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

by George Edmund Street

In the practice of carving, as in that of moulding, I see no reason for yielding the palm to the Venetian. It is true indeed, that the Byzantine capitals—of which such magnificent examples exist at S. Mark’s—are some of the most exquisite I have ever seen, true and precise in their sculpture, revelling in the utmost delicacy of intricate work, and always refined and elaborated with great evidence of care and thoughtfulness; but after the earliest school, and those later examples in which they were copied and regarded as models, there appears to me to be much less to admire. There is a confusion and want of fixed purpose about many of those which are commonly referred to as the best types of Gothic sculpture, which is at best not satisfactory; and I confess that I came away much more pleased with some of the Byzantine capitals than with any others. They have some notable points of difference from those to which we are used. They are generally much larger in proportion to the shaft than ours; and instead of having a regular neck-moulding, they rise out of the shaft with a kind of swell, which, as being less definite, is to me less satisfactory than our neck-moulding. The capitals of all dates are very generally similar in their outlines—this in part arising from the constant occurrence of circular columns with capitals whose abaci are square, and in part from the imitation, more or less closely, of Byzantine models. Indeed, it is impossible not to see how great an influence the earliest remaining work—that of the eleventh century—had in Venice until the end of the fourteenth and far into the fifteenth century; the most beautiful and striking arrangements of the former age are reproduced and only slightly modified in the finest work of the latter to a very remarkable extent: and so much more decidedly and frequently than are the traces, in northern pointed, of any hankering after the features of Romanesque buildings, that I think but one conclusion can fairly be drawn from the sculpture of Venice as well as from its architecture, viz. that pointed architecture was never developed as purely and thoroughly in Venice as in the North of Europe; and that, though it retained its sway there nearly as long as it did elsewhere, it never thoroughly understood or felt its own strength, and worked and toiled tied down and encumbered by Byzantine fetters and Classic sympathies. There is much, notwithstanding this, to admire—and, above all else, the greatest beauty of the style, wherein it so far left us behind, the thorough appreciation and unsparing use of the shaft. It is quite astonishing how very little this was ever used in England. Occasionally, indeed, it was freely used in grand buildings, and in some individual features it was frequently seen in thirteenth-century buildings; but at the very period when, if ever, architecture was in its perfection—in the early part of the fourteenth century—it was almost entirely forgotten and thrown aside. All honour, therefore, to the men who so perseveringly and determinedly used it as did the builders at Venice for three centuries! And all shame to us if we do not attempt for the future so far at any rate to follow in their steps! So rare are any but shafted windows in Venice, that at present I hardly remember a single instance of a window with monials formed by the continuous mouldings of the tracery; and it is obvious that this gave occasion, not only to the use of beautiful marbles—never so well used as in shafts—but also to the constant use of carved capitals. In domestic buildings, as I have before remarked, this arrangement of shafted windows is very valuable, because it suggests one obvious way in which we may unite traceried windows with the very newest arrangement of window-frames or sashes in the most comfortable nineteenth-century houses; for in these Venetian palaces the glass was always contained in a separate wooden frame set within the marble shafts and tracery.[56]

Besides the use of the shaft in the ordinary way, I must not forget to say that parapets frequently (or perhaps it were better to say balustrades)—as, e.g., at S. Mark’s—and balconies everywhere, are composed of a vast number of very delicate shafts, set very close to each other, and surmounted by long pieces of stone cut out in imitation of arching, and not really to be regarded as a succession of arch-stones, but rather as coping-stones to hold the shafts together. And, again, they are used very beautifully for the support of open pinnacles, one at each angle, inclosing a figure, just as in the monuments of the Scaligers at Verona. Examples of this are to be seen in the pinnacles which have been added between the gables of S. Mark’s, which are exceedingly good in their effect; and again in the pinnacles which terminate the church of the Madonna dell’ Orto.

One more point is worthy of remark—the treatment, namely, of the angles of buildings. These were almost always marked either by a roll-moulding or by a succession of nook-shafts, sometimes extravagantly chevroned or otherwise ornamented. This, when done simply, was always satisfactory, but, in its later and more elaborate form, was, I think, as unsatisfactory. The delicate rounding off of the angles of walls was a point not unthought of in England. In the thirteenth century a nook-shaft was the common contrivance; in the fourteenth, a chamfer; and in the fifteenth men reverted entirely to the square form. Here, however, there is a great and very interesting variety in this apparently simple feature. The most satisfactory plan of all is where a quarter-circle forms the angle, and is finished with a small incision in the form of a V on either side, as it unites simplicity with strength of construction and softness of contour, and does not force itself too prominently upon our observation; and, next to this, the most satisfactory form is where, instead of the moulding being round, it is pointed at the angle. The twisted shafts of the upper stage of the Ducal Palace, and the triple and chevroned shafts of the Ca’ d’Oro, are not improvements upon the refinement of the earlier mode.

