A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Stones of Venice [introductions]

J >> John Ruskin >> Stones of Venice [introductions]




SECTION XXXIV. LAW IV. _The shafts may sometimes be independent of the
construction._ Exactly in proportion to the importance which the
shaft assumes as a large jewel, is the diminution of its importance as a
sustaining member; for the delight which we receive in its abstract
bulk, and beauty of color, is altogether independent of any perception
of its adaptation to mechanical necessities. Like other beautiful things
in this world, its end is to _be_ beautiful; and, in proportion to
its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not
blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of
hammers. Nay, so far from our admiration of the jewel shaft being
dependent on its doing work for us, it is very possible that a chief
part of its preciousness may consist in a delicacy, fragility, and
tenderness of material, which must render it utterly unfit for hard
work; and therefore that we shall admire it the more, because we
perceive that if we were to put much weight upon it, it would be
crushed. But, at all events, it is very clear that the primal object in
the placing of such shafts must be the display of their beauty to the
best advantage, and that therefore all imbedding of them in walls, or
crowding of them into groups, in any position in which either their real
size or any portion of their surface would be concealed, is either
inadmissible together, or objectionable in proportion to their value;
that no symmetrical or scientific arrangements of pillars are therefore
ever to be expected in buildings of this kind, and that all such are
even to be looked upon as positive errors and misapplications of
materials: but that, on the contrary, we must be constantly prepared to
see, and to see with admiration, shafts of great size and importance set
in places where their real service is little more than nominal, and
where the chief end of their existence is to catch the sunshine upon
their polished sides, and lead the eye into delighted wandering among
the mazes of their azure veins.

SECTION XXXV. LAW V. _The shafts may be of variable size._ Since
the value of each shaft depends upon its bulk, and diminishes with the
diminution of its mass, in a greater ratio than the size itself
diminishes, as in the case of all other jewellery, it is evident that we
must not in general expect perfect symmetry and equality among the
series of shafts, any more than definiteness of application; but that,
on the contrary, an accurately observed symmetry ought to give us a kind
of pain, as proving that considerable and useless loss has been
sustained by some of the shafts, in being cut down to match with the
rest. It is true that symmetry is generally sought for in works of
smaller jewellery; but, even there, not a perfect symmetry, and obtained
under circumstances quite different from those which affect the placing
of shafts in architecture. First: the symmetry is usually imperfect. The
stones that seem to match each other in a ring or necklace, appear to do
so only because they are so small that their differences are not easily
measured by the eye; but there is almost always such difference between
them as would be strikingly apparent if it existed in the same
proportion between two shafts nine or ten feet in height. Secondly: the
quantity of stones which pass through a jeweller's hands, and the
facility of exchange of such small objects, enable the tradesman to
select any number of stones of approximate size; a selection, however,
often requiring so much time, that perfect symmetry in a group of very
fine stones adds enormously to their value. But the architect has
neither the time nor the facilities of exchange. He cannot lay aside one
column in a corner of his church till, in the course of traffic, he
obtain another that will match it; he has not hundreds of shafts
fastened up in bundles, out of which he can match sizes at his ease; he
cannot send to a brother-tradesman and exchange the useless stones for
available ones, to the convenience of both. His blocks of stone, or his
ready hewn shafts, have been brought to him in limited number, from
immense distances; no others are to be had; and for those which he does
not bring into use, there is no demand elsewhere. His only means of
obtaining symmetry will therefore be, in cutting down the finer masses
to equality with the inferior ones; and this we ought not to desire him
often to do. And therefore, while sometimes in a Baldacchino, or an
important chapel or shrine, this costly symmetry may be necessary, and
admirable in proportion to its probable cost, in the general fabric we
must expect to see shafts introduced of size and proportion continually
varying, and such symmetry as may be obtained among them never
altogether perfect, and dependent for its charm frequently on strange
complexities and unexpected rising and falling of weight and accent in
its marble syllables; bearing the same relation to a rigidly chiselled
and proportioned architecture that the wild lyric rhythm of Aeschylus or
Pindar bears to the finished measures of Pope.

