally in their order only. Thus, if June is

mowing, July is reaping; if July is mowing, August is reaping; and so

on. I shall give a parallel view of some of these varieties presently;

but, meantime, we had better follow the St Mark's series, as it is

peculiar in some respects.

6. JUNE. _Reaping._ The corn and sickle sculptured with singular care

and precision, in bold relief, and the zodiacal sign, the Crab, above,

also worked with great spirit. Spenser puts plough irons into his hand.

Sometimes he is sheep-shearing; and, in English and northern French

manuscripts, carrying a kind of fagot or barrel, of the meaning of which

I am not certain.

7. JULY. _Mowing._ A very interesting piece of sculpture, owing to the

care with which the flowers are wrought out among the long grass. I do

not remember ever finding July but either reaping or mowing. Spenser

works him hard, and puts him to both labors:

"Behinde his backe a sithe, and by his side

Under his belt he bore a sickle circling wide."

8. AUGUST. Peculiarly represented in this archivolt, _sitting in a

chair, with his head upon his hand, as if asleep; the Virgin_ (the

zodiacal sign) _above him, lifting up her hand_. This appears to be a

peculiarly Italian version of the proper employment of August. In

Northern countries he is generally threshing, or gathering grapes.

Spenser merely clothes him with gold, and makes him lead forth

"the righteous Virgin, which of old

Lived here on earth, and plenty made abound."

9. SEPTEMBER. _Bearing home grapes in a basket._ Almost always sowing,

in Northern work. By Spenser, with his usual exquisite ingenuity,

employed in gathering in the general harvest, and _portioning it out

with the Scales_, his zodiacal sign.

10. OCTOBER. _Wearing a conical hat, and digging busily with a long

spade._ In Northern work he is sometimes a vintager, sometimes beating

the acorns out of an oak to feed swine. When September is vintaging,

October is generally sowing. Spenser employs him in the harvest both of

vine and olive.

11. NOVEMBER. _Seems to be catching small birds in a net._ I do not

remember him so employed elsewhere. He is nearly always killing pigs;

sometimes beating the oak for them; with Spenser, fatting them.

12. DECEMBER. _Killing swine._ It is hardly ever that this employment is

not given to one or other of the terminal months of the year. If not so

engaged, December is usually putting new loaves into the oven; sometimes

killing oxen. Spenser properly makes him feasting and drinking instead

of January.

§ LIII. On the next page I have given a parallel view of the employment

of the months from some Northern manuscripts, in order that they may be

more conveniently compared with the sculptures of St. Mark's, in their

expression of the varieties of climate and agricultural system. Observe

that the letter (f.) in some of the columns, opposite the month of May,

means that he has a falcon on his fist; being, in those cases,

represented as riding out, in high exultation, on a caparisoned white

horse. A series nearly similar to that of St. Mark's occurs on the door

of the Cathedral of Lucca, and on that of the Baptistery of Pisa; in

which, however, if I recollect rightly, February is fishing, and May has

something resembling an umbrella in his hand, instead of a hawk. But, in

all cases, the figures are treated with the peculiar spirit of the

Gothic sculptors; and this archivolt is the first expression of that

spirit which is to be found in Venice.

