“Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O sea!But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.”Tennyson.
“Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O sea!But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.”Tennyson.
“Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O sea!But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.”Tennyson.
Padua and Venice Railway—Venice: Piazza and Church of S. Mark—Torcello—The Lagoon—Murano—Sta. Maria dei Frari—SS. Giovanni e Paolo—Sta. Maria dell’ Orto—Other Churches—Domestic Architecture—Fondaco de’ Turchi—Other Byzantine Palaces—The Ducal Palace—Foscari Palace—Ca’ d’Oro—Other Gothic Palaces—Balconies—Venetian Architecture—A Festival—Paintings.
Padua and Venice Railway—Venice: Piazza and Church of S. Mark—Torcello—The Lagoon—Murano—Sta. Maria dei Frari—SS. Giovanni e Paolo—Sta. Maria dell’ Orto—Other Churches—Domestic Architecture—Fondaco de’ Turchi—Other Byzantine Palaces—The Ducal Palace—Foscari Palace—Ca’ d’Oro—Other Gothic Palaces—Balconies—Venetian Architecture—A Festival—Paintings.
LITTLEis to be seen as one leaves Padua to distinguish the city at all vividly, save the oriental-looking cupolas of Sant’ Antonio, and the great roof of the Sala della Ragione, looking like the inverted hull of some great ship, with its convex sides towering up above the otherwise not remarkable-looking city.
And now our destination was Venice, and anxiously we looked out ever and anon, impatient, long before the time, to see the tall outline of S. Mark’s campanile against the horizon. The view was too contracted to be really beautiful; on each side of the railway rank and luxuriant hedges of acacia sprouted their tall branches above the carriages, and beyond them might be seen plantations of maize, flax, and other crops, all remarkable for their prodigious growth and size, and watered by countless small canals, and here and there withturgid, muddy-looking streams rushing on from the mountains to discharge themselves into the Adriatic, and gliding between great artificial banks which gave them the appearance rather of large canals than rivers. Nothing breaks the dead monotony of the scene, for it is misty, and the Tyrolese Alps, which ought to show their jagged peaks to the north, are invisible. The stations follow each other in quick succession, and at each stands some diligence or carriage whose ingrained panoply of white dust, added to that which rises here and there white and cloud-like in the dry glare of the Italian sun which beams overhead, makes one feel grateful that—however unpoetical such a mode of approach may be—a railroad carries us to Venice. Nor is such a country as this along which one passes from Padua to Venice without its moral. I suppose there is nothing more certain than that, ordinarily, the appreciation of high art, and success in its practice, have never been so marked in countries whose natural features are lovely as in those in which the devoutest student of nature’s beauties can see nothing to admire or love. So Venice, surrounded by waters, and then by a country which would be entirely tame and uninteresting, were it not for the exquisite distant views of the Friulan Alps, fell back on her own resources, and provided herself with that substitute for the loveliness of nature which—alone of man’s works—the loveliness of beautiful art can be. And perhaps, it is better for the traveller, that no interest should be felt save in the end of the journey, where the journey has so brave an end!
At last, however, the broad watery level of the Lagoon is reached; Venice rises out of the water at a distance of some two miles; and then across an almost endless bridge the railway takes us into the outskirts of the city; a confused idea of steeples and domes is all that is obtained, and one finds oneself going through that most painful of processes toan excitable man, the usual examination of luggage; at last, however, we are outside the station, the Grand Canal lies before us, and we are vehemently urged to get at once into an omnibus-gondola. But no, this is too absurd a bathos for our first act on entering Venice, and we step therefore into a private gondola, and, propelled rapidly and lightly over the still, unruffled water, sink at once into that dreamy kind of happiness which of all conveyances in the world the gondola is best calculated to encourage. A short reach of the Grand Canal is soon passed, and then, with the picturesque cry of warning, “Ah, stalì!” we turn sharply into a narrow canal to the right, and, shooting down the tortuous street of water, presently cross the Grand Canal again midway between the Rialto and the Foscari palace, dive into another canal still narrower than the former, and at last, after frequent glimpses of mediæval houses and palaces, find ourselves safely housed at our hotel close to the Grand Canal, and within two or three minutes’ walk of the Piazza San Marco.
We stopped but a short time here, so impatient were we to obtain our first glimpse of the church and palace of S. Mark, to which Venice owes so much of her fame. We passed along some narrow winding alleys, lined on either side with open shops, on the counters of which lie exposed for sale not over dainty-looking edibles, and in whose dim interiors little light of day seems ever to enter to help the busy workmen who may always be seen there plying their trade; and then, going under an archway crowded with busy folk in rather noisy consultation, we found ourselves, in four or five minutes, standing under the arcade at the upper end of the great Piazza San Marco. Long lines of regular architecture, arcaded below, heavy with cornices and elaborated windows above, carry the eye not unpleasantly down to the lower end of the piazza, at the right-hand angle of which towers up intothe air a vast campanile, simple and unbroken in its outline, without visible window or any buttress-like projection, until its upper stage, where it has a very simple open arcaded belfry, capped with a pyramidal roof; and then across nearly the whole width of the piazza, and partly concealed by the curiously irregular position of its campanile, stretches the low singular and Eastern-looking church of S. Mark. Before it rise the masts from which of yore hung waving in the wind the banners of the old Venetian state, and crowds of pigeons, fed here by civic liberality, cover the pavement with their pleasant fluttering presence. The charm of the west front is certainly most indescribable; and I confess to feeling a doubt, as I looked at it, whether it was not more akin to some fairy-like vision, such as one might see in dreams, than to any real and substantial erection of stone and mortar; for, indeed, to a mind educated in and accustomed to the traditions of northern Gothic, there is something so veryoutréin the whole idea, something so startling in its novelty, that it is hard at first to know whether to admire or not. It is far from imposing in size, but yet, as it is looked at more and more carefully, it grows much and rapidly on one’s love, and at last imprints itself on the mind as a real work of art of a very beautiful and unusual kind, wrought out with an abundance of beautiful detail, but in such a way as to prevent its being possible that it could ever be absolutely reproduced or taken as a model.
As you pace down the broad level space of the Piazza, the feeling of the strangeness of the whole scene increases. There are of course no horses, and no vehicles of any kind; it is a large square in which all the space is footpath, and on which, in addition to the many men who pace it rapidly with busy brow, or idly lounge whilst enjoying the weather and the place, hundreds of pigeons are constantly fluttering or walking about in quiet confidence, sure that they will not bemolested by any one. And then, as one draws near to the church, it is easy to understand rather better than at first in what its real charm lies; this is no doubt before anything else in its beautiful colour; the whole front is shafted to a greater extent than almost any building I know, the shafts all rather heavy, but of marble of the richest kind; the groining of the seven entrance arches is filled with mosaics, and the walls are encrusted everywhere with marble. Instead of ordinary gables masking the roof, the front is finished with great ogee gables most extravagantly crocketed, and obviously a modern alteration of the original Romanesque finish; behind these a cluster of fourteenth-century cupolas completes the view. Of the seven arches which compose the façade, four have doorways; the outer arches on either side are very narrow, and answer in width to the kind of cloister which masks the church on the south, west, and north sides; and the central arch is much wider and loftier than the others, rising indeed so high as to break through the line of balustrading which runs across the front just above the other arches.
