§ XIX. Having taken sufficient note of all the baseness of mind which these facts indicate in the people, we shall not be surprised to find immediate signs of dotage in the conception of their architecture. The churches raised throughout this period are so grossly debased, that even the Italian critics of the present day, who are partially awakened to the true state of art in Italy, though blind, as yet, to its true cause, exhaust their terms of reproach upon these last efforts of the Renaissance builders. The two churches of San Moisè and Santa Maria Zobenigo, which are among the most remarkable in Venice for their manifestation of insolent atheism, are characterized by Lazari, the one as “culmine d’ogni follia architettonica,” the other as “orrido ammasso di pietra d’Istria,” with added expressions of contempt, as just as it is unmitigated.
§ XX. Now both these churches, which I should like the reader to visit in succession, if possible, after that of Sta. Maria Formosa, agree with that church, and with each other, in being totally destitute of religious symbols, and entirely dedicated to the honor of two Venetian families. In San Moisè, a bust of Vincenzo Fini is set on a tall narrow pyramid, above the central door, with this marvellous inscription:
| “OMNE FASTIGIVM VIRTVTE IMPLET VINCENTIVS FINI.” |
It is very difficult to translate this; for fastigium, besides its general sense, has a particular one in architecture, and refers to the part of the building occupied by the bust; but the main meaning of it is that “Vincenzo Fini fills all height with his virtue.” The inscription goes on into farther praise, but this example is enough. Over the two lateral doors are two other laudatory inscriptions of younger members of the Fini family, the dates of death of the three heroes being 1660, 1685, and 1726, marking thus the period of consummate degradation.
| III. |
| NOBLE AND IGNOBLE GROTESQUE. |
§ XXI. In like manner, the Church of Santa Maria Zobenigo is entirely dedicated to the Barbaro family; the only religious symbols with which it is invested being statues of angels blowing brazen trumpets, intended to express the spreading of the fame of the Barbaro family in heaven. At the top of the church is Venice crowned, between Justice and Temperance, Justice holding a pair of grocer’s scales, of iron, swinging in the wind. There is a two-necked stone eagle (the Barbaro crest), with a copper crown, in the centre of the pediment. A huge statue of a Barbaro in armor, with a fantastic head-dress, over the central door; and four Barbaros in niches, two on each side of it, strutting statues, in the common stage postures of the period,—Jo. Maria Barbaro, sapiens ordinum; Marinus Barbaro, Senator (reading a speech in a Ciceronian attitude); Franc. Barbaro, legatus in classe (in armor, with high-heeled boots, and looking resolutely fierce); and Carolus Barbaro, sapiens ordinum: the decorations of the façade being completed by two trophies, consisting of drums, trumpets, flags and cannon; and six plans, sculptured in relief, of the towns of Zara, Candia, Padua, Rome, Corfu, and Spalatro.
§ XXII. When the traveller has sufficiently considered the meaning of this façade, he ought to visit the Church of St. Eustachio, remarkable for the dramatic effect of the group of sculpture on its façade, and then the Church of the Ospedaletto (see Index, under head Ospedaletto); noticing, on his way, the heads on the foundations of the Palazzo Corner della Regina, and the Palazzo Pesaro, and any other heads carved on the modern bridges, closing with those on the Bridge of Sighs.
He will then have obtained a perfect idea of the style and feeling of the Grotesque Renaissance. I cannot pollute this volume by any illustration of its worst forms, but the head turned to the front, on the right-hand in the opposite Plate, will give the general reader an idea of its most graceful and refined developments. The figure set beside it, on the left, is a piece of noble grotesque, from fourteenth century Gothic; and it must be our present task to ascertain the nature of the difference which exists between the two, by an accurate inquiry into the true essence of the grotesque spirit itself.
§ XXIII. First, then, it seems to me that the grotesque is, in almost all cases, composed of two elements, one ludicrous, the other fearful; that, as one or other of these elements prevails, the grotesque falls into two branches, sportive grotesque and terrible grotesque; but that we cannot legitimately consider it under these two aspects, because there are hardly any examples which do not in some degree combine both elements; there are few grotesques so utterly playful as to be overcast with no shade of fearfulness, and few so fearful as absolutely to exclude all ideas of jest. But although we cannot separate the grotesque itself into two branches, we may easily examine separately the two conditions of mind which it seems to combine; and consider successively what are the kinds of jest, and what the kinds of fearfulness, which may be legitimately expressed in the various walks of art, and how their expressions actually occur in the Gothic and Renaissance schools.