SECOND PERIOD

+---------+--------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

| | | MS. French. | MS. French. | MS. French. |

| | St. Mark's. | Late 13th | Late 13th | Late 13th |

| | | Century | Century | Century |

|---------+--------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

| | | | | |

|January |Carrying wood.|Janus feasting.|Janus feasting.|Drinking and |

| | | | | stirring fire.|

| | | | | |

|February |Warming feet. |Warming feet. |Warming feet. |Pruning. |

| | | | | |

|March |Going to war. |Pruning. |Pruning. |Striking |

| | | | | with axe. |

| | | | | |

|April |Carrying |Gathering |Gathering |Gathering |

| | sheep. | flowers. | flowers. | flowers. |

| | | | | |

|May |Crowned with |Riding (f.). |Riding (f.). |Playing |

| | flowers. | | | violin. |

| | | | | |

|June |Reaping. |Mowing. |Mowing. |Gathering large|

| | | | | red flowers. |

| | | | | |

|July |Mowing. |Reaping. |Reaping. |Mowing. |

| | | | | |

|August |Asleep. |Threshing. |Gathering |Reaping. |

| | | | grapes. | |

| | | | | |

|September|Carrying |Sowing. |Sowing. |Drinking wine. |

| | grapes. | | | |

| | | | | |

|October |Digging. |Gathering |Beating oak. |Sowing. |

| | | grapes. | | |

| | | | | |

|November |Catching |Beating oak. |Killing swine. |Killing swine. |

| | birds. | | | |

| | | | | |

|December |Killing swine.|Killing swine. |Baking. |Killing oxen. |

+---------+--------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

+---------+-------------------+-------------------+------------------+

| | MS. French. | MS. English. | MS. Flemish. |

| |Early 14th Century.|Early 15th Century.| 15th Century. |

|---------+-------------------+-------------------+------------------|

| | | | |

|January |Warming feet. | Janus feasting. |Feasting |

| | | | |

| | | | |

|February |Bearing candles. | Warming feet. |Warming hands. |

| | | | |

|March |Pruning. | Carrying candles. |Reaping. |

| | | | |

|April |Gathering flowers. | Pruning. |Gathering flowers.|

| | | | |

|May |Riding (f.). | Riding (f.). |Riding with lady |

| | | | on pillion. |

| | | | |

|June |Carrying (fagots?) | Carrying fagots. |Sheep-shearing. |

| | | | |

| | | | |

|July |Mowing. | Mowing. |Mowing. |

| | | | |

|August |Reaping. | Reaping. |Reaping. |

| | | | |

|September|Threshing. | Threshing. |Sowing. |

| | | | |

|October |Sowing. | Sowing. |Beating oak. |

| | | | |

|November |Killing swine. | Killing swine. |Pressing (grapes?)|

| | | | |

|December |Baking. | Baking. |Killing swine. |

+---------+-------------------+-------------------+------------------+

§ LIV. In the private palaces, the entrances soon admitted some

concession to the Gothic form also. They pass through nearly the same

conditions of change as the windows, with these three differences:

first, that no arches of the fantastic fourth order occur in any

doorways; secondly, that the pure pointed arch occurs earlier, and much

oftener, in doorways than in window-heads; lastly, that the entrance

itself, if small, is nearly always square-headed in the earliest

examples, without any arch above, but afterwards the arch is thrown

across above the lintel. The interval between the two, or tympanum, is

filled with sculpture, or closed by iron bars, with sometimes a

projecting gable, to form a porch, thrown over the whole, as in the

perfect example, 7 _a_, Plate XIV., above. The other examples in the two

lower lines, 6 and 7, of that Plate are each characteristic of an

enormous number of doors, variously decorated, from the thirteenth to

the close of the fifteenth century. The particulars of their mouldings

are given in the final Appendix.

§ LV. It was useless, on the small scale of this Plate, to attempt any

delineation of the richer sculptures with which the arches are filled;

so that I have chosen for it the simplest examples I could find of the

forms to be illustrated: but, in all the more important instances, the

door-head is charged either with delicate ornaments and inlaid patterns

in variously colored brick, or with sculptures, consisting always of the

shield or crest of the family, protected by an angel. Of these more

perfect doorways I have given three examples carefully, in my folio

work; but I must repeat here one part of the account of their subjects

given in its text, for the convenience of those to whom the larger work

may not be accessible.

§ LVI. "In the earlier ages, all agree thus far, that the name of the

family is told, and together with it there is always an intimation that

they have placed their defence and their prosperity in God's hands;

frequently accompanied with some general expression of benediction to

the person passing over the threshold. This is the general theory of an

old Venetian doorway;--the theory of modern doorways remains to be

explained: it may be studied to advantage in our rows of new-built

houses, or rather of new-built house, changeless for miles together,

from which, to each inhabitant, we allot his proper quantity of windows,

and a Doric portico. The Venetian carried out his theory very simply. In

the centre of the archivolt we find almost invariably, in the older

work, the hand between the sun and moon in the attitude of blessing,

expressing the general power and presence of God, the source of light.

On the tympanum is the shield of the family. Venetian heraldry requires

no beasts for supporters, but usually prefers angels, neither the

supporters nor crests forming any necessary part of Venetian bearings.

Sometimes, however, human figures, or grotesques, are substituted; but,

in that case, an angel is almost always introduced above the shield,

bearing a globe in his left hand, and therefore clearly intended for the

'Angel of the Lord,' or, as it is expressed elsewhere, the 'Angel of His

Presence.' Where elaborate sculpture of this kind is inadmissible, the

shield is merely represented as suspended by a leather thong; and a

cross is introduced above the archivolt. The Renaissance architects

perceived the irrationality of all this, cut away both crosses and

angels, and substituted heads of satyrs, which were the proper presiding

deities of Venice in the Renaissance periods, and which in our own

domestic institutions, we have ever since, with much piety and sagacity,

retained."

§ LVII. The habit of employing some religious symbol, or writing some

religious legend, over the door of the house, does not entirely

disappear until far into the period of the Renaissance. The words "Peace

be to this house" occur on one side of a Veronese gateway, with the

appropriate and veracious inscription S.P.Q.R., on a Roman standard, on

the other; and "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," is

written on one of the doorways of a building added at the flank of the

Casa Barbarigo, in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. It seems to be

only modern Protestantism which is entirely ashamed of _all_ symbols and

words that appear in anywise like a confession of faith.