Within this central arch is a grand doorway, the stilted semicircular arch of which is of three orders, the central plain, the others covered with carvings. The piers supporting the main arches have tiers of shafts in two heights; the lower tier corresponding in height with those of the doors pierced within the arches, and the others, which are smaller in diameter, and more numerous than those which support them, rising to the springing-line of the main arches. The side doorways have very Eastern-looking arches, the semi-circular line being carried on nearly to the centre, and then turned up into an ogee. These and some other portions as, e.g., the windows over two of the doors, and the pinnacles between the gables, belong to the fourteenth century, whilst the finish of the gables themselves—great ogee crocketed gables with figures at the apex of each—is probably of thefifteenth century. All these archways open into the cloister, or narthex already mentioned. Here, where the roofs still glow with the most precious early mosaics, and the walls with marble, either used as inlays or for shafts, one gets a first and not unworthy hint of the beauty which awaits one in the interior.
And then, on entering the nave, the deep tones of an organ are heard reverberating through the old building; many people kneel devoutly at their prayers around us; the hot glare of the sun has gone, and in its place a cool, quiet, dim light reveals the whole magnificence of the design. It is quite in vain to describe this in formal architectural terms. The colour is so magnificent that one troubles oneself but little about the architecture, and thinks only of gazing upon the expanse of gold and deep richly-tinted mosaic all harmonized together into one glorious whole. The mosaics commence throughout the church at the level of the crown of the main arches dividing the nave from the aisles, and are continued up the remainder of the wall and into the domes; even the angles or arrises of the walls and arches are covered with gold mosaic; so that all architectural lines of moulding are entirely lost, and nothing but a soft swelling and undulating sea of colour is perceived. There is nothing violent or garish in all this profuse decoration. The gold mosaic, used as it always is in early works, set irregularly in, and surrounded by a white line or joint of plaster, is never conspicuously bright; the drawing of the figures and subjects may be criticized, but at any rate it is always direct, simple, and intelligible, and the colours of the draperies bright and harmonious, whilst the arcading and wall-lining which fills the lower part of the walls is all of marble, which has now a rich, warm, but quiet tint, singularly suitable as a base to the more gorgeous colouring of the upper part of the walls and domes.
Altogether this is a church beyond most others suggestive of worship. Other churches sometimes suggest the same feeling either by enormous size or vast height. At Köln or Milan man feels so small and so contemptible in comparison with the vastness of his own work that he is subdued in spite of himself. In countless other great Gothic minsters the same feeling is produced. But at S. Mark’s it is produced in an intensified degree, and by a building the scale of which is in every way small, if not almost insignificant. There is no long vista of arches, no complicated perspective, and no vast height to awe the beholder, yet the mystery of colour does for it even more than the mystery of size does for Köln or Beauvais, Milan, Toledo, or Bourges. It is, therefore, emphatically a church for worship, one in which even the most careless treads with hushed footstep and bated breath, and where, in spite of crowds, an aweful silence seems always to reign supreme save when it is broken by the religious sound of the services of the church.
The ground plan is no doubt known to most of my readers. It is a typical example of the Greek or Eastern church as distinguished from the Romanesque, a cross whose arms are not far from equal, covered by a series of cupolas, one in the centre, one to each of the three eastern arms, and two to the western—with aisles to the nave and choir, and a cloister round the north, west, and south sides of the nave, of which the two former are the porches, and the latter the baptistery of the church.[29]
Under the eastern limb of the cross is a crypt, which has in recent years been opened and drained, and is now always open to inspection. This is divided under the choir intofive aisles in width by a multitude of small shafts carrying quadripartite vaults, and in the centre of which just under the choir altar, is the shrine of S. Mark. Another apse is formed under the south aisle of the choir, and under the north aisle is a corresponding crypt save that there is no apse to it. Much modernized as this has been in the course of repair, and entirely devoid of all colour or decoration as it is, it is still full of character, and adds largely to the interest of the church.
GROUND PLAN—S. MARK, VENICE.GROUND PLAN—S. MARK, VENICE.
If we return to the nave, we shall find that it is not only in general effect it is so very worthy of admiration; it still retains much of its old furniture, and in spite of a few modern mosaics, and one or two more modern altars, is less altered in its general effect since the fourteenth centurythan any great church that I have ever seen. The screen between the nave and choir with the ambons on either side of it first deserve notice. The screen is mainly a work ofA. D.1394.[30]It consists of a series of columns carrying a flat lintel or cornice on the top of which is a row of extremely good statues of the apostles. They have that grand sweep of the figure which one knows so well in early fourteenth century work in France, and are free from the somewhat heavy and clumsy treatment which marks so much of the work of the Pisani. The screen has been raised on the base of the older Byzantine screen, which consisted of a simple continuous arcade now nearly hidden by the more modern steps to the choir. The ambons are probably of the same age as this older screen; the gospel ambon being of two stages in height, with a good staircase to it from the choir aisle, that for the epistle being comparatively low and simple, but still large enough to contain two or three modern pulpits. The screens to the choir aisles are of the same sort as the main screen, but are placed one bay to the east of it. They are all three interesting as showing that a Gothic architect could use with good effect a common Classic arrangement, and indeed lend fresh grace to it by the detail of the sculpture and inlaying with which he adorned it.
Dimly seen from the nave through the Rood-screen, but far more interesting than even it, is the great baldacchin or canopy over the altar in the choir. Here we have the simplest form—four columns carrying round arches and the wall above them finished with a plain horizontal capping. The arches may be modern; though if they are so, they are copied from the old, as is evidenced by the painting at the back of the Pala d’Oro, which shows the placing of the shrine of S. Mark under a similar baldacchin; but the groining isold, and the alabaster columns are of extreme interest, being covered all over with most elaborate sculptures of Scripture subjects. The subjects in the north-east column give the history of Joachim and Anna, and the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the north-west has the nativity of Our Lord, the marriage in Cana, &c.; the south-west subjects from the Passion; and the south-east the miracles of Our Lord. Few modes of decorating an altar are altogether so fitting and beautiful as this, and I hope the day is not far distant when we shall see many of our English altars standing under canopies of the same sort. St. Paul’s cathedral may well prepare the way for us in this, by reviving what was usually accepted as the best kind of reredos by our English church-builders in the eighteenth century.
Here, too, is a brass eagle so like one of our own, that one might almost give it credit for coming from an English smith or founder.
Returning to the nave, one finds nothing more worthy of admiration than another smaller baldachin over an altar between it and the north aisle. This is hexagonal, carried on shafts with stilted arches and roofed with a steep roof. Its dimensions render a small altar a necessity—a matter of common occurrence in old examples. Another reredos and altar in a chapel at the north end of the north transept, dating from 1430, may also be noticed. Here the altar is panelled in front and carved with two angels censing a cross, and low open screens with arcades carried on shafts are placed a few inches from the ends of the altar. The footpace is not carried round the altar, so that it can only be approached from the front.
