A doorway on the Ponte San Tomà is quite worthy of a visit. It has the usual square opening of reddish marble, and above this is a pointed arch of moulded brick; the tympanum is filled in with a square carved centre panel, and the ground beyond this with quatrefoils of brick or tile very prettily disposed, and quite deserving of illustration.
And now let us go back to the Grand Canal; we shall enter it by the side of the Palazzo Foscari, which, with two other contiguous palaces, occupies quite the post of honour at the bottom of the principal reach of the canal, and commands the whole view of its noble and ever-busy way to where the arch of the Rialto and another bend in the canal close in the view. We will go a few strokes only towards the Rialto, and then turn round to look at the palaces we have just passed. They certainly form a most magnificent group, and are in every way worthy of their conspicuous position. The palace at the junction of the two waters is that of the Foscari; the others belonged, I believe, to two of the Giustiniani family; and but a few yards up the canal, which runs by the side of the former, is one of the smaller remnants of Byzantine work already referred to. This group is so well known as scarcely to need any description—suffice it to say, therefore, that throughout these palaces the windows are shafted, and the glass is fixed in wooden frames behind the stonework. This is beyond all doubt what we ought to do; it is the only sensible and rational mode of adapting the system of traceried and shafted windows for domestic purposes, and
has here, as elsewhere, the prestige of ancient authority to recommend it to the consideration of those amongst us who will do nothing without it. I have enlarged on this point elsewhere, and will, therefore, say no more upon it now, save that in Venice such a thing as an English monial ordinarily is, was never known. Windows were invariably shafted from the earliest period to the latest, and so far invariably of the highest order, inasmuch as they admitted of the definite expression of the point at which the monial terminated and the arch commenced, and inasmuch, too, as the coloured surface of the detached marble shaft must ever be far more lovely than the lines of tracery mouldings carried down even to the sill.
The angle-shafts of the Palazzo Foscari have caps and bases in each stage of the building; those of the other palaces continue up without interruption.
The date of the smaller palaces, and probably of the large one also, is very early in the fifteenth century; and the latter had, in 1574, the honour of being the grandest palace that the Venetians could find in which to lodge Henry III. of France. They are all three very similar in their design. Their water-gates are pointed, and the windows in the water-stage small and unimportant. The second stage is more important, and has cusped ogee window-heads and balconies. The third stage is, however, the piano nobile, all the windows having deep traceried heads and large balconies. The fourth stage is very nearly like the first, save that instead of balconies there is a delicate balustrading between the shafts of the windows, which is very frequent in good Venetian work, and always very pretty in its effect. All the windows in these three palaces have ogee-heads generally finished with carved finials, and inclosed within a square outline formed by the small dentilled moulding, and giving what I have before had to refer to—to some extent the effect of a panel with a window pierced in it, veneered on the front. The Foscari Palace is the only one of these three that has any string-courses. The arrangement of the windows—large in the centre and smaller at the sides—is so nearly regular and of a sort of two-and-two kind of uniformity, that one scarcely notices that nevertheless, when internal arrangements make it necessary, a departure from this strict rule is allowed.