Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of Tours in the North of Italy

by George Edmund Street

Another desecrated church is that “dei Servi,” which has a fine lofty brick front with a large rose window.

In the Campo Sta. Zaccaria is a portal much like that of San Stefano, save that it has in the tympanum a good figure of the Blessed Virgin with Our Lord with a saint on each side—the two Saints John, I think. The Virgin is seated on a Gothic throne carved in very low relief, and the whole composition is decidedly fine; comparing it with the doorway at Mazzorbo, I should say this must be a work of A.D. 1380. The church of Sta. Zaccaria is an early Renaissance building, with many of its arches pointed. It has an aisle and chapels round the choir, an unusual plan in Venice, but otherwise it has no interest.

The church of l’Abbazia has some fair detail in its cornices, with pinnacles at its west end of the same type as those in the Madonna dell’ Orto, and has poor ogee-headed pointed windows; near it is another of the canopied doorways—the gate of the Corte Vecchia—with an outer arched canopy, within which under an ogee-shaped label stands the Blessed Virgin with Our Lord in an aureole on her breast. Two saints stand at her side, and groups of little figures kneel at her feet, whilst from the upper finial Our Lord gives His blessing. This bears the date of 1505.

I think I have now said enough about these late Gothic churches. I have never been able to interest myself much about them. The work of which they are specimens is so exceedingly poor, cold, and distasteful to me, that I feel much inclined when I attempt to sketch them to give up ecclesiology in despair. The truth is that, S. Mark’s excepted—and of course it is a very wonderful exception—the churches in Venice do not come up to the expectations of any one who has ever experienced the delight of visiting the churches of much smaller cities in France, Germany, and England. True, indeed, there are much interest and a great breadth and dignity about the general effect of such a church as that of the Frari; but for all those lovely points of detail which in every direction amaze us by the art they display and the rich array of beauty with which they clothe the walls of Northern cathedrals, there is here no kind of equivalent.

When I had thoroughly come to this conclusion, and settled in my own mind by repeated inspection that my judgment was not harsh or unfair, I confess I felt a weight off my mind. I was now free to indulge myself to the full in the search for what Venice really has in greater abundance, perhaps, than any other city in Christendom—remains, namely, of mediæval domestic work. Nothing can be conceived more delightful than such a search. You seldom go a hundred yards—often it is much less—without coming upon some remains, or perhaps some nearly perfect example, of an old Venetian palace; and then, with the gondola fastened to one of the great posts which line all the canals, the well-satisfied gondolier lying stretched on his back behind the awning, your friends laughing and talking within its dark recess, you sit most luxuriously, and make your notes and sketches with a degree of quiet comfort which is not a little conducive to accurate and careful sketching, and to diligence in its pursuit.

Venetian palaces divide themselves naturally into two great classes—the Byzantine and the Gothic; and it surprized me very much to find remains so perfect and so extensive of the former class even on the banks of the Grand Canal itself, where change has been ever so frequent and so rife. Indeed, it is singular that nearly all the Byzantine palaces are situated on its banks.

Of these palaces, certainly the most striking by far are the Ca’ Loredan, the Ca’ Farsetti, and the Fondaco de’ Turchi. They all agree singularly in the general idea of their design, and consist of a grand scheme of arcading over the entire front. Divided generally into two stories in height, they are again divided in a marked manner in width into a centre and wings. This division is effected solely by a great difference in the spans of the arches forming the arcades, which in the wings are much narrower than in the central division. In the upper arcade the spaces between the columns, and indeed the whole arrangement, are often studiously unlike those in the lower range; but, at the same time, there is so very much similarity in the detail of the whole, that this variety, far from being perceived as an irregularity or a fault, does in truth just suffice to give force and vitality to what might otherwise appear to be monotonous and too often repeated, and recalls to mind not a little the very similar kind of difference between the upper and lower order of shafts already described in the west front of S. Mark’s.

We cannot do better than take, as an example of the finest type of a Byzantine palace, the magnificent, though now desolate, decaying, and ruined façade of the Fondaco de’ Turchi, once the palace of the Dukes of Ferrara. The whole front of this was originally cased with a thin facing of marble, like the coeval works at S. Mark’s—a kind of decoration which, neglected as this fine relic has been for years, we cannot be surprized to find almost altogether destroyed; small fragments do, however, still here and there remain to tell of the original magnificence of the work. The lower stage of the Fondaco consists of a continuous arcade of ten open arches, with three narrower arches at either end, forming the wings, so to speak; the upper stage has eighteen arches in the centre, and four in each wing. In the wings the piers supporting the arches are, I think, all moulded pilasters; in the centre all the arches rest upon columns; and throughout the whole building the arches, which are all semicircular, are considerably stilted. The entire building is constructed in brick, which was originally, as I have before said, covered all over with a thin veneer of marble; in the spandrels of all the arches this is relieved by small circular medallions delicately carved, and over the upper stage is a string-course, above which there would seem to have been a long series of slightly sunk panels with round-arched heads, filled in with delicately arranged and beautifully sculptured patterns in marble. These panels are immediately below the eaves of the roof. Many of the abaci and string-courses, and all the thin pieces of marble which form the soffeits of the arches, have their projections finished either with a nail-head or dentil moulding, and between the shafts of the upper stage there are traces of balconies.[42]

A very noticeable point in the general effect of the façade of the Fondaco de’ Turchi is that, from the peculiar shape and great projection of the capitals of the shafts and the narrow span of the arches, the whole of the arcading has, at a small distance, almost the effect of a series of trefoils, and so seems to pave the way for the continuous traceries of the Ducal Palace and other later buildings.

There is a ruined fragment of a house of the same age as the Fondaco de’ Turchi in a canal behind the Foscari Palace. Here the centre arch is very wide, has four stilted arches on the sides, the archivolts are all delicately carved, and small sculptured medallions are introduced in the spandrels. Here, I think, the red brick of the walls was always intended to be seen. Of very similar character is a much larger fragment on the right of the Grand Canal after passing under the Rialto. Here there are two stories still remaining. The round-arched doorway has two open and stilted arches on each side, and then a space of blank wall; and the upper stage has a group of seven arches in the centre, and a single arch at each end over the blank wall below. The labels of these upper arches are turned up at the point into an ogee shape, which, strange as it may seem, must be original, as the detail is early, and they are surmounted by a collection of carved medallions and a carved string-course of early style.[43]