Of another sort of furniture—monuments of the dead—S. Mark’s has, as might be expected, a good many examples. The earliest are the probably Roman sarcophagi,[31]which liein the outer aisle or cloister right and left of the entrance; the next, near them,[32]where the sarcophagus is still retained, but adorned with Christian emblems and sculpture; and of considerably later date, and much more artistic interest, are the tombs of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, and of Sant’Isidoro. Here the sarcophagus is surmounted by a canopy, reverent angels stand on either side drawing back partially the curtains from the front of the effigy, and in the centre of the tomb is a bas-relief of the Madonna, and at the ends the Annunciation, S. Gabriel on one side, the B. V. Mary at the other. This is the type of monumental memorial on which so much of the time of Venetian sculptors seems to have been spent. Here, indeed, and on the very similar figures of the Virgin on so many of the tympana of doorways throughout the city, we have to study the sculptor’s art from the time of the Byzantine carvers who wrought the still numerous early capitals, until the artist of the Ducal Palace came to revive the art with his original and splendid series of capitals.
But of all the features of this grand church, that which next to the gorgeous colour of the walls most attracted me was the wild beauty of the pavement. I know not what other word to use which quite describes the effect it produces. It is throughout arranged in the patterns common in most Opus Alexandrinum, but instead of being laid level and even, it swells up and down as though its surface were the petrified waves of the sea, on which those who embark in the ship of the church may kneel in prayer with safety, the undulating surface serving only to remind them of the stormy sea of life, and of the sea actually washing the walls of the streets and houses throughout their city. It cannot be supposed that this undulation is accidental, for had it been the consequence of a settlement of the ground we should see some marks of it in the crypt and in the walls, and sometokens of disruption in the pavement itself. And the corresponding example of Sta. Sofia, Constantinople, where we have it on record that there was an intentional symbolism in just such a floor, is conclusive as to the intention of its imitators here.
Of the mosaics with which the church is richly adorned I cannot pretend to give a complete account. They deserve a volume to themselves. As regards choice of subjects, it is noticeable that the most prominent figure is that of Our Lord, who is seated and surrounded by prophets. Below are the emblems of the four Evangelists, and the four rivers of Paradise. Whilst again in the west dome He is surrounded by the apostles and the Evangelists, and everywhere the general scheme is a lesson to those who now-a-days too often forget the relative importance or the proper order and arrangement of the divine story in the schemes they adopt for stained glass and mural decoration. As regards colour, I need not repeat what I have already said; but it may be observed that wherever modern mosaics have taken the place of old ones there at once we see a complete collapse, and a loss of all good effect. This is mainly owing, beyond doubt, to the attempt which their designers made to produce the effect of pictures, instead of thinking first and mainly of the decorative effect of their work on the building. But at the same time it is obvious that their eyes had lost all feeling for good colour, and that in attempting to draw with a certain amount of academical accuracy, they had equally lost all sense of the prime necessity in such works of simplicity of arrangement, and directness in the telling of their story. There is no part of the church in which some of the best of this sort of decoration can be studied with more ease and advantage than in the cloister on the north side of the nave. Here the mosaics are so near the eye, and the details of design and colour so fine that one is never tired of admiring them.
I never leave S. Mark’s without taking one look at least at the four bronze horses, which, placed as they are on columns high above the ground, add so much to the strange character of the west front, and are in themselves such exquisite examples of their kind. Strange ornaments these for the façade of the chief church of a city where horses’ feet have hardly ever trod! Equally strange, if you are to have horses in such a position at all, is the way in which these are supported. They stand balancing themselves nicely on the caps of small columns. Extremes meet; and I am not so sure but that this extraordinary arrangement is not better than that which is usually adopted. If horses are to be supported above the ground, they may almost as well be so in this way as on the ordinary pedestal, which looks equally unsafe if the bronze is instinct with life. These horses were brought from Constantinople after the fourth Crusade, circa 1203. They are of admirable character, and are probably of Greek workmanship. With every other moveable thing worth moving, they were taken to Paris, and returned after the Peace in 1815.
There is a picture in the Accademia by Gentile Bellini, which ought to be looked at after a visit to S. Mark’s. In it we see the church much as it is at present; but an enormous procession which winds its tortuous way about the piazza, defiles before houses every one of which seems to be ancient, and I never look at the now uninteresting lines of houses which surround it without wishing for the resuscitation of the buildings which G. Bellini saw and drew.
We went into the treasury to see the treasures and plate belonging to the church, but I was much disappointed to find that, in an artistic point of view, there was really very little to admire, or else what was admirable was not shewn. The treasury is a dark room lighted up by a few wax candles, but so badly that it was difficult to see at all satisfactorily.
I was unable to obtain a sight of the Pala d’Oro, as the altar-piece behind the high altar is called; it is only uncovered on feast days, and I have never happened to be in Venice when it was visible. I was very anxious to have seen it, as it is a most magnificent piece of workmanship in gold and enamel. It was executed in Constantinople, and brought to Venice in 1102. Some Italian writers have claimed it for their forefathers as an Italian work; but the documentary evidence of its Eastern origin is supported by the details of the design and execution of the earliest portions of the work. M. Durand has published a very careful description of it in the ‘Annales Archéologiques,’ vol. xx. He gives a list of no less than one hundred and sixty-nine panels or figures, in a considerable number of which the accompanying inscriptions are in Greek characters. The Pala was “restored” in the thirteenth century and again in the fourteenth, when no doubt considerable additions were made to it. The painting at the back has fourteen subjects on a gold ground, and is dated 1345.
Over and over again when at Venice must one go into S. Mark’s, not to criticize but to admire; and if ever in any building in which the main object is the study of art, assuredly here one must go for worship also. I think I never saw an interior so thoroughly religious and religion-inspiring as this, and it is well, therefore, not lightly to pass it by as useless for our general purposes. It seems to shew, as strongly as any one example can, how much awefulness and grandeur of character even a small building may attain to by the lavish expenditure of art and precious materials throughout its fabric; for it is to this that S. Mark’s owes its grandeur, and to this only. There is nothing imposing either in its size or in its architecture; on the contrary, they appear to me to be both moderate, and the former rather mean; and yet this grand display of mosaics upon a gold ground makes thebuilding appear to be both larger and better than it is, and fully atones for all other defects. Could we but place one of our cold, bare places of worship by the side of S. Mark’s, and let the development of Christian art in the construction of the fabric be ten times as great in our Northern church as in the Venetian, we may yet rest assured that every religious mind would turn at once to the latter, and scarce deign to think of the former as a place of worship at all. If this is so, does it not point most forcibly to the absolute necessity for the introduction of more colour in the interior of our buildings, either in their construction, or afterwards by the hand of the painter? And architects must remember that this ought all to be within their province as directors or designers, and therefore that they must not, as now, venture to design cold shells which may or may not afterwards receive these necessary and indispensable decorations, but from the very first must view them as part and parcel of the work in which they are personally concerned; and then, but not till then, shall we see a satisfactory school of architects in England.
