I
,
t
THE
STONES OF VENICE.
VOLUME THE FIRST.
BY JOH]Sr BUSKIN, M.D.,
ni
AUTHOR OF "THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE," "MODERN PAINTERS," ETC., ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK:
JOHN WILEY & SONS,
No. 15 ASTOR PLACI
1880.
DATE
SEEN BY
PRESERVATION
SERVICES
v»* \m
PRESS OF
S. W. GREEN'S SON,
74 Beekman St.,
NEW YORK.
PREFACE.
IN the course of arranging the following essay, I put many
things aside in my thoughts to be said in the Preface, things
which I shall now put aside altogether, and pass by ; for when
a book has been advertised a year and a half, it seems best to
present it with as little preface as possible.
Thus much, however, it is necessary for the reader to
know, that, when I planned the work, I had materials by me,
collected at different times of sojourn in Venice during the
last seventeen years, which it seemed to me might be arranged
with little difficulty, and which I believe to be of value as
illustrating the history of Southern Gothic. Requiring,
however, some clearer assurance respecting certain points of
chronology, I went to Venice finally in the autumn of 1849,
not doubting but that the dates of the principal edifices of
the ancient city were either ascertained, or ascertainable with-
out extraordinary research. To my consternation, I found
that the Venetian antiquaries were not agreed within a century
as to the date of the building of the facades of the Ducal
Palace, and that nothing was known of any other civil edifice
of the early city, except that at some time or other it had been
fitted up for somebody's reception, and been thereupon fresh
painted. Every date in question was determinable only by
internal evidence, and it became necessary for me to examine
not only every one of the older palaces, stone by stone, but
iv PREFACE.
every fragment throughout the city which afforded any clue
to the formation of its styles. This I did as well as I could,
and I believe there will be found, in the following pages, the
only existing account of the details of early Venetian architec-
ture on which dependence can be placed, as far as it goes. I
do not care to point out the deficiencies of other works on this
subject ; the reader will find, if he examines them, either that
the buildings to which I shall specially direct his attention
have been hitherto undescribed, or else that there are great
discrepancies between previous descriptions and mine: for
which discrepancies I may be permitted to give this single and
sufficient reason, that my account of every building is based
on personal examination and measurement of it, and that my
taking the pains so to examine what I had to describe, was a
subject of grave surprise to my Italian friends. The work of
the Marchese Selvatico is, however, to be distinguished with
respect ; it is clear in arrangement, and full of useful, though
vague, information ; and I have found cause to adopt, in great
measure, its views of the chronological succession of the
edifices of Venice-. I shall have cause hereafter to quarrel
with it on other grounds, but not without expression of grati-
tude for the assistance it has given me. Fontana's " Fabbriche
di Yenezia" is also historically valuable, but does not attempt
to give architectural detail. Cicognara, as is now generally
known, is so inaccurate as hardly to deserve mention.
Indeed, it is not easy to be accurate in an account of any-
thing, however simple. Zoologists often disagree in their
descriptions of the curve of a shell, or the plumage of a bird,
though they may lay their specimen on the table, and ex-
amine it at their leisure ; how much greater becomes the like-
lihood of error in the description of things which must be in
many parts observed from a distance, or under unfavorable
PREFACE. V
circumstances of light and shade ; and of which many of the
distinctive features have been worn away by time. I believe
few people have any idea of the cost of truth in these things ;
of the expenditure of time necessary to make sure of the
simplest facts, and of the strange way in which separate obser-
vations will sometimes falsify each other, incapable of recon-
cilement, owing to some imperceptible inadvertency. I am
ashamed of the number of times in which I have had to say,
in the following pages, " I am not sure," and I claim for them
no authority, as if they were thoroughly sifted from error,
even in what they more confidently state. Only, as far as my
time, and strength, and mind served me, I have endeavored,,
down to the smallest matters, to ascertain and speak the truth.
Nor was the subject without many and most discouraging
difficulties, peculiar to itself. As far as my inquiries have ex-
tended, there is not a building in Venice, raised prior to the
sixteenth century, which has not sustained essential change in
one or more of its most important features. By far the
greater number present examples of three or four different
styles, it may be successive, it may be accidentally associated ;
and, in many instances, the restorations or additions have
gradually replaced the entire structure of the ancient fabric, of
which nothing but the name remains, together with a kind of
identity, exhibited in the anomalous association of the modern-
ized portions : the Will of the old building asserted through
them all, stubbornly, though vainly, expressive; superseded
by codicils, and falsified by misinterpretation ; yet animating
what would otherwise be a mere group of fantastic masque, as
embarrassing to the antiquary, as to the mineralogist, the
epigene crystal, formed by materials of one substance modelled
on the perished crystals of another. The church of St. Mark's
itself, harmonious as its structure may at first sight appear, is
VI PREFACE.
