§ XXXVI. In the two upper lines of the opposite Plate ([XVII.]), I have arranged some of the more delicate and finished examples of Gothic work of this period. Of these, fig. 4 is taken from the outer arcade of San Fermo of Verona, to show the condition of mainland architecture, from which all these Venetian types were borrowed. This arch, together with the rest of the arcade, is wrought in fine stone, with a band of inlaid red brick, the whole chiselled and fitted with exquisite precision, all Venetian work being coarse in comparison. Throughout the streets of Verona, arches and windows of the thirteenth century are of continual occurrence, wrought, in this manner, with brick and stone; sometimes the brick alternating with the stones of the arch, as in the finished example given in [Plate XIX.] of the first volume, and there selected in preference to other examples of archivolt decoration, because furnishing a complete type of the master school from which the Venetian Gothic is derived.
§ XXXVII. The arch from St. Fermo, however, fig. 4, [Plate XVII.], corresponds more closely, in its entire simplicity, with the little windows from the Campiello San Rocco; and with the type 5 set beside it in [Plate XVII.], from a very ancient house in the Corte del Forno at Santa Marina (all in brick); while the upper examples, 1 and 2, show the use of the flat but highly enriched architrave, for the connection of which with Byzantine work see the final Appendix, Vol. III., under the head “Archivolt.” These windows (figs. 1 and 2, [Plate XVII.]) are from a narrow alley in a part of Venice now exclusively inhabited by the lower orders, close to the arsenal;[90] they are entirely wrought in brick, with exquisite mouldings, not cast, but moulded in the clay by the hand, so that there is not one piece of the arch like another; the pilasters and shafts being, as usual, of stone.
§ XXXVIII. And here let me pause for a moment, to note what one should have thought was well enough known in England,—yet I could not perhaps touch upon anything less considered,—the real use of brick. Our fields of good clay were never given us to be made into oblong morsels of one size. They were given us that we might play with them, and that men who could not handle a chisel, might knead out of them some expression of human thought. In the ancient architecture of the clay districts of Italy, every possible adaptation of the material is found exemplified: from the coarsest and most brittle kinds, used in the mass of the structure, to bricks for arches and plinths, cast in the most perfect curves, and of almost every size, strength, and hardness; and moulded bricks, wrought into flower-work and tracery as fine as raised patterns upon china. And, just as many of the finest works of the Italian sculptors were executed in porcelain, many of the best thoughts of their architects are expressed in brick, or in the softer material of terra cotta; and if this were so in Italy, where there is not one city from whose towers we may not descry the blue outline of Alp or Apennine, everlasting quarries of granite or marble, how much more ought it to be so among the fields of England! I believe that the best academy for her architects, for some half century to come, would be the brick-field; for of this they may rest assured, that till they know how to use clay, they will never know how to use marble.
§ XXXIX. And now observe, as we pass from fig. 2 to fig. 3, and from fig. 5 to fig. 6, in [Plate XVII.], a most interesting step of transition. As we saw above, § XIV., the round arch yielding to the Gothic, by allowing a point to emerge at its summit, so here we have the Gothic conceding something to the form which had been assumed by the round; and itself slightly altering its outline so as to meet the condescension of the round arch half way. At page 137 of the first volume, I have drawn to scale one of these minute concessions of the pointed arch, granted at Verona out of pure courtesy to the Venetian forms, by one of the purest Gothic ornaments in the world; and the small window here, fig. 6, is a similar example at Venice itself, from the Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini, where the reversed curve at the head of the pointed arch is just perceptible and no more. The other examples, figs. 3 and 7, the first from a small but very noble house in the Merceria, the second from an isolated palace at Murano, show more advanced conditions of the reversed curve, which, though still employing the broad decorated architrave of the earlier examples, are in all other respects prepared for the transition to the simple window of the fifth order.
