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Stones of Venice [introductions]

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SECTION XIX. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the
people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the
various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the dark
places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and,
for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater
number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their
appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the
step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of
St. Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in
which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian
porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and
then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss
and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the
lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if
comforted.

SECTION XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler
characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a
devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to
their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever
there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more
than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of
the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its
architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories
embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight,
on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number
of worshippers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the
Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left
comparatively empty. [Footnote: The mere warmth of St. Mark's in winter,
which is much greater than that of the other two churches above named,
must, however, be taken into consideration, as one of the most efficient
causes of its being then more frequented.] But this effect is altogether
to be ascribed to its richer assemblage of those sources of influence
which address themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind,
and which, in all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in
the support of superstition. Darkness and mystery; confused recesses of
building; artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained
with a constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness;
preciousness of material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye; close
air loaded with a sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious
services, solemn music, and tangible idols or images having popular
legends attached to them,--these, the stage properties of superstition,
which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be to the end
of it, employed by all nations, whether openly savage or nominally
civilized, to produce a false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the
true nature of the Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as
far as I know, unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the
Magus and the Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed
Christianity; and the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be
regarded by us with no more respect than we should have considered
ourselves justified in rendering to the devotion of the worshippers at
Eleusis, Ellora, or Edfou. [Footnote: I said above that the larger
number of the devotees entered by the "Arabian" porch; the porch, that
is to say, on the north side of the church, remarkable for its rich
Arabian archivolt, and through which access is gained immediately to the
northern transept. The reason is, that in that transept is the chapel of
the Madonna, which has a greater attraction for the Venetians than all
the rest of the church besides. The old builders kept their images of
the Virgin subordinate to those of Christ; but modern Romanism has
retrograded from theirs, and the most glittering portions of the whole
church are the two recesses behind this lateral altar, covered with
silver hearts dedicated to the Virgin.]

SECTION XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion
were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not
employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the
torchlight illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye
traced and every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole
residence in Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I
never heard from any one the most languid expression of interest in any
feature of the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their
understanding the meaning of its architecture; and while, therefore, the
English cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services
for which it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many
of its characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now
surrounded, retains yet so much of its religious influence that no
prominent feature of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in
vain, we have in St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the
ceremonies for which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive
attributes have altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries.
The beauty which it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is
forgotten; and in the midst of the city to whose service it has so long
been consecrated, and still filled by crowds of the descendants of those
to whom it owes its magnificence; it stands, in reality, more desolate
than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our
English valleys; and the writing on its marble walls is less regarded
and less powerful for the teaching of men, than the letters which the
shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on the
tombs in the desecrated cloister.

SECTION XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its
present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and
meaning of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only
be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on
abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the
present neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the
Venetian character, or how far this church is to be considered as the
relic of a barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or
influencing the feelings of a civilized community.

The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I
carefully kept the study of _expression_ distinct from that of abstract
architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we
should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its
construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of
art; and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its
expressional purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's
merely as a piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to estimate
its fitness for its special duty as a place of worship, and the relation
in which it stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that still
retain so much of the power over the human heart, which the Byzantine
domes appear to have lost for ever.

SECTION XXIII. In the two succeeding sections of this work, devoted
respectively to the examination of the Gothic and Renaissance buildings
in Venice, I have endeavored to analyze and state, as briefly as
possible, the true nature of each school,--first in Spirit, then in
Form. I wished to have given a similar analysis, in this section, of the
nature of Byzantine architecture; but could not make my statements
general, because I have never seen this kind of building on its native
soil. Nevertheless, in the following sketch of the principles
exemplified in St. Mark's, I believe that most of the leading features
and motives of the style will be found clearly enough distinguished to
enable the reader to judge of it with tolerable fairness, as compared
with the better known systems of European architecture in the middle
ages.