§ LVIII. This peculiar feeling is well worthy of attentive analysis. It

indeed, in most cases, hardly deserves the name of a feeling; for the

meaningless doorway is merely an ignorant copy of heathen models: but

yet, if it were at this moment proposed to any of us, by our architects,

to remove the grinning head of a satyr, or other classical or Palladian

ornament, from the keystone of the door, and to substitute for it a

cross, and an inscription testifying our faith, I believe that most

persons would shrink from the proposal with an obscure and yet

overwhelming sense that things would be sometimes done, and thought,

within the house which would make the inscription on its gate a base

hypocrisy. And if so, let us look to it, whether that strong reluctance

to utter a definite religious profession, which so many of us feel, and

which, not very carefully examining into its dim nature, we conclude to

be modesty, or fear of hypocrisy, or other such form of amiableness, be

not, in very deed, neither less nor more than Infidelity; whether

Peter's "I know not the man" be not the sum and substance of all these

misgivings and hesitations; and whether the shamefacedness which we

attribute to sincerity and reverence, be not such shamefacedness as may

at last put us among those of whom the Son of Man shall be ashamed.

§ LIX. Such are the principal circumstances to be noted in the external

form and details of the Gothic palaces; of their interior arrangements

there is little left unaltered. The gateways which we have been

examining almost universally lead, in the earlier palaces, into a long

interior court, round which the mass of the palace is built; and in

which its first story is reached by a superb external staircase,

sustained on four or five pointed arches gradually increasing as they

ascend, both in height and span,--this change in their size being, so

far as I remember, peculiar to Venice, and visibly a consequence of the

habitual admission of arches of different sizes in the Byzantine

façades. These staircases are protected by exquisitely carved parapets,

like those of the outer balconies, with lions or grotesque heads set on

the angles, and with true projecting balconies on their landing-places.

In the centre of the court there is always a marble well; and these

wells furnish some of the most superb examples of Venetian sculpture. I

am aware only of one remaining from the Byzantine period; it is

octagonal, and treated like the richest of our Norman fonts: but the

Gothic wells of every date, from the thirteenth century downwards, are

innumerable, and full of beauty, though their form is little varied;

they being, in almost every case, treated like colossal capitals of

pillars, with foliage at the angles, and the shield of the family upon

their sides.

§ LX. The interior apartments always consist of one noble hall on the

first story, often on the second also, extending across the entire depth

of the house, and lighted in front by the principal groups of its

windows, while smaller apartments open from it on either side. The

ceilings, where they remain untouched, are of bold horizontal beams,

richly carved and gilded; but few of these are left from the true Gothic

times, the Venetian interiors having, in almost every case, been

remodelled by the Renaissance architects. This change, _however_, for

once, we cannot regret, as the walls and ceilings, when so altered, were

covered with the noblest works of Veronese, Titian, and Tintoret; nor

the interior walls only, but, as before noticed, often the exteriors

also. Of the color decorations of the Gothic exteriors I have,

therefore, at present taken no notice, as it will be more convenient to

embrace this subject in one general view of the systems of coloring of

the Venetian palaces, when we arrive at the period of its richest

developement.[98] The details, also, of most interest, respecting the

forms and transitional decoration of their capitals, will be given in

the final Appendix to the next volume, where we shall be able to include

in our inquiry the whole extent of the Gothic period; and it remains for

us, therefore, at present, only to review the history, fix the date, and

note the most important particulars in the structure of the building

which at once consummates and embodies the entire system of the Gothic

architecture of Venice,--the DUCAL PALACE.

FOOTNOTES

[75] 38 ft. 2 in., without its cornice, which is 10 inches deep, and

sustains pinnacles of stone 7 feet high. I was enabled to get the

measures by a scaffolding erected in 1851 to repair the front.

[76] I believe the necessary upper joint is vertical, through the

uppermost lobe of the quatrefoil, as in the figure; but I have lost

my memorandum of this joint.

[77] "Dice, che non lauda per alcun modo di metter questo Serenissimo

Dominio in tanto pericolo d' habitar un palazzo fabricato in

aria."--_Pareri di XV. Architetti, con illustrazioni dell' Abbate

Giuseppe Cadorin_ (Venice, 1838), p. 104.

[78] "Il muro della sala è più grosso delle colonne sott' esso piedi

uno e onze tre, et posto in modo che onze sei sta come in aere sopra

la piazza, et onze nove dentro."--_Pareri di XV. Architetti_, p. 47.

[79] Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. iii. § 7.

[80] Pareri, above quoted, p. 21.

[81] It is a curious proof how completely, even so early as the

beginning of the sixteenth century, the Venetians had lost the habit

of _reading_ the religious art of their ancient churches, that

Sanuto, describing this injury, says, that "four of the _Kings_ in

marble fell from their pinnacles above the front, at St. Mark's

church;" and presently afterwards corrects his mistake, and

apologises for it thus: "These were four saints, St. Constantine,

St. Demetrius, St. George, and St. Theodore, all Greek saints. _They

look like Kings_." Observe the perfect, because unintentional,

praise given to the old sculptor.

