§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 disturbedby 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,81only shook one lily from the brow of the Ducal Palace.
§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, theBalconies, 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 inFig. 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 advancedbeneaththe 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, foundedon 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.
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 obtainedwas that of a horizontal bar or hand-rail, sustained upon short shafts or balusters, as inFig. 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 ofthe 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.
§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 balcony83altogether, I must allude, for a moment, tothe 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.
§XXIV.The uppermost shaded series of six forms of windows inPlate 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 eleventhand 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 orders84of 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 ofPlate XIV.
Then the series below shows the principal forms found in each period, belonging to each several order; except 1bto 1c, 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 1a, in the second row. The horse-shoe arch, 1b, is the door-head commonly associated with it, and the other three in the same row occur in St. Mark’s exclusively; 1cbeing 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—1d, from the door of thesouthern transept, and 1c, 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.85The 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 isnotthe 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.
§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, inVenice, 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 3a(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 purepointedarches 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,86and 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.
§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 buildersformed it of three pieces of hewn stone inserted in the wall, as inFig. 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 ata,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 (b5,Fig. XXVIII., or 2, inPlate XIV.); a form perfectly strong and serviceable, and of immense importance in the transitional architecture of Venice.
§XXIX.Atb,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 forma), from a most important fragment of a defaced house in the Salizzada San Liò, close to the Merceria. It is associated with a finepointedbrick 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,aandb.
§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 ofdistance 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,87may 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 inPlate 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.
§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 consequenceof the discovery that the keystone would do duty quite as well in the formbas in the forma,Fig. XXX., and the substitution ofb, at the head of the arch, gives us the window of the third order, 3b, 3d, and 3e, inPlate XIV.The forms 3aand 3care 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, 3b, 3d, 3e, 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 3bthere 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 3d, the Gothic expression is definite, and the entire school of the architecture is changed.
This slope of the flanks occurs, first, in so slight a degree as to be hardly perceptible, and gradually increases until, reaching the form 3eat 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 leadershipof a political faction in 1280,88the 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.
§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 (3b,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 itselfabsolutely corresponding with those of the Frari, and therefore of inestimable value in determining the date of the palace. Of these more hereafter.
§XXXIV.Contemporarily with these windows of the second and third orders, those of the fourth (4aand 4b, inPlate 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 4c, 4d, ofPlate 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 4ato 4e,Plate XIV., shows its most ordinary conditionsand changes of arch-line: 4aand 4bare the early Venetian forms; 4c, later, is general at Venice; 4d, the best and most piquant condition, owing to its fantastic and bold projection of cusp, is common to Venice and Verona; 4eis early Veronese.
§XXXV.The reader will see at once, in descending to the fifth row inPlate 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.
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 inFig. XXXIII.They are built entirely of brick, except thecentral 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 inFig. XXXIV.The capital of the shaft is one of the earliest transitional forms;89and 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.
§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, inthis manner, with brick and stone; sometimes the brick alternating with the stones of the arch, as in the finished example given inPlate 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 inPlate 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;90they are entirely wrought in brick, with exquisite mouldings, not cast, butmoulded 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 mostbrittle 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, inPlate 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 inPlate 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 havebeen traced partly to the hatred of the Greeks, consequent upon the treachery of Manuel Comnenus,91and 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; merelynotingthis one assured fact, thatthe 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 abroadIn leathern girdle, and a clasp of bone;And, with no artful coloring on her cheeks,His lady leave the glass. The sons I sawOf Verli and of Vecchio, well contentWith unrobed jerkin, and their good dames handlingThe spindle and the flax....One waked to tend the cradle, hushing itWith sounds that lulled the parents’ infancy;Another, with her maidens, drawing offThe tresses from the distaff, lectured themOld tales of Troy, and Fesole, and Rome.”92
“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,93and 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 backof 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 inPlate 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 respectingthem may be more clearly stated in connexion with other facts characteristic of that period.
§XLIV.As the examples inPlate XVII.are necessarily confined to the upper parts of the windows, I have given in the Plate opposite (XVIII94) 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.95The 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.
§XLV.The smaller balconies between the great shafts in the lower example inPlate 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 themarble 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 aboutby 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.96These 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.
§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 atb, 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 voussoirand 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 openingto 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 themidst 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 dayAn hatchet keene, with which he felled wood.”
“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 sideHis plough and harnesse fit to till the ground,And tooles to prune the trees.”
“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 iscommonly 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,97Which on the earth he strowed as he went.”
“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 ledEuropa floting through the Argolick fluds:His horns were gilden all with golden studs,And garnished with garlonds goodly dightOf all the fairest flowres and freshest budsWhich th’ earth brings forth; andwet he seemed in sightWith waves, through which he waded for his love’s delight.”
“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; andwet he seemed in sight
With waves, through which he waded for his love’s delight.”
5.Mayis 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 sideUnder his belt he bore a sickle circling wide.”
“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 oldLived here on earth, and plenty made abound.”
“the righteous Virgin, which of old
Lived here on earth, and plenty made abound.”