The Stones of Venice, Volume 1 (of 3)

by John Ruskin

§ XXII. Look back to the XXXIIIrd paragraph of the first chapter, and you will see the meaning of it. These cornices are the Venetian Ecclesiastical Gothic; the Christian element struggling with the Formalism of the Papacy,—the Papacy being entirely heathen in all its principles. That officialism of the leaves and their ribs means Apostolic succession, and I don’t know how much more, and is already preparing for the transition to old Heathenism again, and the Renaissance.[86]

§ XXIII. Now look to the last cornice (g). That is Protestantism,—a slight touch of Dissent, hardly amounting to schism, in those falling leaves, but true life in the whole of it. The forms all broken through, and sent heaven knows where, but the root held fast; and the strong sap in the branches; and, best of all, good fruit ripening and opening straight towards heaven, and in the face of it, even though some of the leaves lie in the dust.

Now, observe. The cornice f represents Heathenism and Papistry, animated by the mingling of Christianity and nature. The good in it, the life of it, the veracity and liberty of it, such as it has, are Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and saplessness are the Romanism of it. It is the mind of Fra Angelico in the monk’s dress,—Christianity before the Reformation. The cornice g has the Lombardic life element in its fulness, with only some color and shape of Classicalism mingled with it—the good of classicalism; as much method and Formalism as are consistent with life, and fitting for it: The continence within certain border lines, the unity at the root, the simplicity of the great profile,—all these are the healthy classical elements retained: the rest is reformation, new strength, and recovered liberty.

§ XXIV. There is one more point about it especially noticeable. The leaves are thoroughly natural in their general character, but they are of no particular species: and after being something like cabbage-leaves in the beginning, one of them suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end. Now I don’t know what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a classical character;—it is eminently characteristic of Southern work; and markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which would have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor two things in one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element; but whether a good or bad element, I am not sure;—whether it is the last trace of Centaurism and other monstrosity dying away; or whether it has a figurative purpose, legitimate in architecture (though never in painting), and has been rightly retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working of that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns a law in its members warring against the law of its mind.

§ XXV. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the spirit both of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to return to the question proposed in § XIII., and observe the modifications of form of profile which resulted from the changing contours of the leafage; for up to § XIII., we had, as usual, considered the possible conditions of form in the abstract;—the modes in which they have been derived from each other in actual practice require to be followed in their turn. How the Greek Doric or Greek ogee cornices were invented is not easy to determine, and, fortunately, is little to our present purpose; for the mediæval ogee cornices have an independent development of their own, from the first type of the concave cornice a in [Plate XV.]

Fig. LXIII.

§ XXVI. That cornice occurs, in the simplest work, perfectly pure, but in finished work it was quickly felt that there was a meagreness in its junction with the wall beneath it, where it was set as here at a, [Fig. LXIII.], which could only be conquered by concealing such junction in a bar of shadow. There were two ways of getting this bar: one by a projecting roll at the foot of the cornice (b, [Fig. LXIII.]), the other by slipping the whole cornice a little forward (c. [Fig. LXIII.]). From these two methods arise two groups of cornices and capitals, which we shall pursue in succession.

§ XXVII. First group. With the roll at the base (b, [Fig. LXIII.]). The chain of its succession is represented from 1 to 6, in [Plate XV.]: 1 and 2 are the steps already gained, as in [Fig. LXIII.]; and in them the profile of cornice used is a of [Plate XV.], or a refined condition of b of [Fig. V.], [p. 69], above. Now, keeping the same refined profile, substitute the condition of it, f of [Fig. V.] (and there accounted for), above the roll here, and you have 3, [Plate XV.] This superadded abacus was instantly felt to be harsh in its projecting angle; but you know what to do with an angle when it is harsh. Use your simplest chamfer on it (a or b, [Fig. LIII.], page 287, above), but on the visible side only, and you have fig. 4, [Plate XV.] (the top stone being made deeper that you may have room to chamfer it). Now this fig. 4 is the profile of Lombardic and Venetian early capitals and cornices, by tens of thousands; and it continues into the late Venetian Gothic, with this only difference, that as times advances, the vertical line at the top of the original cornice begins to slope outwards, and through a series of years rises like the hazel wand in the hand of a diviner:—but how slowly! a stone dial which marches but 45 degrees in three centuries, and through the intermediate condition 5 arrives at 6, and so stays.

In tracing this chain I have kept all the profiles of the same height in order to make the comparison more easy; the depth chosen is about intermediate between that which is customary in cornices on the one hand, which are often a little shorter, and capitals on the other, which are often a little deeper.[87] And it is to be noted that the profiles 5 and 6 establish themselves in capitals chiefly, while 4 is retained in cornices to the latest times.

Fig. LXIV.