SECTION XXIV. Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and
the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its
confessed _incrustation_. It is the purest example in Italy of the
great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the
incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary
before we proceed to criticise any one of its arrangements, that the
reader should carefully consider the principles which are likely to have
influenced, or might legitimately influence, the architects of such a
school, as distinguished from those whose designs are to be executed in
massive materials.

It is true, that among different nations, and at different times, we may
find examples of every sort and degree of incrustation, from the mere
setting of the larger and more compact stones by preference at the
outside of the wall, to the miserable construction of that modern brick
cornice, with its coating of cement, which, but the other day, in
London, killed its unhappy workmen in its fall. [Footnote: Vide
"Builder," for October, 1851.] But just as it is perfectly possible to
have a clear idea of the opposing characteristics of two different
species of plants or animals, though between the two there are varieties
which it is difficult to assign either to the one or the other, so the
reader may fix decisively in his mind the legitimate characteristics of
the incrusted and the massive styles, though between the two there are
varieties which confessedly unite the attributes of both. For instance,
in many Roman remains, built of blocks of tufa and incrusted with
marble, we have a style, which, though truly solid, possesses some of
the attributes of incrustation; and in the Cathedral of Florence, built
of brick and coated with marble, the marble facing is so firmly and
exquisitely set, that the building, though in reality incrusted, assumes
the attributes of solidity. But these intermediate examples need not in
the least confuse our generally distinct ideas of the two families of
buildings: the one in which the substance is alike throughout, and the
forms and conditions of the ornament assume or prove that it is so, as
in the best Greek buildings, and for the most part in our early Norman
and Gothic; and the other, in which the substance is of two kinds, one
internal, the other external, and the system of decoration is founded on
this duplicity, as pre-eminently in St. Mark's.

SECTION XXV. I have used the word duplicity in no depreciatory sense. In
chapter ii. of the "Seven Lamps," Section 18, I especially guarded this
incrusted school from the imputation of insincerity, and I must do so
now at greater length. It appears insincere at first to a Northern
builder, because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he
is in the habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of
masonry to be some criterion of its thickness. But, as soon as he gets
acquainted with the incrusted style, he will find that the Southern
builders had no intention to deceive him. He will see that every slab of
facial marble is fastened to the next by a confessed _rivet_, and that
the joints of the armor are so visibly and openly accommodated to the
contours of the substance within, that he has no more right to complain
of treachery than a savage would have, who, for the first time in his
life seeing a man in armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel.
Acquaint him with the customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat
of mail, and he ceases to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the
knight.

These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must
be our business to develop.

SECTION XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise
to such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any
quarries of available stone, and having precarious access to the
mainland where they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely
with brick, or to import whatever stone they use from great distances,
in ships of small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on
the oar rather than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as
great, whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the
natural tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as
possible. But in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the
limitation of its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by
cost, but by the physical conditions of the material, for of many
marbles, pieces above a certain size are not to be had for money. There
would also be a tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone
as possible ready sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if
the traffic of their merchants led them to places where there were ruins
of ancient edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out
of this supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a
quality that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and
partly of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the
island architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his
edifice. It is at his choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious
marble here and there among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the
sculptured fragments such new forms as may be necessary for the
observance of fixed proportions in the new building; or else to cut the
colored stones into thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole
surface of the walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular
enough to admit the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a
view of displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting them to any
regular service in the support of the building.

An architect who cared only to display his own skill, and had no respect
for the works of others, would assuredly have chosen the former
alternative, and would have sawn the old marbles into fragments in order
to prevent all interference with his own designs. But an architect who
cared for the preservation of noble work, whether his own or others',
and more regarded the beauty of his building than his own fame, would
have done what those old builders of St. Mark's did for us, and saved
every relic with which he was entrusted.

