Add to this magnificence a lavish use of gold and color, particularly the warm ochres and earth reds, and the costly ultramarine, and the modern mind, accustomed to uncolored and unstriated marbles and the quiet gray of stone, can hardly imagine the gorgeous luxuriance of color that marked the city in her prime.
The architectural glory of Venice is of course the Church of St. Mark, which, says Professor Middleton,
stands quite alone among the buildings of the world in respect of its unequaled richness of material and decoration, and also from the fact that it has been constructed with the spoils of countless other buildings, and therefore forms a museum of sculpture of the most varied kind, nearly every century from the fourth down to the latest Renaissance being represented in some carved panel or capital, if not more largely....
During the long period from its dedication in 1085 till the overthrow of the Venetian republic by Napoleon, every doge's reign saw some addition to the rich decorations of the church—mosaics, sculpture, wall linings or columns of precious marbles. By degrees the whole walls inside and outside were completely faced either with glass mosaics on gold grounds or with precious colored marbles and porphyries, plain white marble being only used for sculpture, and then thickly covered with gold.... No less than five hundred columns of porphyry and costly marbles are used.... A whole volume might be written on the sculptured capitals, panels, screens.
The use of inlay is almost peculiar to St. Mark's, as is also the method of enriching sculptured reliefs with backgrounds of brilliant gold and colored glass mosaics, producing an effect of extraordinary magnificence.
One of the great glories of St. Mark's is the most magnificent gold retable in the world, most sumptuously decorated with jewels and enamels, usually known as the Pala d'Oro.... This marvelous retable is made up of an immense number of microscopically minute gold cloisonné enamel pictures, of the utmost splendor in color and detail.
Of the architecture and art of the great council hall of the doges, the Ducal Palace, little need be said after the description of St. Mark's, for while not so lavishly ornamented, it is a world in itself in the style of architectural beauty that most appealed to the Venetians.
The original Palace of the Doges was built in the ninth century, but the vicissitudes of war and of fire decreed its rebuilding several times, and the Ducal Palace that we know today dates from the fourteenth century. Says Professor Middleton:
The two main façades, those towards the sea and the Piazzetta, consist of a repetition of the same design, that which was begun in the early years of the fourteenth century.... The design of these façades is very striking, and unlike that of any other building in the world....
The main walls are wholly of brick; but none was left visible. The whole surface of the upper story is faced with small blocks of fine Istrian and red Verona marbles, arranged so as to make a large diaper pattern, with, in the center of each lozenge, a cross made of verde antico and other costly marbles. The colonnades, string-courses, and other decorative features are built in solid Istrian stone.
Very beautiful sculpture, executed with an ivory-like minuteness of finish, is used to decorate the whole building with wonderful profusion. At each of the three free angles is a large group immediately over the lower column. At the south-east angle is the Drunkenness of Noah, at the south-west the Fall of Man, and at the north-west the Judgment of Solomon. Over each at a much higher level is a colossal figure of an archangel—Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel.
The sculpture of all the capitals, especially of those on the thirty-six lower columns, is very beautiful and elaborate, a great variety of subjects being introduced among the decorative foliage, such as the virtues, vices, months of the year, age of man, occupations, sciences, animals, nations of the world, and the like. On the whole, the sculpture of the fourteenth century part is finer than that of the later part near St. Mark's.
On the walls of the chief council chambers are a magnificent series of oil paintings by Tintoretto and other, less able, Venetians—among them Tintoretto's masterpiece, Bacchus and Ariadne and his enormous picture of Paradise, the largest oil painting in the world.
Up to and during a part of the sixteenth century the state prisons were on the ground floor of the Ducal Palace, but they were finally removed to a new structure on the opposite side of the narrow canal, and a bridge, the "Ponte dei Sospiri" or "Bridge of Sighs," was thrown across the canal, connecting the two buildings.
In the magnificence and beauty of its homes—its palazzi or palaces—Venice is unique in the world. It is said that no other city, then or since, is to be compared with Venice in the loveliness and romantic interest of its domestic architecture. Up to the twelfth century the Byzantine style of architecture prevailed, but the thirteenth and fourteenth century palaces—whose builders were more or less influenced by the design of the Ducal Palace, then nearing completion—are Venetian Gothic.
The climax of splendor was reached in the "Golden House" the wonderful Ca' d'Oro, so named from the lavish use of gold leaf on its sculptured ornamentations. It was literally a "golden house."
No words can describe the magnificence of this palace on the Grand Canal, its whole façade faced with the most costly variegated marbles, once picked out with gold, vermillion and ultramarine, the walls pierced with the elaborate traceried windows and enriched with bands and panels of delicate carving—in combined richness of form and wealth of color giving an effect of almost dazzling splendor.