The interest of S. Mark’s is not, however, only religious and artistic; on other grounds it is certainly one of the buildings most worthy of study in all Europe. Its architecture is purely Byzantine; and whether its design was derived from Constantinople or from Alexandria, it presents us with an almost unique example of the architecture of the Eastern church transplanted almost without alteration to the domains of the Western. Nor is this all. It played no small part in modifying the distinctly Roman influence by which otherwise the whole of Northern Europe would have been affected. When we see a church so far from S. Mark’s as that of S. Front at Périgueux modelled after it, and in its turn influencing a vast number of churches in that and the neighbouring districts, we may realize what S. Mark’s did towards thedevelopment of Romanesque into new forms and combinations, and may then value properly every portion of its fabric. Byzantine architecture was the development of Greek art in the hands of the then vigorous and active Eastern Church. It is not a direct reproduction therefore of Classic art which is to be seen in S. Mark’s, but one stage of a development the influence of which—partly owing to the effect of commerce, partly to her isolation—was largely felt, down to the very last days of active Venetian artistic life. This has been well condensed in a short sentence by Mr. Ruskin. “All European architecture,” he says, “good and bad, old and new, is derived from Greece through Rome, and coloured and perfected from the East. The Doric and Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque buildings—Norman, Lombard, Byzantine; the other of all Gothic—Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. The old Greeks gave the shaft, Rome gave the arch. The Arabs pointed and foliated the arch.” But in the colouring and perfecting the church of S. Mark had the lion’s share, just as in the ground-plan it is to Venice and the East that we owe the cruciform arrangement of so many of our buildings, instead of the basilican form to which we might otherwise have been condemned.
There is another respect in which S. Mark’s is extremely Eastern. This is in the almost entire absence of figure-sculpture in its original construction. The subjects and figures on the columns of the baldachin are too delicate to be noticed from a distance, and it was not untilA.D.1394 that the choir-screen was introduced, with figures of the Apostles on either side of the rood, erected no doubt to supply a want which had been long felt before it was gratified. At the same time figures were added in niches between the gables of the exterior, but even now they form a small and inconsiderable part of the decoration of the church.
I have lingered on paper as I did in reality about S.Mark’s; but if we wish to see Venice we must tear ourselves away from it. We will go out by the baptistery, and here we are at once on the Piazzetta, the noble façade of the Ducal Palace on one side, and a great work of Sansovino’s—the library of S. Mark—on the other; at the end of the Piazzetta are two monolithic granite columns, one of which bears the lion of S. Mark, the other the figure of the ancient patron saint of Venice, S. Theodore; between them is seen the dark-blue line of the sea rippled into a thousand twinkling waves, and beyond this the Isola San Giorgio, remarkable for one of Palladio’s churches—a building, as I think, irredeemably ugly, but, nevertheless, much admired by many. If you walk down to the strand, where a hundred gondolas wait for hire—some black and funereal-like, others dressed up with gay awnings, and all of them proud and swan-like with their bright steel prows rising lightly and high out of the water—and then, turning round, look first down the Riva dei Schiavoni, towards the sea, taking in the long sea-front of the Ducal Palace, then the narrow gap bridged by the famous Bridge of Sighs, and on again, noting bridge after bridge, and the Gothic palace now turned into the Hôtel Danieli, and then on to the promontory running out towards the Adriatic, occupied by the Public Gardens and planted with the only trees that Venice boasts—how lovely is the scene! or if, looking back up the Piazzetta to S. Mark’s, noting the tall campanile and the quaint clock and clock-tower beyond, and the domes and turrets, niches and figures, which crown the church, how much more vividly does it not impress the mind!
Venice is full to excess of striking pictures, and it would be endless to say in how very many respects it has a character of its own which can never be forgotten. The strange silence of its watery streets, broken only by the cry of the gondolier or the delicate plash of his oar in the water, is not the least impressive thing to the stranger; and when, after tryingin vain to thread on foot the labyrinth of passages which confuse him irrecoverably in a few minutes, he commits himself to the dark recesses of a gondola, how delightful is the quiet, smooth, and yet rapid way in which, without more labour than is necessary in looking about, he finds himself now following the narrow winding of some small canal, awakening the echoes between the high walls of palaces or warehouses on either side of the way, or anon, upon turning with a graceful sweep into the smooth broad reach of the Grand Canal, making his gondolier move gently and slowly, as one by one the great palaces which grace its banks and form its retaining walls are carefully scanned, whilst the various and ever-changing perspective of the whole is dwelt upon, to be remembered afterwards with such intense pleasure!
From S. Mark’s I remember trying to find my way to San Stefano; and, taking a map of Venice, and calculating upon the orientation of the churches being fairly correct, I flattered myself that I might without difficulty make my way: the result was simply that for half an hour I was threading the mazes of all the passages around the church, and at last reached it only by chance; and I found afterwards that it would not at all do to take the churches as marking the cardinal points of the compass, for, as may be seen from the campanile of S. Mark, there are scarcely two churches in the city exactly alike in their orientation.
But pleasant as it is to recall one’s recollections of highways and byways in Venice, I think, if we wish to understand her architecture thoroughly, we shall do well first of all to make a pilgrimage to Torcello, that sad and weird cathedral, standing forlorn and deserted on a wretched island in the lagoon, wherein we see the handiwork of the earliest Venetians, and the prototype of much of the later work in Venice itself. The story of Torcello has been told often—by no one with more feeling or more pathos than byMr. Ruskin, and I need not attempt to repeat it. Suffice it to say that aboutA.D.641 the church was first built, whilst in 864 it was restored, and being nearly decayed by age, was again most studiously repaired in 1008;[33]whilst in 1361, according to the testimony of Cornaro,[34]there were still standing on the same island divers churches (forty-two in number) adorned with columns of pietra dura, and with mosaics. Strange indeed is the difference here between then and now!
