| Ft. | In. | ||
| Central | arch | 9 | 9 |
| Second | " | 3 | 8 |
| Third | " | 3 | 10 |
| Fourth | " | 3 | 10 |
| Fifth | " | 3 | 8 |
The difference of two inches on nearly three feet in the two midmost arches being all that was necessary to satisfy the builder’s eye.
§ XI. I need not point out to the reader that these singular and minute harmonies of proportion indicate, beyond all dispute, not only that the buildings in which they are found are of one school, but (so far as these subtle coincidences of measurement can still be traced in them) in their original form. No modern builder has any idea of connecting his arches in this manner, and restorations in Venice are carried on with too violent hands to admit of the supposition that such refinements would be even noticed in the progress of demolition, much less imitated in heedless reproduction. And as if to direct our attention especially to this character, as indicative of Byzantine workmanship, the most interesting example of all will be found in the arches of the front of St. Mark’s itself, whose proportions I have not noticed before, in order that they might here be compared with those of the contemporary palaces.
| Fig. V. |
§ XII. The doors actually employed for entrance in the western façade are as usual five, arranged as at a in the annexed woodcut, [Fig. V.]; but the Byzantine builder could not be satisfied with so simple a group, and he introduced, therefore, two minor arches at the extremities, as at b, by adding two small porticos which are of no use whatever except to consummate the proportions of the façade, and themselves to exhibit the most exquisite proportions in arrangements of shaft and archivolt with which I am acquainted in the entire range of European architecture.
Into these minor particulars I cannot here enter; but observe the dimensions of the range of arches in the façade, as thus completed by the flanking porticos:
| Ft. | In. | |
| The space of its central archivolt is | 31 | 8 |
| " the two on each side, about[44] | 19 | 8 |
| " the two succeeding, about | 20 | 4 |
| " small arches at flanks, about | 6 | 0 |
| Fig. VI. |
I need not make any comment upon the subtle difference of eight inches on twenty feet between the second and third dimensions. If the reader will be at the pains to compare the whole evidence now laid before him, with that deduced above from the apse of Murano, he cannot but confess that it amounts to an irrefragable proof of an intense perception of harmony in the relation of quantities, on the part of the Byzantine architects; a perception which we have at present lost so utterly as hardly to be able even to conceive it. And let it not be said, as it was of the late discoveries of subtle curvature in the Parthenon,[45] that what is not to be demonstrated without laborious measurement, cannot have influence on the beauty of the design. The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far to say, that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the changes of expression in the human countenance. The greater he is, the more he will feel their subtlety, and the intense difficulty of perceiving all their relations, or answering for the consequences of a variation of a hair’s breadth in a single curve. Indeed, there is nothing truly noble either in color or in form, but its power depends on circumstances infinitely too intricate to be explained, and almost too subtle to be traced. And as for these Byzantine buildings, we only do not feel them because we do not watch them; otherwise we should as much enjoy the variety of proportion in their arches, as we do at present that of the natural architecture of flowers and leaves. Any of us can feel in an instant the grace of the leaf group, b, in the annexed figure; and yet that grace is simply owing to its being proportioned like the façade of St. Mark’s; each leaflet answering to an arch,—the smallest at the root, to those of the porticos. I have tried to give the proportion quite accurately in b; but as the difference between the second and third leaflets is hardly discernible on so small a scale, it is somewhat exaggerated in a.[46] Nature is often far more subtle in her proportions. In looking at some of the nobler species of lilies, full in the front of the flower, we may fancy for a moment that they form a symmetrical six-petaled star; but on examining them more closely, we shall find that they are thrown into a group of three magnitudes by the expansion of two of the inner petals above the stamens to a breadth greater than any of the four others; while the third inner petal, on which the stamens rest, contracts itself into the narrowest of the six, and the three under petals remain of one intermediate magnitude, as seen in the annexed figure.