SECTION XXXVI. The application of the principles of jewellery to the
smaller as well as the larger blocks, will suggest to us another reason
for the method of incrustation adopted in the walls. It often happens
that the beauty of the veining in some varieties of alabaster is so
great, that it becomes desirable to exhibit it by dividing the stone,
not merely to economize its substance, but to display the changes in the
disposition of its fantastic lines. By reversing one of two thin plates
successively taken from the stone, and placing their corresponding edges
in contact, a perfectly symmetrical figure may be obtained, which will
enable the eye to comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins.
And this is actually the method in which, for the most part, the
alabasters of St. Mark are employed; thus accomplishing a double
good,--directing the spectator, in the first place, to close observation
of the nature of the stone employed, and in the second, giving him a
farther proof of the honesty of intention in the builder: for wherever
similar veining is discovered in two pieces, the fact is declared that
they have been cut from the same stone. It would have been easy to
disguise the similarity by using them in different parts of the
building; but on the contrary they are set edge to edge, so that the
whole system of the architecture may be discovered at a glance by any
one acquainted with the nature of the stones employed. Nay, but, it is
perhaps answered me, not by an ordinary observer; a person ignorant of
the nature of alabaster might perhaps fancy all these symmetrical
patterns to have been found in the stone itself, and thus be doubly
deceived, supposing blocks to be solid and symmetrical which were in
reality subdivided and irregular. I grant it; but be it remembered, that
in all things, ignorance is liable to be deceived, and has no right to
accuse anything but itself as the source of the deception. The style and
the words are dishonest, not which are liable to be misunderstood if
subjected to no inquiry, but which are deliberately calculated to lead
inquiry astray. There are perhaps no great or noble truths, from those
of religion downwards, which present no mistakable aspect to casual or
ignorant contemplation. Both the truth and the lie agree in hiding
themselves at first, but the lie continues to hide itself with effort,
as we approach to examine it; and leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper
lies; the truth reveals itself in proportion to our patience and
knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our pleading, and leads us, as it
is discovered, into deeper truths.

SECTION XXXVII. LAW VI. _The decoration must be shallow in
cutting._ The method of construction being thus systematized, it is
evident that a certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based
on the primal condition that over the greater part of the edifice there
can be _no deep cutting_. The thin sheets of covering stones do not
admit of it; we must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever
ornaments we engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an inch
deep at the utmost. Consider for an instant the enormous differences
which this single condition compels between the sculptural decoration of
the incrusted style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which
may be hacked and hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black
recesses we choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque
projections, and rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any
form or thought may be wrought out on any scale,--mighty statues with
robes of rock and crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous
goblins and stealthy dragons shrunk into lurking-places of untraceable
shade: think of this, and of the play and freedom given to the
sculptor's hand and temper, to smite out and in, hither and thither, as
he will; and then consider what must be the different spirit of the
design which is to be wrought on the smooth surface of a film of marble,
where every line and shadow must be drawn with the most tender
pencilling and cautious reserve of resource,--where even the chisel must
not strike hard, lest it break through the delicate stone, nor the mind
be permitted in any impetuosity of conception inconsistent with the fine
discipline of the hand. Consider that whatever animal or human form is
to be suggested, must be projected on a flat surface; that all the
features of the countenance, the folds of the drapery, the involutions
of the limbs, must be so reduced and subdued that the whole work becomes
rather a piece of fine drawing than of sculpture; and then follow out,
until you begin to perceive their endlessness, the resulting differences
of character which will be necessitated in every part of the ornamental
designs of these incrusted churches, as compared with that of the
Northern schools. I shall endeavor to trace a few of them only.

SECTION XXXVIII. The first would of course be a diminution of the
builder's dependence upon human form as a source of ornament: since
exactly in proportion to the dignity of the form itself is the loss
which it must sustain in being reduced to a shallow and linear
bas-relief, as well as the difficulty of expressing it at all under such
conditions. Wherever sculpture can be solid, the nobler characters of
the human form at once lead the artist to aim at its representation,
rather than at that of inferior organisms; but when all is to be reduced
to outline, the forms of flowers and lower animals are always more
intelligible, and are felt to approach much more to a satisfactory
rendering of the objects intended, than the outlines of the human body.
This inducement to seek for resources of ornament in the lower fields of
creation was powerless in the minds of the great Pagan nations,
Ninevite, Greek, or Egyptian: first, because their thoughts were so
concentrated on their own capacities and fates, that they preferred the
rudest suggestion of human form to the best of an inferior organism;
secondly, because their constant practice in solid sculpture, often
colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science into the
treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome vase,
or shallow hieroglyphic.