an epitome of the changes of Venetian architecture from the
tenth to the nineteentli century. Its crypt, and the line of
low arches which support the screen, are apparently the earliest
portions; the lower stories of the main fabric are of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, with later Gothic interpola-
tions ; the pinnacles are of the earliest fully developed Vene-
tian Gothic (fourteenth century) ; but one of them, that on
the projection at the eastern extremity of the Piazzetta de
Leoni, is of far finer, and probably earlier workmanship than
all the rest. The southern range of pinnacles is again inferior
to the northern and western, and visibly of later date. Then
the screen, which most writers have described as part of the
original fabric, bears its date inscribed on its architrave, 1394,
and with it are associated a multitude of small screens, balus-
trades, decorations of the interior building, and probably the
rose window of the south transept. Then come the inter-
polated traceries of the front and sides ; then the crocketings
of the upper arches, extravagances of the incipient Renais-
sance : and, finally, the figures which carry the water-spouts on
the north side — utterly barbarous seventeenth or eighteenth
century work — connect the whole with the plastered restora-
tions of the year 1844 and 1845. Most of the palaces in Venice?
have sustained interpolations hardly less numerous ; and those
of the Ducal Palace are so intricate, that a year's labor would
probably be insufficient altogether to disentangle and define
them. I therefore gave up all thoughts of obtaining a per-
fectly clear chronological view of the early architecture ; but
the dates necessary to the main purposes of the book the reader
will find well established ; and of the evidence brought for-
ward for those of less importance, he is himself to judge.
Doubtful estimates are never made grounds of argument ; and
the accuracy of the account of the buildings themselves, for
PREFACE. Vii
which alone I pledge myself, is of course entirely independent
of them.
In like manner, as the statements briefly made in the
chapters on construction involve questions so difficult and so gen-
eral, that I cannot hope that every expression referring to them
will be found free from error : and as the conclusions to which
I have endeavored to lead the reader are thrown into a form
the validity of which depends on that of each successive step,
it might be argued, if fallacy or weakness could be detected in
one of them, that all the subsequent reasonings were valueless.
The reader may be assured, however, that it is not so ; the
method of proof used in the following essay being only one
out of many which were in my choice, adopted because it
seemed to me the shortest and simplest, not as being the
strongest. In many cases, the conclusions are those which
men of quick feeling would arrive at instinctively ; and I then
sought to discover the reasons of what so strongly recommended
itself as truth. Though these reasons could every one of
them, from the beginning to the end of the book, be proved
insufficient, the truth of its conclusions would remain the same.
I should only regret that I had dishonored them by an ill-
grounded defence ; and endeavor to repair my error by a better
one.
I have not, however, written carelessly ; nor should I in
any wise have expressed doubt of the security of the following
argument, but that it is physically impossible for me, being
engaged quite as much with mountains, and clouds, and trees,
and criticism of painting, as with architecture, to verify, as I
should desire, the expression of every sentence bearing upon
empirical and technical matters. Life is not long enough ; nor
does a day pass by without causing me to feel more bitterly
the impossibility of carrying out to the extent which I should
Vil PREFACE.
desire, the separate studies which general criticism continually
forces me to undertake. I can only assure the reader, that he
will find the certainty of every statement I permit myself to
make, increase with its importance ; and that, for the security
of the final conclusions of the following essay, as well as for
the resolute veracity of its account of whatever facts have
come under my own immediate cognizance, I will pledge my-
self to the uttermost.
It was necessary, to the accomplishment of the purpose of
the work (of which account is given in the First Chapter), that
I should establish some canons of judgment, which the general
reader should thoroughly understand, and, if it pleased him,
accept, before we took cognizance, together, of any architecture
whatsoever. It has taken me more time and trouble to do this
than I expected ; but, if I have succeeded, the thing done will
be of use for many other purposes than that to which it is now
put. The establishment of these canons, which I have called
"the Foundations," and some account of the connection of
Yenetian architecture with that of the rest of Europe, have
filled the present volume. The second will, I hope, contain all
I have to say about Venice itself.
It was of course inexpedient to reduce drawings of crowded
details to the size of an octavo volume, — I do not say impossi-
ble, but inexpedient ; requiring infinite pains on the part of
the engraver, with no result except farther pains to the be-
holder. And as, on the other hand, folio books are not easy
reading, I determined to separate the text and the unreduci-
ble plates. I have given, with the principal text, all the illus-
trations absolutely necessary to the understanding of it, and, in
the detached work, such additional text as has special reference
to the larger illustrations.
A considerable number of these larger plates were at first
PREFACE. IX
intended to be executed in tinted lithography ; but, finding the
result unsatisfactory, I have determined to prepare the princi-
pal subjects for mezzotinting,— a change of method requiring
two new drawings to be made of every subject ; one a carefully
penned outline for the etcher, and then a finished drawing
upon the etching. This work does not proceed fast, while I
am also occupied with the completion of the text; but the
numbers of it will appear as fast as I can prepare them.