I have already spoken of the exquisite beauty of the inlaid marbles in S. Mark’s; nothing can be better than their effect, and nothing seems more wonderful than that they should not have been used more frequently in later buildings. I was, perhaps, a little disappointed in not finding, as I had expected, the marble arranged generally in geometrical patterns; but this is quite the exception; and one sees only, in a medallion here and there, the exquisite beauty which their arrangement in this way may produce. As a rule the walls are faced with thin slabs of marble, each of the size in which it came to hand, sawn into as many slices as its substance would allow, and then riveted to the walls and held in place securely by projecting thin lines of stonework built into the wall, and cut with indented or billet ornaments along their edges. There is, however, a degree of real as well as apparent weakness which is not at all satisfactory in this system of incrustation, and I thought how much more noble such work might well become, were it to be inlaid only where no strong work was required to be done—as, e.g., in spandrels of arches,[57] or within arches—and not as here to the concealment of every one of the necessary constructional features. It is to be observed, however, that the slabs of marble are generally higher than they are wide, so as at once to destroy any thought of their being really constructional.

The south side of S. Mark’s is, perhaps, the place above all others in Venice where this inlaid work may be seen to the greatest advantage. Some of the great arches which stand in place of gables are divided into four or five square-headed lights by shafts supporting semicircular arches, the tympana of which are filled in with delicate and perpetually varied filigree-work in marble, whilst above them a succession of panels or medallions shews all the resources of the rich materials which were to be exhibited. In another case, just over the entrance from the Piazzetta to the church, the tympanum of the arch is filled in with large medallions, one exquisitely carved, the others plain; whilst the arch of the window below the tympanum has its beautiful marble spandrels adorned on either side with medallions which, for exquisite arrangement of vari-coloured marbles in geometrical patterns, are perfectly admirable. There is enough, therefore, in the Venetian system of incrustation, though much unhappily be lost, to give ample food for our study and admiration; and its only weak point is, as I have said, its too frequent neglect or concealment of the constructional features of the buildings it adorns.

It is easy, however, to cavil at particular details, and scan with a critical eye the architectural beauties of Venice; but let it not be thought for an instant that all the wonderful pictures which every new turn or new point of view brings before the eyes are unappreciated. A few days spent there suffice almost to fill a lifetime with reminiscences of all that is novel, beautiful, and strange; and days such as I have spent, year after year, rejoicing in the daytime in the full brilliancy of a September sun, and at night in the calm loveliness of a Venetian night, have been just the most delightful in every way that could be passed.

We were at Venice on the festival of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin—a great feast-day, which it had been my fortune to spend some two or three times before in Roman Catholic countries. I confess that here we were not edified. We came in, as we went from church to church, for rather more than the usual number of the désagrémens which always seem to attend the decoration of the churches, and especially the altars, for such festivities abroad. The strongest impression left on my mind was one of wonder at the paltry character of the long array of what by courtesy are called, I suppose, wreaths of flowers, manufactured of pink gauze, or some equally unnatural material. These, with vulgar draperies hung outside the church doors, and in additional quantity about the altars, with the most noisy and gladsome ringing of bells, completed the external demonstrations; all the shops were most studiously closed, and the churches and open places were thronged with people. At S. Mark’s we heard[58] some abominably light opera-music, which sounded, as may be imagined, very discordant within its solemn walls.

One morning we devoted partly to the ascent of the campanile in the Piazza. The ascent is entirely by inclined planes; the outer walls of the tower are in fact double, and in the space between them these inclined planes are formed; and it is worth notice that to this day, in all buildings which we have seen in progress in this part of the world, inclined boards are used instead of ladders for obtaining access to scaffolding; and in one of the mosaics in the entrance-porch of S. Mark’s, where the building of the Tower of Babel is depicted, precisely the same kind of arrangement is shewn. This is interesting, as shewing the tenacity with which old customs are adhered to. The view, when the top is reached, quite repays the labour of the ascent, as it gives the best possible idea of what Venice really is. We get an impression of a very densely populated town, hemmed in on all sides by water, and looking very flat and low; in the distance small islands pave the way to the mainland, or shelter us from the sea; these, where they are more distant, look like mere black spots on the smooth, unrippled expanse of water: and in the far horizon we see to the west the purple outline of the mountains about Vicenza; and to the north of these, and rising grandly into the sky, the snowy peaks of the southern range of the Friulan Alps. Below and around are countless churches, all placed confusedly without respect to orientation—a neglect, if anywhere excusable, surely so here, where land is the exception and water the rule.

The last day we spent in Venice was most enjoyable. We had been all day in our gondola, now stopping to sketch some Gothic palace, anon shooting into some narrow canal to escape the bright heat of the sun, winding our way now here, now there, just as the fancy of the moment seized us, and realizing more than ever that “the longest summer’s day was all too short” for a last day in so fair a place. In the evening, just before sunset, we went out into the Lagoon, and, rowing round the small island of Giudecca, watched the gradually waning light reflected on the smooth, calm water, which seemed too silent and too soft to be disturbed by a word from any of us; and then at last, turning back and coming suddenly through a short canal into the main stream just opposite the Dogana, we moved on gently till we came abreast of the Ducal Palace. It was just dark; the moon was rising behind us in all her beauty, and in front, lamp after lamp was suddenly lit along the Piazzetta, then along the palace-front, all along the Riva dei Schiavoni, until at last, before we landed, as far as we could see, the bright lights, reflected in a hundred gleaming, flashing lines, were fitfully dancing in long streams of light upon the bosom of the waters.