SECTION XXXIX. But when various ideas adverse to the representation of
animal, and especially of human, form, originating with the Arabs and
iconoclast Greeks, had begun at any rate to direct the builders' minds
to seek for decorative materials in inferior types, and when diminished
practice in solid sculpture had rendered it more difficult to find
artists capable of satisfactorily reducing the high organisms to their
elementary outlines, the choice of subject for surface sculpture would
be more and more uninterruptedly directed to floral organisms, and human
and animal form would become diminished in size, frequency, and general
importance. So that, while in the Northern solid architecture we
constantly find the effect of its noblest features dependent on ranges
of statues, often colossal, and full of abstract interest, independent
of their architectural service, in the Southern incrusted style we must
expect to find the human form for the most part subordinate and
diminutive, and involved among designs of foliage and flowers, in the
manner of which endless examples had been furnished by the fantastic
ornamentation of the Romans, from which the incrusted style had been
directly derived.

SECTION XL. Farther. In proportion to the degree in which his subject
must be reduced to abstract outline will be the tendency in the sculptor
to abandon naturalism of representation, and subordinate every form to
architectural service. Where the flower or animal can be hewn into bold
relief, there will always be a temptation to render the representation
of it more complete than is necessary, or even to introduce details and
intricacies inconsistent with simplicity of distant effect. Very often a
worse fault than this is committed; and in the endeavor to give vitality
to the stone, the original ornamental purpose of the design is
sacrificed or forgotten. But when nothing of this kind can be attempted,
and a slight outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may
anticipate that this outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and
that the richness of its ornamental arrangement will atone for the
feebleness of its power of portraiture. On the porch of a Northern
cathedral we may seek for the images of the flowers that grow in the
neighboring fields, and as we watch with wonder the gray stones that
fret themselves into thorns, and soften into blossoms, we may care
little that these knots of ornament, as we retire from them to
contemplate the whole building, appear unconsidered or confused. On the
incrusted building we must expect no such deception of the eye or
thoughts. It may sometimes be difficult to determine, from the
involutions of its linear sculpture, what were the natural forms which
originally suggested them: but we may confidently expect that the grace
of their arrangement will always be complete; that there will not be a
line in them which could be taken away without injury, nor one wanting
which could be added with advantage.

SECTION XLI. Farther. While the sculptures of the incrusted school will
thus be generally distinguished by care and purity rather than force,
and will be, for the most part, utterly wanting in depth of shadow,
there will be one means of obtaining darkness peculiarly simple and
obvious, and often in the sculptor's power. Wherever he can, without
danger, leave a hollow behind his covering slabs, or use them, like
glass, to fill an aperture in the wall, he can, by piercing them with
holes, obtain points or spaces of intense blackness to contrast with the
light tracing of the rest of his design. And we may expect to find this
artifice used the more extensively, because, while it will be an
effective means of ornamentation on the exterior of the building, it
will be also the safest way of admitting light to the interior, still
totally excluding both rain and wind. And it will naturally follow that
the architect, thus familiarized with the effect of black and sudden
points of shadow, will often seek to carry the same principle into other
portions of his ornamentation, and by deep drill-holes, or perhaps
inlaid portions of black color, to refresh the eye where it may be
wearied by the lightness of the general handling.

SECTION XLII. Farther. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which the
force of sculpture is subdued, will be the importance attached to color
as a means of effect or constituent of beauty. I have above stated that
the incrusted style was the only one in which perfect or permanent color
decoration was _possible_. It is also the only one in which a true
system of color decoration was ever likely to be invented. In order to
understand this, the reader must permit me to review with some care the
nature of the principles of coloring adopted by the Northern and
Southern nations.