For the illustrations of the body of the work itself, I have
used any kind of engraving which seemed suited to the sub-
jects— line and mezzotint, on steel, with mixed lithographs
and woodcuts, at considerable loss of uniformity in the appear-
ance of the volume, but, I hope, with advantage, in rendering
the character of the architecture it describes. And both in
the plates and the text I have aimed chiefly at clear intelligi-
bility ; that any one, however little versed in the subject, might
be able to take up the book, and understand what it meant
forthwith. I have utterly failed of my purpose, if I have not
made all the essential parts of the essay intelligible to the least
learned, and easy to the most desultory readers, who are likely
to take interest in the matter at all. There are few passages
which even require so much as an acquaintance with the ele-
ments of Euclid, and these may be missed, without harm to
the sense of the rest, by every reader to whom they may
appear mysterious ; and the architectural terms necessarily em-
ployed (which are very few) are explained as they occur, or in
a note ; so that, though I may often be found trite or tedious,
I trust that I shall not be obscure. I am especially anxious to
rid this essay of ambiguity, because I want to gain the ear of
all kinds of persons. Every man has, at some time of his life,
personal interest in architecture. He has influence on the
design of some public building ; or he has to buy, or build, or
X PREFACE.
alter his own house. It signifies less whether the knowledge
of other arts be general or not ; men may live without buying
pictures or statues : but, in architecture, all must in some way
commit themselves ; they must do mischief, and waste their
money, if they do not know how to turn it to account.
Churches, and shops, and warehouses, and cottages, and small
row, and place, and terrace houses, must be built, and lived in,
however joyless or inconvenient. And it is assuredly intended
that all of us should have knowledge, and act upon our knowl-
edge, in matters with which we are daily concerned, and not
to be left to the caprice of architects or mercy of contractors.
There is not, indeed, anything in the following essay bearing
on the special forms and needs of modern buildings ; but the
principles it inculcates are universal ; and they are illustrated
from the remains of a city which should surely be interesting
to the men of London, as affording the richest existing exam-
ples of architecture raised by a mercantile community, for
civil uses, and domestic magnificence.
DENMAKK HILL, February, 1851.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface, ...... iii
CHAPTER I.
The Quarry, .....
CHAPTER II.
The Virtues of Architecture)/ . . . . . .36
CHAPTER III.
The Six Divisions of Architecture, . 47
CHAPTER IV.
The Wall Base, ....
CHAPTER V.
The Wall Veil, ........ 58
CHAPTER VI.
The Wall Cornice, . . .
CHAPTER VII.
The Pier Base, .....
CHAPTER VIII.
The Shaft, .... .84
CHAPTER IX.
The Capital, . .... 105
Xll
The Arch Line,
The Arch Masonry,
The Arch Load,
The Roof, .
The Roof Cornice, .
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XHL
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
The Buttress, .....
CHAPTER XVI.
Form of Aperture, ....
Filling of Aperture,
Protection of Aperture,
Superimposition,
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Material of Ornament,
Treatment of Ornament,
CHAPTER XX,
CHAPTER XXI.
PAGE
. 122
132
, 144
148
. 155
166
. 174
183
195
211
CONTENTS. Xlll
PAGE
CHAPTER XXII.
The Angle, 259
CHAPTER XXIH.
The Edge and Fillet, 367
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Roll and Recess, . . . . . . .276
CHAPTER XXV.
The Base, . . . . . . .281
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Wall Veil and Shaft, 294
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Cornice and Capital, ...... 305
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Archivolt and Aperture, . .... 333
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Roof, . 343
CHAPTER XXX.
The Vestibule, . . . .349
APPENDIX.
1. Foundation of Venice, . . . . . .359
2. Power of the Doges, ...... 360
3. Serrar del Consiglio, . ... 360
4. S. Pietro di Castello, 361
xiv CONTENTS.
PAGE
5. Papal Power in Venice, . . . . . .362
6. Renaissance Ornaments. ...... 369
7. Varieties of the Orders, . . . ... .370
8. The Northern Energy, . ... 371
9. Wooden Churches of the North, . . . . .381
10. Church of Alexandria, ...... 381
11. Renaissance Landscape, ...... 381
12. Romanist Modern Art, ...... 384
13. Mr. Fergusson's System, . . . . . .388
14. Divisions of Humanity ...... 394
15. Instinctive Judgments, ...... 399
16. Strength of Shafts, ...... 402
17. Answer to Mr. Garbett, ...... 403
18. Early English Capitals, ...... 411
19. Tombs near St. Anastasia, ...... 412
20. Shafts of the Ducal Palace, . . . . .413
21. Ancient Representations of Water, ..... 417
22. Arabian Ornamentation, ...... 429
23. Varieties of Chamfer, ...... 429
24. Renaissance Bases, ...... 431
25. Romanist Decoration of Bases, ..... 432
LIST OF PLATES.