SECTION XXVII. But these were not the only motives which influenced the
Venetians in the adoption of their method of architecture. It might,
under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with
other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or
twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with
porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in
freestone. But with the Venetians it could not be a question for an
instant; they were exiles from ancient and beautiful cities, and had
been accustomed to build with their ruins, not less in affection than in
admiration: they had thus not only grown familiar with the practice of
inserting older fragments in modern buildings, but they owed to that
practice a great part of the splendor of their city, and whatever charm
of association might aid its change from a Refuge into a Home. The
practice which began in the affections of a fugitive nation, was
prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and beside the memorials of
departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of returning victory. The
ship of war brought home more marble in triumph than 'the merchant
vessel in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's became rather a
shrine at which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous spoil, than
the organized expression of any fixed architectural law, or religious
emotion.

SECTION XXVIII. Thus far, however, the justification of the style of
this church depends on circumstances peculiar to the time of its
erection, and to the spot where it arose. The merit of its method,
considered in the abstract, rests on far broader grounds.

In the fifth chapter of the "Seven Lamps," Section 14, the reader will
find the opinion of a modern architect of some reputation, Mr. Wood,
that the chief thing remarkable in this church "is its extreme
ugliness;" and he will find this opinion associated with another,
namely, that the works of the Caracci are far preferable to those of the
Venetian painters. This second statement of feeling reveals to us one of
the principal causes of the first; namely, that Mr. Wood had not any
perception of color, or delight in it. The perception of color is a gift
just as definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, as an
ear for music; and the very first requisite for true judgment of St.
Mark's, is the perfection of that color-faculty which few people ever
set themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. For it
is on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that
the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested; and a deaf
man might as well pretend to pronounce judgment on the merits of a full
orchestra, as an architect trained in the composition of form only, to
discern the beauty of St. Mark's. It possesses the charm of color in
common with the greater part of the architecture, as well as of the
manufactures, of the East; but the Venetians deserve especial note as
the only European people who appear to have sympathized to the full with
the great instinct of the Eastern races. They indeed were compelled to
bring artists from Constantinople to design the mosaics of the vaults of
St. Mark's, and to group the colors of its porches; but they rapidly
took up and developed, under more masculine conditions, the system of
which the Greeks had shown them the example: while the burghers and
barons of the North were building their dark streets and grisly castles
of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice were covering their
palaces with porphyry and gold; and at last, when her mighty painters
had created for her a color more priceless than gold or porphyry, even
this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls whose
foundations were beaten by the sea; and the strong tide, as it runs
beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the
frescoes of Giorgione.

SECTION XXIX. If, therefore, the reader does not care for color, I must
protest against his endeavor to form any judgment whatever of this
church of St. Mark's. But, if he both cares for and loves it, let him
remember that the school of incrusted architecture is _the only one in
which perfect and permanent chromatic decoration is possible_; and
let him look upon every piece of jasper and alabaster given to the
architect as a cake of very hard color, of which a certain portion is to
be ground down or cut off, to paint the walls with. Once understand this
thoroughly, and accept the condition that the body and availing strength
of the edifice are to be in brick, and that this under muscular power of
brickwork is to be clothed with the defence and the brightness of the
marble, as the body of an animal is protected and adorned by its scales
or its skin, and all the consequent fitnesses and laws of the structure
will be easily discernible. These I shall state in their natural order.

SECTION XXX. LAW I. _That the plinths and cornices used for binding
the armor are to be light and delicate._ A certain thickness, at
least two or three inches, must be required in the covering pieces (even
when composed of the strongest stone, and set on the least exposed
parts), in order to prevent the chance of fracture, and to allow for the
wear of time. And the weight of this armor must not be trusted to
cement; the pieces must not be merely glued to the rough brick surface,
but connected with the mass which they protect by binding cornices and
string courses; and with each other, so as to secure mutual support,
aided by the rivetings, but by no means dependent upon them. And, for
the full honesty and straightforwardness of the work, it is necessary
that these string courses and binding plinths should not be of such
proportions as would fit them for taking any important part in the hard
work of the inner structure, or render them liable to be mistaken for
the great cornices and plinths already explained as essential parts of
the best solid building. They must be delicate, slight, and visibly
incapable of severer work than that assigned to them.

