Venetian architecture, like her literary and industrial life—indeed, like her whole life—was a combination of Oriental and Occidental influences. Her people were discoverers, adapters; they had a perfect genius for appreciation of the artistic, the eloquent, the statesmanlike, the progressive—in a word, "the Good, the Beautiful and the True" in the work of others—and with opportunities strewn along her path thicker than flowers in June, Venice seemed to grasp them all.
Although Venetian architecture was complex and composite to a degree, it is possible to trace the predominating influences as they set their mark upon style after style. Up to the thirteenth century the prevailing style was Byzantine, of which the leading characteristics seem to have been in Venice the semi-circular arch and a prodigal use of sculptured ornament. The method of construction employed by the Venetians—the walls being of a fine hard brick which was covered with stucco, or in the finer buildings with thin slabs of costly marbles and porphyries—permitted no end of surface decoration. And in this the color-loving Venetians reveled. Moldings, carvings, rolls, cavettos, flutings, panels, bands and diapers of flowing scroll work, lent their support to most varied adaptations of characteristic Persian or Moslem design, with its semi-conventional foliage, animals, dragons, birds, flowers, etc. Markedly beautiful, and in a way peculiar, is the effect of the façades of many buildings, "studded with gorgeous panels like jewels on a rich brocade."
Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept.
VENICE
Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept.
A "STREET" IN VENICE