My first visit to Torcello was sad and sombre enough to begin with. We started early from Venice in a thick mist, making our way first to the cemetery, where there is a good tall campanile, then to Murano, and through its shabby water streets, passing the end of San Donato (which shall be described later), and then on through long canals edged on either side by miles of green mud, and thronged with market boats and noisy boatmen. Here and there across the lagoon we saw a tall campanile marking the position of each settlement or island in this waste of sea and mud, and, last of all, that of the cathedral of Torcello, some five minutes’ walk among decaying walls and unmown grass from the half-ruined landing-place to which our gondolier tied his boat. All that remains of the city is before us in small compass. On the left a fourteenth-century building, said to have been the Palazzo Publico; in front a stone seat or throne in the centre of what was once the market-place; on the right, the Byzantine church of Sta. Fosca; and beyond, and connected with Sta. Fosca by a cloister, the modernized-looking cathedral, plain, bare, and uninteresting on the outside, with a detached campanile near the east end. This is all Torcello has to shew; but, forlorn and decayed as everything in the place is, it is precious in the highest degree to the architectwho cares about the growth of his art. The cathedral is full of interest, though much damaged by extensive repairs, carried on in a reckless mood by the Austrians, not long before they lost Venetia, when new roofs were put on, and the mosaics were so much damaged that I remember collecting a handful of fragments from a barrow of rubbish before it was shot into the canal; at the same time a scaffold was erected for a proposed restoration of the great western mosaic which, though threatened and indeed commenced in 1857, had not in 1872 been proceeded with. The exterior has been completely modernized. In plan the cathedral consists of three parallel naves of ten bays, all finished with apses. The columns dividing the nave from the aisles are of veined marble, with capitals of exquisite workmanship, founded, indeed, on Corinthian examples, but modified by Byzantine influence and by study of nature. The arches are stilted and high; above them is a small clerestory of very simple windows. The central apse retains its raised rows of seats, though their brickwork alone is left; the throne for the bishop is placed in the centre, and retains some of its marble inlay. Under this raised east end a descending passage is formed, connecting the two smaller apses, and with a small apse formed in the thickness of the east wall opening into it. Three bays of the church are given to the choir, which is fenced round with richly sculptured marble screens. On the west the screen has marble columns carrying a flat entablature, and below them is a solid portion some four feet high covered with panels of flat sculpture, one having two peacocks drinking out of the same vase, another two lions at the foot of a branching tree, and another a complicated interlacing pattern of foliage. Such a screen is the obvious prototype of that in S. Mark’s, and the sculptures with which it is adorned are evidently the work of some early Byzantine workman—whether brought from Aquileja from
22. DUOMO. TORCELLO. p. 168.22. DUOMO. TORCELLO.p. 168.
the ruins created by Attila’s invasion, or wrought on the spot, I cannot say, but of a character which we still see in some of the nearly corresponding screens in the existing cathedral of Aquileja. North-west of this rood-screen stands the marble ambon—a pulpit of two divisions, one (circular) facing south, the other (square) facing west. This and the staircase leading to it are full of delicate and good carved work. The arrangement has an absurd likeness to many a modern English scheme of pulpit and reading pew, and there is certainly force in an observation which Mr. Webb makes,[35]that such an arrangement would never have been thought of, unless the Gospel was to be understood by the people. Now they do not understand it, it is no longer said from an ambon, and ambons seem to be much less useful to Romans than rood-screens are to us!
The screens north and south of the choir do not seem to be so old as the other, and are simple low screens.
In the mosaics of the apse and western wall we have, perhaps, the finest examples of Venetian mosaics. The apse is lined with slabs of veined marble below, and has above a mosaic of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Our Lord and the twelve Apostles, and the patron of the church, S. Heliodorus. The whole west wall is covered with a grand mosaic of the Crucifixion at the top, the Descent into Hell under it, and a Last Judgment at the base, which is carried down on each side of the west door, in the tympanum of which is a half figure of Our Lady. A mosaic at the end of the south aisle has Our Lord with SS. Michael and Gabriel, and below them S. Gregory, S. Martin, S. Ambrose, and S. Austin.[36]Save wherethese mosaics occur, the walls have been persistently whitewashed, so that the appearance of the church is now far from attractive. It is not the less of great interest, as an example of a very early church founded on a Roman basilica, but with Byzantine influence most conspicuous in the sculpture of its ornaments. Here, as in S. Mark’s, the floor is paved with Opus Alexandrinum, of which, in spite of damage done during the late repairs, it is a fine example. There is nothing to admire on the exterior, though the large stone shutters to the windows—single slabs of stone about four inches thick, working on stone pivots—have a most primitive air. The campanile has not much to distinguish it from others, but the top affords an interesting view of the lagoon and the sea with Venice in the distance, and the Alps of Friuli far away to the north.
A few yards through the cloister bring us to the church of Sta. Fosca. Here by the side of the Romanesque we have a capital example of a Byzantine plan, which seems to me to be of the greatest value in connection with the whole of the round-arched palaces of Venice of which so many remains still exist. Sta. Fosca is a square church with small projections on the north, south, and west sides, and a deeper projection for the altar on the east. There are three eastern apses, and the western side is screened by an open cloister, which is octagonal in plan. The square centre is domed on very simple pendentives, and the capitals are similar in character to those in the cathedral. The best detail is to be seen outside the east end, where there is some good arcading and an enriched band of chevron ornament, formed by recessing the brickwork, and a mixture of red and buff brickwork, which is very effective.
The last time I was here, I found myself, in the middle of making a sketch of the west front of Sta. Fosca, suddenly struck by the strange likeness of its octagonal cloister to themost typical elevations of the Byzantine palaces in Venice. These always have a centre and wings divided by piers; and whilst the arches in the centre are of ordinary proportions, those in the wings are narrow and considerably stilted. In Sta. Fosca precisely the same effect is produced by the elevation of the three sides of the octagonal cloister, two of them being reduced in width and seeming to have narrow stilted arches, owing to their being canted and not seen in true elevation. I confess I could hardly help thinking that here I saw the accidental germ of an arrangement which, commenced in Romanesque or Byzantine buildings, was imitated in many of the finest of the Gothic palaces, and was revived with invariable persistency in the Renaissance.
EAST END—STA. FOSCA, TORCELLO.EAST END—STA. FOSCA, TORCELLO.
The return to Venice was more pleasant than the journey out had been. The water had risen enough to cover themud everywhere, and now a vast expanse of apparent sea was lighted up by the hot sun, and in the far-off distance the horizon was lined with the long picturesque range of the Alps, tender and transparent in hue, and sweet reminders to the dwellers on this monotonous lagoon of the world which lay outside their boundaries in the far north. On the road we stopped at Mazzorbo, where there is a dated example of a Gothic doorway. This has a square-headed opening, and above this an ogee canopy or label over a figure of Our Lord, and some kneeling figures. The date inscribed on it isA.D.1368.
Farther on Murano is passed, and a halt made for a visit to the church of San Donato—once a building of the highest interest and well known to all readers of Mr. Ruskin’s books. Unfortunately my first visit to this church was after it had been in part “restored,” in the largest and worst sense of the word. The old brickwork was being renewed, plastered, and painted up, till most of its interest had vanished; and now, I fear, only those who saw San Donato some ten years ago can have any idea of its architectural value and interest. This was chiefly centred in the east front, where there is a central apse with a lean-to end to the aisle on either side. The wall is divided into two stages, by a bold string-course and double line of chevrons formed by recessing the brickwork and inserting panels of coloured and carved white marble. The lower stage is arcaded mainly in red brick, whilst the upper has a wall deeply recessed behind arcades under the eaves, with delicate balustrades between the columns which carry the arcades. This upper part of the building is mainly of buff-coloured bricks, with thin lines of red to mark the pattern of arches, and it is curious that the light bricks are much larger than the red.[37]The pavements here are veryfine examples of Opus Alexandrinum, with a more than usual proportion of black marble, and there is a grand mosaic in the apse, of the B. V. Mary and Our Lord on a gold ground.