SECTION XXXI. LAW II. _Science of inner structure is to be abandoned._ As
the body of the structure is confessedly of inferior, and comparatively
incoherent materials, it would be absurd to attempt in it any expression
of the higher refinements of construction. It will be enough that by its
mass we are assured of its sufficiency and strength; and there is the
less reason for endeavoring to diminish the extent of its surface by
delicacy of adjustment, because on the breadth of that surface we are to
depend for the better display of the color, which is to be the chief
source of our pleasure in the building. The main body of the work,
therefore, will be composed of solid walls and massive piers; and
whatever expression of finer structural science we may require, will be
thrown either into subordinate portions of it, or entirely directed to
the support of the external mail, where in arches or vaults it might
otherwise appear dangerously independent of the material within.

SECTION XXXII. LAW III. _All shafts are to be solid._ Wherever, by the
smallness of the parts, we may be driven to abandon the incrusted
structure at all, it must be abandoned altogether. The eye must never be
left in the least doubt as to what is solid and what is coated. Whatever
appears _probably_ solid, must be _assuredly_ so, and therefore it
becomes an inviolable law that no shaft shall ever be incrusted. Not only
does the whole virtue of a shaft depend on its consolidation, but the
labor of cutting and adjusting an incrusted coat to it would be greater
than the saving of material is worth. Therefore the shaft, of whatever
size, is always to be solid; and because the incrusted character of the
rest of the building renders it more difficult for the shafts to clear
themselves from suspicion, they must not, in this incrusted style, be in
any place jointed. No shaft must ever be used but of one block; and this
the more, because the permission given to the builder to have his walls
and piers as ponderous as he likes, renders it quite unnecessary for him
to use shafts of any fixed size. In our Norman and Gothic, where definite
support is required at a definite point, it becomes lawful to build up a
tower of small stones in the shape of a shaft. But the Byzantine is
allowed to have as much support as he wants from the walls in every
direction, and he has no right to ask for further license in the
structure of his shafts. Let him, by generosity in the substance of his
pillars, repay us for the permission we have given him to be superficial
in his walls. The builder in the chalk valleys of France and England may
be blameless in kneading his clumsy pier out of broken flint and calcined
lime; but the Venetian, who has access to the riches of Asia and the
quarries of Egypt, must frame at least his shafts out of flawless stone.

SECTION XXXIII. And this for another reason yet. Although, as we have
said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with
color, except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there
is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the
procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from
this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but
in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his
walls so thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the
portion of the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in
this respect. For if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the
walls, the spectator cannot tell their thickness, and cannot judge of
the costliness of the sacrifice. But the shaft he can measure with his
eye in an instant, and estimate the quantity of treasure both in the
mass of its existing substance, and in that which has been hewn away to
bring it into its perfect and symmetrical form. And thus the shafts of
all buildings of this kind are justly regarded as an expression of their
wealth, and a form of treasure, just as much as the jewels or gold in
the sacred vessels; they are, in fact, nothing else than large jewels,
[Footnote: "Quivi presso si vedi una colonna di tanta bellezza e finezza
che e riputato _piutosto gioia che pietra_,"--Sansovino, of the
verd-antique pillar in San Jacomo dell' Orio. A remarkable piece of
natural history and moral philosophy, connected with this subject, will
be found in the second chapter of our third volume, quoted from the work
of a Florentine architect of the fifteenth century.] the block of
precious serpentine or jasper being valued according to its size and
brilliancy of color, like a large emerald or ruby; only the bulk
required to bestow value on the one is to be measured in feet and tons,
and on the other in lines and carats. The shafts must therefore be,
without exception, of one block in all buildings of this kind; for the
attempt in any place to incrust or joint them would be a deception like
that of introducing a false stone among jewellery (for a number of
joints of any precious stone are of course not equal in value to a
single piece of equal weight), and would put an end at once to the
spectator's confidence in the expression of wealth in any portion of the
structure, or of the spirit of sacrifice in those who raised it.

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