§ XL. The next example, the uppermost of the three lower series in [Plate XVII.], shows this order in its early purity; associated with intermediate decorations like those of the Byzantines, from a palace once belonging to the Erizzo family, near the Arsenal. The ornaments appear to be actually of Greek workmanship (except, perhaps, the two birds over the central arch, which are bolder, and more free in treatment), and built into the Gothic fronts; showing, however, the early date of the whole by the manner of their insertion, corresponding exactly with that employed in the Byzantine palaces, and by the covering of the intermediate spaces with sheets of marble, which, however, instead of being laid over the entire wall, are now confined to the immediate spaces between and above the windows, and are bounded by a dentil moulding.
In the example below this the Byzantine ornamentation has vanished, and the fifth order window is seen in its generic form, as commonly employed throughout the early Gothic period. Such arcades are of perpetual occurrence; the one in the Plate was taken from a small palace on the Grand Canal, nearly opposite the Casa Foscari. One point in it deserves especial notice, the increased size of the lateral window as compared with the rest: a circumstance which occurs in a great number of the groups of windows belonging to this period, and for which I have never been able to account.
§ XLI. Both these figures have been most carefully engraved; and the uppermost will give the reader a perfectly faithful idea of the general effect of the Byzantine sculptures, and of the varied alabaster among which they are inlaid, as well as of the manner in which these pieces are set together, every joint having been drawn on the spot: and the transition from the embroidered and silvery richness of this architecture, in which the Byzantine ornamentation was associated with the Gothic form of arch, to the simplicity of the pure Gothic arcade as seen in the lower figure, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of Venetian art. If it had occurred suddenly, and at an earlier period, it might have been traced partly to the hatred of the Greeks, consequent upon the treachery of Manuel Comnenus,[91] and the fatal war to which it led; but the change takes place gradually, and not till a much later period. I hoped to have been able to make some careful inquiries into the habits of domestic life of the Venetians before and after the dissolution of their friendly relations with Constantinople; but the labor necessary for the execution of my more immediate task has entirely prevented this: and I must be content to lay the succession of the architectural styles plainly before the reader, and leave the collateral questions to the investigation of others; merely noting this one assured fact, that the root of all that is greatest in Christian art is struck in the thirteenth century; that the temper of that century is the life-blood of all manly work thenceforward in Europe; and I suppose that one of its peculiar characteristics was elsewhere, as assuredly in Florence, a singular simplicity in domestic life:
| “I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad In leathern girdle, and a clasp of bone; And, with no artful coloring on her cheeks, His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw Of Verli and of Vecchio, well content With unrobed jerkin, and their good dames handling The spindle and the flax.... One waked to tend the cradle, hushing it With sounds that lulled the parents’ infancy; Another, with her maidens, drawing off The tresses from the distaff, lectured them Old tales of Troy, and Fesole, and Rome.”[92] |
§ XLII. Such, then, is the simple fact at Venice, that from the beginning of the thirteenth century there is found a singular increase of simplicity in all architectural ornamentation; the rich Byzantine capitals giving place to a pure and severe type hereafter to be described,[93] and the rich sculptures vanishing from the walls, nothing but the marble facing remaining. One of the most interesting examples of this transitional state is a palace at San Severo, just behind the Casa Zorzi. This latter is a Renaissance building, utterly worthless in every respect, but known to the Venetian Ciceroni; and by inquiring for it, and passing a little beyond it down the Fondamenta San Severo, the traveller will see, on the other side of the canal, a palace which the Ciceroni never notice, but which is unique in Venice for the magnificence of the veined purple alabasters with which it has been decorated, and for the manly simplicity of the foliage of its capitals. Except in these, it has no sculpture whatever, and its effect is dependent entirely on color. Disks of green serpentine are inlaid on the field of purple alabaster; and the pillars are alternately of red marble with white capitals, and of white marble with red capitals. Its windows appear of the third order; and the back of the palace, in a small and most picturesque court, shows a group of windows which are, perhaps, the most superb examples of that order in Venice. But the windows to the front have, I think, been of the fifth order, and their cusps have been cut away.