SECTION XLIII. I believe that from the beginning of the world there has
never been a true or fine school of art in which color was despised. It
has often been imperfectly attained and injudiciously applied, but I
believe it to be one of the essential signs of life in a school of art,
that it loves color; and I know it to be one of the first signs of death
in the Renaissance schools, that they despised color.

Observe, it is not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are
better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature
and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but
that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the
builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they
could obtain, and that there is not, as far as I am aware, in Europe,
any monument of a truly noble school which has not been either painted
all over, or vigorously touched with paint, mosaic, and gilding in its
prominent parts. Thus far Egyptians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and mediaeval
Christians all agree: none of them, when in their right senses, ever
think of doing without paint; and, therefore, when I said above that the
Venetians were the only people who had thoroughly sympathized with the
Arabs in this respect, I referred, first, to their intense love of
color, which led them to lavish the most expensive decorations on
ordinary dwelling-houses; and, secondly, to that perfection of the
color-instinct in them, which enabled them to render whatever they did,
in this kind, as just in principle as it was gorgeous in appliance. It
is this principle of theirs, as distinguished from that of the Northern
builders, which we have finally to examine.

SECTION XLIV. In the second chapter of the first volume, it was noticed
that the architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorn, and that the
porch of his cathedral was therefore decorated with a rich wreath of it;
but another of the predilections of that architect was there unnoticed,
namely, that he did not at all like _gray_ hawthorn, but preferred
it green, and he painted it green accordingly, as bright as he could.
The color is still left in every sheltered interstice of the foliage. He
had, in fact, hardly the choice of any other color; he might have gilded
the thorns, by way of allegorizing human life, but if they were to be
painted at all, they could hardly be painted anything but green, and
green all over. People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of
abstract harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his
hawthorn blue.

SECTION XLV. In the same way, whenever the subject of the sculpture was
definite, its color was of necessity definite also; and, in the hands of
the Northern builders, it often became, in consequence, rather the means
of explaining and animating the stories of their stone-work, than a
matter of abstract decorative science. Flowers were painted red, trees
green, and faces flesh-color; the result of the whole being often far
more entertaining than beautiful. And also, though in the lines of the
mouldings and the decorations of shafts or vaults, a richer and more
abstract method of coloring was adopted (aided by the rapid development
of the best principles of color in early glass-painting), the vigorous
depths of shadow in the Northern sculpture confused the architect's eye,
compelling him to use violent colors in the recesses, if these were to
be seen as color at all, and thus injured his perception of more
delicate color harmonies; so that in innumerable instances it becomes
very disputable whether monuments even of the best times were improved
by the color bestowed upon them, or the contrary. But, in the South, the
flatness and comparatively vague forms of the sculpture, while they
appeared to call for color in order to enhance their interest, presented
exactly the conditions which would set it off to the greatest advantage;
breadth or surface displaying even the most delicate tints in the
lights, and faintness of shadow joining with the most delicate and
pearly grays of color harmony; while the subject of the design being in
nearly all cases reduced to mere intricacy of ornamental line, might be
colored in any way the architect chose without any loss of rationality.
Where oak-leaves and roses were carved into fresh relief and perfect
bloom, it was necessary to paint the one green and the other red; but in
portions of ornamentation where there was nothing which could be
definitely construed into either an oak-leaf or a rose, but a mere
labyrinth of beautiful lines, becoming here something like a leaf, and
there something like a flower, the whole tracery of the sculpture might
be left white, and grounded with gold or blue, or treated in any other
manner best harmonizing with the colors around it. And as the
necessarily feeble character of the sculpture called for and was ready
to display the best arrangements of color, so the precious marbles in
the architect's hands give him at once the best examples and the best
means of color. The best examples, for the tints of all natural stones
are as exquisite in quality as endless in change; and the best means,
for they are all permanent.

SECTION XLVI. Every motive thus concurred in urging him to the study of
chromatic decoration, and every advantage was given him in the pursuit
of it; and this at the very moment when, as presently to be noticed, the
_naïveté_ of barbaric Christianity could only be forcibly appealed
to by the help of colored pictures: so that, both externally and
internally, the architectural construction became partly merged in
pictorial effect; and the whole edifice is to be regarded less as a
temple wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast
illuminated missal, bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded
with porphyry pillars instead of jewels, and written within and without
in letters of enamel and gold.