One or two Gothic houses in semi-ruinous condition, and a very fine fragment of late Byzantine work quite in ruins—the Palazzo da Mula—remain in Murano, but of these there is such good store in Venice itself that we may pass them by.
Most visitors, I suppose, go to Murano in order to visit Dr. Salviati’s glass and mosaic manufactory. He has succeeded in reproducing a material quite equal to that used in the old mosaics. Still more difficult feat—he has succeeded also in making glass so like the old Venetian glass in colour, texture, and design, as to puzzle all ordinary judges. I cannot sufficiently admire or praise the singular power which Dr. Salviati has shewn in the education of his men. A party of six or eight made for me before my eyes, in a few minutes, a tall, delicate, and richly adorned goblet, in which every part was done by eye and fancy; no modern accuracy was attempted, and the result was a thoroughly beautiful and artistic work. All artists know how difficult it is to get a workman nowadays out of the hard mechanical groove of dull uniformity, and Dr. Salviati’s success is an encouragement to all of us when we are tempted to despair of making the attempt.
From Murano a few minutes take us again into the watery streets of Venice. We have now seen the two buildings which ought first of all to be studied—Torcello and S. Mark’s, and in them we have the key to everything that follows. The Venetians commenced in their earliest buildings with works which shewed but little original invention or power. It was their fortune to have, by reason of their situation and their commerce, a great connection with the East. They received, therefore, a great impetus at the first from Byzantine art. Nowhere in Europe was so great an influenceof the kind exerted; and to us, whose early architecture was almost entirely Romanesque in its origin, it has a special interest and novelty. But if the early Venetians copied Byzantine models, employed Byzantine workmen, and thought rather more of the beautiful colours for which their Eastern acquaintances gave them a taste than did their neighbours on the mainland, it must be frankly conceded that in later times they developed a very original form of Gothic out of these very materials, and owed comparatively little to any external aid in their great works of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The first business of a tourist in Venice is to secure a gondolier with intelligence enough to understand his proclivities, and patience enough to humour them. I have more than once or twice had to thank my gondolier for shewing me old work which otherwise I should never have seen, and I am grateful accordingly. I am grateful, too, whenever I think of a gondola, for the most luxurious machine for sketching from which has ever been constructed; and the more so, when I recollect how for an hour at a time I have been persecuted in most Italian towns by all the idlest, dirtiest, and worst-behaved people of the place whilst I have made my sketches of their buildings. In a gondola in Venice one knows no such troubles, and the sketcher’s life, as long as he can work in it, is as happy and undisturbedly serene as is possible. But no artist must suppose that everything worth seeing can be seen from the water: a few walks will convince him that, in the narrowcallias well as on the water-side, much that is interesting is to be found; and when he has studied Venice both by boat and by pavement, he will find, as I do, that the subject is too large for a chapter, and requires rather a volume for its thorough elucidation.
The buildings of Venice divide themselves into two great classes—the churches and the civil buildings; of these theformer is the smaller and the less interesting class. But as we have already seen at S. Mark’s and Torcello the earliest examples of the churches, it will be best to say all that has to be said about them here, and to take the palaces and houses by themselves afterwards.
We have seen that S. Mark’s was built in the eleventh and twelfth, and largely altered in the fourteenth century. Between these two periods little if anything was done in church-building in Venice; or if it was, it has disappeared. Just as in Germany, the thirteenth century seems hardly to have existed for Venice, and we go at a bound from the simple nervous round-arched work of S. Mark’s to the here somewhat poor and tasteless churches of the fourteenth century. One or two small campanili—San Polo, San Samuele, and San Barnaba are the best—remain to show what the size and character of the earlier work were. They have plain arcades in the walls, rising from the ground to the belfry, and this has generally windows of two or three lights carried on shafts. At San Barnaba[38]a spire with parapets and pinnacles was added to such a steeple in the fourteenth century, the spire being circular in plan and built of round-ended bricks. San Paterniano has an hexagonal brick tower with two light belfry windows, also of Romanesque character. The whole of these works are of brick, and usually the walls batter outward towards the base. In this respect, as in the general design, the great tower of S. Mark’s follows those early examples, as also in its means of access to the top, which is a continuous slope in the thickness of the wall in place of the newel staircase in use all over the North of Europe. Finally, all these older works are very small and modest in scale and design.
Let us now give up all thought of early works, and seewhat the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did for Venice in the way of churches. Taking them in their order of merit, we will go first to the Frari, the church of the Franciscans, thence to SS. Giovanni e Paolo, that of the Dominicans, to the Madonna dell’ Orto, San Stefano, the desecrated church of the Convent of La Carità, now forming part of the Accademia, San Gregorio, Santa Zaccaria, San Giacomo del Rialto, and some smaller fragments.
I must confess that on the whole, in spite of the grand size of some of them, I was rather disappointed on first seeing these buildings. One cannot but be impressed with the magnificent size of such a church as the Frari, with its many interesting details, and its monuments and woodwork. But in spite of all this, there is something wanting. I had not expected larger churches, but I had imagined that their style would be more pure, and at the same time more unlike what I was accustomed to elsewhere. The impression they left on my mind was decidedly that they were very inferior in almost every respect to churches of the same size and degree of ornament in the North of Europe, whilst in scarcely any point did they seem to me to have features which could with any advantage be imitated by us. I had allowed myself to expect a very different result, and was proportionately disappointed. There is no church in Venice—(in what I am now saying I mean always to except S. Mark’s)—comparable either to Sta. Anastasia or to the cathedral at Verona in the interior; and the exteriors, though fine as examples of the bold use of brick, are nevertheless not first-rate, nor at all superior to what one sees elsewhere.
Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari ought first to be described, as being certainly the finest of its class. The first stone is said to have been laid on April 3rd, 1250, Nicola Pisano being the architect. The campanile was begun in 1361
23.—INTERIOR OF STA. MARIA GLORIOSA DEI FRARI. VENICE. Page 177.23.—INTERIOR OF STA. MARIA GLORIOSA DEI FRARI. VENICE.Page 177.
under Jacopo Collega, and completed in 1396 by Pietro Paolo his son.
The first impression of the church on landing from the gondola on the desolate-looking piece of pavement which here, as in many of the Venetian churches, forms a court between the canal and the west front, is not pleasing. The design of the west front is nothing short of being positively ugly; it is finished with a great sham gable, with a curved outline, somewhat akin to the degraded taste of our worst Jacobæan art, and entirely without any beauty or even picturesqueness of appearance; the doorways, too, are particularly poor, consisting of a succession of twisted and reedy mouldings, thin and shadowless, like so many cords stretched from cap to base and round the arch, without any proper distinction of jamb and archivolt.
