The back entrance to the Foscari Palace is on the side canal. It is of some interest as retaining, in a very perfect state, an example of a very picturesque treatment in brick of the Venetian battlement. This consists of a series of piers finished with a steep gabled outline, and pierced with trefoiled openings. A good example of this sort of battlement remained near the Fondaco de’ Turchi, and deserves illustration. It is quite a Venetian invention, and errs on the side of quaintness.
In a small courtyard, desolate and dreary, reached after crossing the Ponte di Paglia and one or two other bridges on the Riva dei Schiavoni, is the Palazzo Badoer, a fourteenth-century palace, the ogeed arches of the windows in which are more than usually good; whilst the beauty of the central window, inclosed within a square line of moulding, within which the wall is incrusted with marble relieved by medallions, is very great. The structure of this, as of most Venetian palaces, is brick which has been frescoed; but it is now in a very lamentable state of decay. The balconies of the lower windows are clearly modern, but there is a trace of the original balustrade between the shafts of the windows in the second stage; and in front of the side-lights to the upper window is a grille of iron-work taking the place of a balcony, and composed of a combination of quatrefoils. The arrangement of the windows in this front is not absolutely regular, but still the centre is very marked; and though it is of early date, the true use of the arch nowhere appears. The usual[52] dog-tooth cornice finishes the walls under the eaves. In the courtyard of this house are two of the wells which give so much character to all the courts in Venice. They appear generally to be of early date, and look, frequently, like the capitals of large columns, taken down and placed upon the ground. Those in front of the Palazzo Badoer are perhaps more like fonts.
Another palace, also said to belong to one of the Badoer family, placed at the junction of two canals very near the Scuola di San Giorgio and the Greek Church, is remarkable as being now one of the very few houses in which the red brick walls are still in their original state, and not defiled by compo, paint, or whitewash. This house has three fronts, with one old doorway on the canal, and two on the land. The back facing the Campo San Severo has an unusually fine and lofty entrance, a square doorway with a pointed arch above (which I suppose once held tracery), and a group of five windows with circles or disks of marble in their spandrels above. Amongst other things it is remarkable as an instance of the way in which windows were sometimes placed absolutely at the very angles of the building. Judging by the similarity of its tracery to that above the Porta della Carta in the Ducal Palace, this angle window must date from about 1400 to 1430. It has a very bold shaft at the angle, whilst the jambs have pilasters ornamented at their angles by a twisted cord-like moulding, which is frequently met with in the later work. There is a small angle-shaft elaborately twisted just above this window, and very much like the angle-shafts of the Ducal Palace.
The composition of the main window in the front of this house is, I think, very striking. The lower window of four lights (one of which is larger and loftier than the others—a curious instance of the junction of regularity with irregularity), and whose arches are ogee trefoils, is surmounted by another window of four lights, with delicate balustrading between the shafts; and on each side of this upper window, and forming part of the composition, is a single light, with projecting balcony. The effect of the whole arrangement is pleasing, and is frequently repeated in other palaces. The marble incrustation over this window is very much like that in the other Palazzo Badoer; and from the centre of the medallions of marble small balls of marble project, fixed with metal, and giving great life and beauty to the medallions, and I think without any sacrifice of truth. The main fabric of this building must be of the latter part of the fourteenth century—the arches of the principal window being of a very excellent though simple type. Venetian balconies, of which this palace affords such good examples, are very beautiful and very characteristic. Nowhere else are they seen in such perfection; nowhere else, perhaps, were they ever so absolutely necessary. The palaces rose out of the dark water which washed against their foundations, and no ground