I quote the passage from the translation of these precious diaries

of Sanuto, by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, a translation which I hope

will some day become a standard book in English libraries.

[82] I am not speaking here of iron balconies. See below, § XXII.

[83] A Some details respecting the mechanical structure of the

Venetian balcony are given in the final Appendix.

[84] I found it convenient in my own memoranda to express them

simply as fourths, seconds, &c. But "order" is an excellent word for

any known group of forms, whether of windows, capitals, bases,

mouldings, or any other architectural feature, provided always that

it be not understood in any wise to imply preëminence or isolation

in these groups. Thus I may rationally speak of the six orders of

Venetian windows, provided I am ready to allow a French architect to

speak of the six or seven, or eight, or seventy or eighty, orders of

Norman windows, if so many are distinguishable; and so also we may

rationally speak, for the sake of intelligibility, of the five

orders of Greek pillars, provided only we understand that there may

be five millions of orders as good or better, of pillars _not_

Greek.

[85] Or in their own curves; as, on a small scale, in the balustrade

fig. 6, Plate XIII., above.

[86] For all details of this kind, the reader is referred to the

final Appendix in Vol. III.

[87] Two threads of white marble, each about an inch wide, inlaid in

the dark grey pavement, indicate the road to the Rialto from the

farthest extremity of the north quarter of Venice. The peasant or

traveller, lost in the intricacy of the pathway in this portion of

the city, cannot fail, after a few experimental traverses, to cross

these white lines, which thenceforward he has nothing to do but to

follow, though their capricious sinuosities will try his patience

not a little.

[88] An account of the conspiracy of Bajamonte may be found in

almost any Venetian history; the reader may consult Mutinelli,

Annali Urbani, lib. iii.

[89] See account of series of capitals in final Appendix.

[90] If the traveller desire to find them (and they are worth

seeking), let him row from the Fondamenta S. Biagio down the Rio

della Tana, and look, on his right, for a low house with windows in

it like those in the woodcut No. XXXI. above, p. 256. Let him go in

at the door of the portico in the middle of this house, and he will

find himself in a small alley, with the windows in question on each

side of him.

[91] The bitterness of feeling with which the Venetians must have

remembered this, was probably the cause of their magnificent heroism

in the final siege of the city under Dandolo, and, partly, of the

excesses which disgraced their victory. The conduct of the allied

army of the Crusaders on this occasion cannot, however, be brought

in evidence of general barbarism in the thirteenth century: first,

because the masses of the crusading armies were in great part

composed of the refuse of the nations of Europe; and secondly,

because such a mode of argument might lead us to inconvenient

conclusions respecting ourselves, so long as the horses of the

Austrian cavalry are stabled in the cloister of the convent which

contains the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci. See Appendix 3, Vol.

III.: "Austrian Government in Italy."

[92] It is generally better to read ten lines of any poet in the

original language, however painfully, than ten cantos of a

translation. But an exception may be made in favor of Cary's Dante.

If no poet ever was liable to lose more in translation, none was

ever so carefully translated; and I hardly know whether most to

admire the rigid fidelity, or the sweet and solemn harmony, of

Cary's verse. There is hardly a fault in the fragment quoted above,

except the word "lectured," for Dante's beautiful "favoleggiava;"

and even in this case, joining the first words of the following

line, the translation is strictly literal. It is true that the

conciseness and the rivulet-like melody of Dante must continually be

lost; but if I could only read English, and had to choose, for a

library narrowed by poverty, between Cary's Dante and our own

original Milton, I should choose Cary without an instant's pause.

[93] See final Appendix, Vol. III., under head "Capitals."

[94] This Plate is not from a drawing of mine. It has been engraved

by Mr. Armytage, with great skill, from two daguerreotypes.

[95] Vide final Appendix, under head "Archivolt."

[96] "On Thursday, the 20th, the front walls of two of the new

houses now building in Victoria Street, Westminster, fell to the

ground.... The roof was on, _and a massive compo cornice_ was put up

at top, as well as dressings to the upper windows. The roof is

formed by girders and 4½-brick arches in cement, covered with

asphalt to form a flat. The failure is attributed _to the quantity

of rain which has fallen_. Others suppose that some of the girders

were defective, and gave way, carrying the walls with

them."--_Builder_, for January 29th, 1853. The rest of this volume

might be filled with such notices, if we sought for them.

[97] "Ysame," collected together.

[98] Vol. III. Chap. I. I have had considerable difficulty in the

arrangement of these volumes, so as to get the points bearing upon

each other grouped in consecutive and intelligible order.