“Thwart of these, as fierce,
Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise,
Sirocco and Libecchio.”
I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones on the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to the fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe them all carefully, until he comes to the great pilaster or complicated pier which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say, the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the lower arcade; the first new lion’s head with smooth ears, cut in the time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the Fourteenth and the other of the Fifteenth Century....
I can only say that, in the winter of 1851 the “Paradise” of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de’ Pregadi were full of pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as precious as so many kingdoms, so precious indeed, and so full of majesty, that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the great chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of purple flower and shadowy pine.
Stones of Venice (London, 1851–’3).
THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA.
EDMONDO DE AMICIS.
The Mosque of Cordova, which was converted into a cathedral when the Moors were expelled but which has, notwithstanding, always remained a Mosque, was built on the ruins of the primitive cathedral not far from the Guadalquiver. Abd-er-Rahman began to build it in the year 785 or 786. “Let us build a Mosque,” said he, “which will surpass that of Bagdad, that of Damascus, and that of Jerusalem, which shall be the greatest temple of Islam and become the Mecca of the Occident.” The work was begun with ardour; and Christian slaves were made to carry the stones of razed churches for its foundation. Abd-er-Rahman, himself, worked an hour every day; in a few years the Mosque was built, the Caliphs who succeeded Abd-er-Rahman embellished it, and it was completed after a century of continuous labour.
“Here we are,” said one of my hosts, as we suddenly stopped before a vast edifice. I thought it was a fortress; but it was the wall that surrounded the Mosque, in which formerly opened twenty large bronze doors surrounded by graceful arabesques and arched windows supported by light columns; it is now covered with a triple coat of plaster. A trip around the boundary-wall is a nice little walk after dinner: you can judge then of the extent of the building.