The internal effect of the church is much finer than its west front would lead one to expect. The plan is simple; a nave and aisles of six bays, transepts with three eastern chapels to each, and a choir of one bay with an apse of four bays projecting beyond the others. The tower is in the angle between the north transept and the nave, and a large sacristy with an eastern apse is built against the south transept. The nave and aisles measure about 230 feet by 104, and the transept 160 feet by 48,—magnificent dimensions undoubtedly. The columns are simple, cylindrical, and very lofty, their capitals carved with foliage, which looks late and poor in its execution, though grouped in the old way in regular tufts or balls of foliage. The arrangement of the wall above the main arcade is very similar to that of the Veronese, and, indeed, to that of most Italian Gothic churches; a plain wall being carried up to the groining, relieved only by a small clerestory window at the highest point. One is apt to compare this arrangement with the artistic arrangement of clerestory and triforium in our ownchurches; but herein we do not act quite fairly to Nicola Pisano, who is said to have designed the Frari, and his brethren. They had to work in a country where light must be admitted very sparingly, and where therefore it is impossible for architects to revel in the rich traceries which fill the bays of the churches of the North; they lived among a nation of painters, and deemed, perhaps, that these plain surfaces of wall would one day glow with colour and with Scripture story. For these reasons, then, I defend them for the bareness and over-great plainness which are certainly at first felt to be so remarkable in their work. The real beauty of these interiors is owing, more than to anything else, I believe, to the simplicity and purity of the quadripartite groining which covers them in, and which, even where other features would seem to tell of debasement and absence of pure feeling, invariably recalls us to a proper recollection of the infinite value of simplicity in this important feature—a point lost sight of in England after the thirteenth century, to the incalculable detriment of the beauty of some of our greatest churches. It is not difficult to prove that this must be the case, for I take it for granted that we all feel that ornament for its own sake is valueless; and equally, that doing in a troublesome, and therefore costly way, that which may be done as well and as strongly in a simpler manner, is unpleasant and distasteful as an exhibition of the wasteful expenditure of human skill and energy; and therefore, as simple quadripartite groining with diagonal and transverse ribs, and no lierne or intermediate ribs, is quite sufficient for the construction, and as the vaults are in no degree whatever strengthened by the multiplication and ramification of perplexing ribs, such as we see in later days in fan tracery and other contemporary modes of vaulting, that it is the truest and most agreeable system of roofing in stone.
The simple groining of the Frari is entirely executed inbrick, and springs in the aisles from pilasters corbelled out of the walls midway in height, just as in Sta. Anastasia at Verona, and in the nave and choir from clusters of shafts rising from the caps of the columns.
The apse is the noblest feature of the whole church; its windows, with their singular and not quite pleasing transome of tracery, are refreshing because they have tracery, though indeed it is of a rude and heavy kind.
There is something impressive about the arrangement of the church. The choir is prolonged by the length of about one bay and a half into the nave, and fenced off to the west by a great screen, surmounted by figures of the Apostles, with a crucifix rising in the centre. The nave is, of course, quite free from any fixed seats; and this, with the great area of the transept and the fine perspective of the long range of seven apsidal chapels on its east side, gives a grand air of spaciousness to the whole interior. There are some fine monuments here, quite worth notice as very characteristic of Italian art. They are generally high tombs corbelled out from the walls, with arched canopies over them, inclosing paintings. Here the south transept wall over the door to the vestry contains a group of such monuments, which is extremely picturesque. The monument of “Beatus Pacificus” (A.D.1437) has a graceful painting of the Annunciation over its arch, and sculptures under it of the Baptism, and, on the tomb, of the Resurrection and the Descent into Hell.[39]Another monument has a life-size figure on horseback, and all have so much freshness to an English eye, and yet so much identity in principle with our own old monuments, that they are well worthy of study. Last, but not least, are two immense monuments facing each other, near the westend of the nave, to Canova and Titian, preposterous in size, heavy, ugly, and cold in character, quite unsuitable to a church, and, so far at least as I could judge, entirely devoid of merit as works of religious art. There is, too, a painting by Giovanni Bellini of the Madonna and Saints, which ought to be visited, in the grand and well-used sacristy—a room such as one never seems to see save in Italy. It is still in its old frame over the sacristy altar. Both in artistic interest and in religious effect it is perfectly fine; the subject—a Madonna and Child, such as Gian Bellini alone could paint. Angels playing instruments, sweet and pretty in character, and saints full of reverence and awe for Our Lord, all treated with a colour of exquisite depth and richness throughout, make this as worshipful a picture as I know. There is also in the north transept a most elaborately framed Gothic triptych, with figures well drawn and rich in colour.
The stalls in the Frari are all placed in the nave west of the transept, as in Westminster Abbey. They are of very rich Renaissance character, but with some late Gothic features. In the north transept is some elaborate Gothic panelling—very German in character—which looks as if it had come from the back of the old choir stalls. Here, too, is a crucifix, probably the original rood. Some fragments of stained glass are still visible; they are coarse and rude in detail, but extremely fine in colour; and one must picture the church full of rich glass in order to do justice to the scheme of the mediæval architect.
To the south of the nave are large uninteresting cloisters, and it is only at the east end that the exterior at all repays the ecclesiologist for the pains he must take to get all round it. The view which I give will best illustrate its general character. The windows are all transomed, the tracery and portions of the arches being executed in stone, the rest of the wall being entirely of brick or terra-cotta with some
24.—STA. MARIA GLORIOSA DEI FRARI. VENICE. Page 180.24.—STA. MARIA GLORIOSA DEI FRARI. VENICE.Page 180.
red marble in the eaves-arcading; the bricks are not particularly good, and the terra-cotta borders, cornices, and ornaments are poor and meagre in their design. The most observable point about the detail is the great and ugly splay on the exterior of the windows, and the facts that the window mouldings are returned round the sills and that all the apsidal terminations in the church finish with an angle in the centre—a peculiarity which is very seldom met with, but very much to be commended as a variety.
There is a degree of clumsiness about the way in which the arches of the windows are set upon the jambs which is very characteristic of Italian Gothic; but this, and other points open to criticism, do not prevent the east end of this church from being a very noble conception, broad and grand, unbroken with the lines of buttresses which generally too much confuse apsidal terminations, and yet very vertical in its effect. There is no petty attempt at relieving or ornamenting plain wall where it occurs, but it is left in the native rudeness of the rather rough-looking red brick, which is in no respect better than the bricks one may get anywhere in England. The cornices are very marked, and those in the clerestory have the common and ungraceful corbelled arcading in brick, to which I have a special antipathy. The clerestory windows of the transepts and choir are, I need hardly say, quite modern, and of a kind, unfortunately, most popular throughout the north of Italy. North of the choir is a tall brick campanile, leaning rather dangerously to the North, finished with an octagonal upper stage, and, though not very remarkable, making a conspicuous feature in most of the views of this part of Venice, and at any rate to be admired for its simplicity and the absence of effort in its design.
Next in order of merit to this church are those of SS. Giovanni e Paolo and of the Madonna dell’ Orto, both ofthem savouring most strongly of the influence of the Pisani, and in very many points remarkably like the church of the Frari.