SECTION XLVII. LAW VII. _That the impression of the architecture is
not to be dependent on size._ And now there is but one final
consequence to be deduced. The reader understands, I trust, by this
time, that the claims of these several parts of the building upon his
attention will depend upon their delicacy of design, their perfection of
color, their preciousness of material, and their legendary interest. All
these qualities are independent of size, and partly even inconsistent
with it. Neither delicacy of surface sculpture, nor subtle gradations of
color, can be appreciated by the eye at a distance; and since we have
seen that our sculpture is generally to be only an inch or two in depth,
and that our coloring is in great part to be produced with the soft
tints and veins of natural stones, it will follow necessarily that none
of the parts of the building can be removed far from the eye, and
therefore that the whole mass of it cannot be large. It is not even
desirable that it should be so; for the temper in which the mind
addresses itself to contemplate minute and beautiful details is
altogether different from that in which it submits itself to vague
impressions of space and size. And therefore we must not be
disappointed, but grateful, when we find all the best work of the
building concentrated within a space comparatively small; and that, for
the great cliff-like buttresses and mighty piers of the North, shooting
up into indiscernible height, we have here low walls spread before us
like the pages of a book, and shafts whose capitals we may touch with
our hand.

SECTION XLVIII. The due consideration of the principles above stated
will enable the traveller to judge with more candor and justice of the
architecture of St. Mark's than usually it would have been possible for
him to do while under the influence of the prejudices necessitated by
familiarity with the very different schools of Northern art. I wish it
were in my power to lay also before the general reader some
exemplification of the manner in which these strange principles are
developed in the lovely building. But exactly in proportion to the
nobility of any work, is the difficulty of conveying a just impression
of it: and wherever I have occasion to bestow high praise, there it is
exactly most dangerous for me to endeavor to illustrate my meaning,
except by reference to the work itself. And, in fact, the principal
reason why architectural criticism is at this day so far behind all
other, is the impossibility of illustrating the best architecture
faithfully. Of the various schools of painting, examples are accessible
to every one, and reference to the works themselves is found sufficient
for all purposes of criticism; but there is nothing like St. Mark's or
the Ducal Palace to be referred to in the National Gallery, and no
faithful illustration of them is possible on the scale of such a volume
as this. And it is exceedingly difficult on any scale. Nothing is so
rare in art, as far as my own experience goes, as a fair illustration of
architecture; _perfect_ illustration of it does not exist. For all
good architecture depends upon the adaptation of its chiselling to the
effect at a certain distance from the eye; and to render the peculiar
confusion in the midst of order, and uncertainty in the midst of
decision, and mystery in the midst of trenchant lines, which are the
result of distance, together with perfect expression of the
peculiarities of the design, requires the skill of the most admirable
artist, devoted to the work with the most severe conscientiousness,
neither the skill nor the determination having as yet been given to the
subject. And in the illustration of details, every building of any
pretensions to high architectural rank would require a volume of plates,
and those finished with extraordinary care. With respect to the two
buildings which are the principal subjects of the present volume, St.
Mark's and the Ducal Palace, I have found it quite impossible to do them
the slightest justice by any kind of portraiture; and I abandoned the
endeavor in the case of the latter with less regret, because in the new
Crystal Palace (as the poetical public insist upon calling it, though it
is neither a palace, nor of crystal) there will be placed, I believe, a
noble cast of one of its angles. As for St. Mark's, the effort was
hopeless from the beginning. For its effect depends not only upon the
most delicate sculpture in every part, out, as we have just stated,
eminently on its color also, and that the most subtle, variable,
inexpressible color in the world,--the color of glass, of transparent
alabaster, of polished marble, and lustrous gold. It would be easier to
illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with its purple heather and
pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest,
with its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's.
The fragment of one of its archivolts, given at the bottom of the
opposite Plate, is not to illustrate the thing itself, but to illustrate
the impossibility of illustration.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.