We will take SS. Giovanni e Paolo first. The plan is of the same sort as that of the Frari—nave with aisles, and transepts with two chapels opening on each side of them. These are all apsidal, but planned in the usual way and not as at the Frari. The east end is a fine composition, having an apse of seven sides, and is the only part of the exterior to which much praise can be given. It is divided into two stages by an elaborate brick cornice and a good balustraded passage in front of the upper windows. The traceries are all unskilfully designed, and set back from the face of the wall with a bald plain splay of brickwork round them; the lower windows here have two transoms, and the upper a single band of heavy tracery which performs the part of a transom in an ungainly fashion, though not so badly as in the great south-transept window in the same church. Here, just as at the Frari, it is obvious that the absence of buttresses to these many-sided apses is the secret of the largeness and breadth which mark them; and, to say the truth, not only are large buttresses to an apse often detrimental to its effect, but at the same time they are very often not wanted for strength. The interior is remarkable on account of the fine scale on which it is built, and for the large number of interesting monuments corbelled out from its walls. Many of them are mediæval and rich in sculpture of figures, not only on the tombs themselves, but again in the face of the wall, around their canopies. The effigy of the deceased is almost always placed on the top of the high tomb or sarcophagus, which, in order that it may be visible from below, is made with a slope towards the spectator, the effect of which is most distressing. Much more beautiful generally is the curtained tester often put above the figure, on either side ofwhich guardian angels, holding back the folds of the draperies, allow us to join them in looking at the figure on the tomb. There is here a very fine lectern—a double-headed eagle standing on a scorpion—with a rich mediæval stand and base.
There are small two-light windows just over the arches in the nave which take the place of a triforium, and which look almost as if they were the clerestory windows of an earlier church whose arches were much less lofty than those which now exist.
In the small piazza in front of the church stands one of the glories of Venice—the monument of Bartolomeo Colleoni. As is the case with too many equestrian statues the base seems dangerously small for the steed, slow and stately as his movement is. What a grand air of valiant determination this old warrior wears! what a serious purpose the artist had in his work, and how carefully he has rendered every detail of trapping and armour on both man and horse! We have already heard of this famous condottiere in his chapel at Bergamo and in his castle of Malpaga. His statue was the work of Andrea Verocchio, but was completed by Alessandro Leopardi, between 1479 and 1488. Colleoni had left his whole fortune to the republic of Venice on condition that his statue should be placed in the Piazza of S. Mark. This being contrary to the laws, an ingenious loophole for escape was discovered; the bequest was secured by the erection of the statue in front of the Scuola di San Marco, whose strange Renaissance front (built with coloured marble in a horrible sort of perspective, which is the lowest depth to which architecture ever reached) stands at right angles to the front of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. For any one who wished to be remembered near S. Mark’s church, the catastrophe would be as great, if he cared about art, to find himself connected, instead, with such an abortion as the Scuola of that ilk, as it would be to Bartolomeo Colleoni to find himselfhere in the suburbs when he stipulated so carefully for a place in the very centre of the city!
Next in order of merit to SS. Giovanni e Paolo I should place the church of Sta. Maria dell’ Orto. This church is in a very bad state, and so far ruinous as to require to be supported in its interior by a forest of shores and scaffold-poles, which makes it quite impossible to get a good idea of the general effect. It has fair pointed arcades resting upon very Classic-looking columns, with capitals of poorly grouped and executed foliage. It is decidedly inferior to the two churches just described, in every respect save the treatment of its west front, which, poor as it is, sins less against all acknowledged rules than do theirs; its character is of a kind of pseudo-pointed, very flat, hard, and awkward. The cornice, with the open Italian pinnacles above it, over the central portion, is better in its effect than the singular row of niches which stands in lieu of cornice for the ends of the aisles; but it is worth while, nevertheless, to observe how simple is the design of these niches, taken separately, and how far this simplicity and the genuine beauty of their cusping and arching go towards redeeming the want of taste which is shown in the choice of their location. The doorway and rose window in the west front are of red and white marble, and in the side windows the tracery and monials are of white marble, and the jambs alternately red and white. The rest of the wall is brick, but has been plastered and washed with pink. The windows at the end of the aisles are remarkable for transoms of tracery supported upon two heights of delicate marble shafts, and entirely independent of the glazing which is fixed in frames within them. This kind of arrangement, incongruous and unsatisfactory as it is here, is worth recollecting, as being suggestive of an obvious opening for the use of traceried windows in domestic work; and it is a plan of most frequent occurrence in the best Italian ecclesiastical architecture. Many of the windows of Sta. Anastasia at Verona are constructed in this way, showing on the outside elaborately cusped and pierced plates of stone, against which on the inside the glazing is fixed, surrounded only with a plain circle of stone.
San Stefano is another really striking Gothic church. Its interior, notwithstanding the gaudy red damask with which the Venetians here and elsewhere delight to clothe the columns of their churches, is very fine and unlike what is common in the North of Europe. The dimensions are very large. The nave is about forty-eight feet wide, and the whole length about one hundred and seventy feet. There are a cloister and a chapter-house north of the nave, and a campanile detached at some distance to the east. The arcades of six pointed arches dividing the nave from either aisle are very light, and supported on delicate marble columns, whose capitals, with square abaci and foliage of Classical character, hardly look like Gothic work. The masonry and mouldings of the arches are not arranged in a succession of orders, as is the case in almost all good pointed work, but have a broad, plain soffeit, with a small and shallow moulding at the edge, finished with a dentil or billet ornament, which, originally used by the architect of S. Mark’s in order to form the lines of constructional stonework within which his encrusted marbles were held, was afterwards, down to the very decline of pointed architecture, used everywhere in Venice—not only in its original position, but, as at San Stefano, in place of a label round the arch. Its effect is much like that of the English dog-tooth ornament—a succession of sharp hard lights and shades, useful as giving value and force to a very small piece of stonework, and therefore exceedingly valuable when used as it is at S. Mark’s, and equally contemptible, I am bound to say, when used, as it is in later work at Venice, simply as an ornament; for thisit is not and cannot be, as it is the result of no skill or taste on the part of the workman, but just such an enrichment as might be rather better done by machine than by hand. The roof of the nave is a painted timber roof, boarded in a series of cusped lines on the under side of the constructional framework, so as to hide it. I must not forget to add that the interior of San Stefano requires to be held together by iron ties in every direction—a sin to which, in Italy, the eye soon has to become accustomed.
The whole of the exterior is very carefully executed in brick, the moulded work being well done, though very late in date and not good in effect. The western doorway is of a favourite Venetian type. It is square-headed, enriched with mouldings and carving, and above it is an arched canopy with pinnacles on each side and with an ogee arched label carrying enormous crockets. The finial is a three-quarter figure, and an angel occupies the spandrel between the arch and the label. Above the door is a large circular window, unadorned with tracery or filling-in of any kind. The window from the east end of the church, of which I give an engraving, is a very characteristic example, of great width, and utterly unlike any example out of Venice.