Facing Page
Plate 1. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan and Ca' Dario, . . 13
" 2. Plans of Piers, . .... 100
" 3. Arch Masonry, . . . . . . .134
" 4. Arch Masonry, ...... 137
" 5. Arch Masonry, Bruletto of Como, .... 141
«' 6. Types of Towers, ...... 207
" 7. Abstracts Lines, . . . . . .222
" 8. Decorations by Disks, Ca' Badoari, ... 241
" 9. Edge Decoration, ...... 268
"10. Profiles of Bases, ...... 283
" 11. Plans of Bases, ...... 288
" 12. Decorations of Bases, ..... 289
" 13. Wall Veil Decorations, ...... 295
" 14. Spandril Decorations, Ducal Palace, . . . 298
" 15. Cornice Profiles, . 306
" 16. Cornice Decorations, ... 311
" 17. Capitals— Concave, . . . . .323
" 18. Capitals— Convex, ..... 327
"19. Archivolt Decoration, Verona, . . . . .333
" 20. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan, . 369
" 21. Wall Veil Decoration, San Michele, Lucca, . . 378
THE
STONES OF VENICE.
CHAPTEK I.
THE QUAKRY.
§ i. SINCE the first dominion of men was asserted over the
ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set
upon its sands : the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England.
Of the First of these great powers only the memory remains ;
of the Second, the ruin ; the Third, which inherits their great-
ness, if it forget their example, may be led through prouder
eminence to less pitied destruction.
The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have
been recorded for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever
uttered by the Prophets of Israel against the cities of the
stranger. But we read them as a lovely song ; and close our
ears to the sternness of their warning : for the very depth of
the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we forget,
as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine
and the sea, that they were once " as in Eden, the garden of
God/'
Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less
in endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the
final period of her decline : a ghost upon the sands of the sea,
so weak — so quiet, — so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we
might well doubt, as we watched her faint reflection in the
mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and which the
Shadow.
2 THE QUARRY.
I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it
be for ever lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning
which seems to me to be uttered by every one of the fast-gain-
ing waves, that beat, like passing bells, against the STONES OF
VENICE.
§ IT. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the les-
sons which might be derived from a faithful study of the his-
tory of this strange and mighty city : a history which, in spite
of the labor of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and dis-
putable outline, — barred with brightness and shade, like the
far away edge of her own ocean, where the surf and the sand-
bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which we
have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but
their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect ; and, so far
as they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far
higher kind than that ' usually belonging to architectural inves-
tigations. I may, perhaps, in the outset, and in few words,
enable the general reader to form a clearer idea of the impor-
tance of every existing expression of Venetian character
through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest which
the true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have
gleaned from the current fables of her mystery or magnifi-
cence.
§ in. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy : She was
so duiing a period less than the half of her existence, and that
including the days of her decline ; and it is one of the first
questions needing severe examination, whether that decline
was owing in any wise to the change in the form of her gov-
ernment, or altogether, as assuredly in great part, to changes,
in the character of the persons of whom it was composed.
The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-
six years, from the first establishment of a consular govern-
ment on the island of the Rialto,* to the moment when the
General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the
Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two
* Appendix 1, " Foundation of Venice."
THE QUARRY. 3
Hundred and Seventy-six * years were passed in a nominal sub-
jection to the cities of old Venetia, especially to Padua, and in
an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive appears
to have been entrusted to tribunes, f chosen, one by the inhabi-
tants of each of the principal islands. For six hundred years, J
during which the power of Venice was continually on the in-
crease, her government was an elective monarchy, her King or
doge possessing, in early times at least, as much independent
authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of
its prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the
image of a king, lasted for five hundred years, during which
Venice reaped the fruits^ of her former energies, consumed
them, — and expired.
§ iv. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the
Venetian state as broadly divided into two periods : the first
of nine hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separa-
tion being marked by what was called the " Serrar del Con-
siglio ;" that is to say, the final and absolute distinction of the
nobles from the commonalty, and the establishment of the
government in their hands to the exclusion alike of the in-
fluence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
doge on the other.
Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us
with the most interesting spectacle of a people struggling out
of anarchy into order "and power; and then governed, for the
most part, by the worthiest and noblest man whom they could
find among them,§ called their Doge or Leader, with an aris-
tocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself around him,
out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen ; an aristoc-
* Appendix 2, "Power of the Doges."
f Sismondi, Hist, des Rep. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.
\ Appendix 3, ' ' Serrar del Consiglio. "
§ ' ' Ha saputo trovar modo clie non uno, non pochi, non molti, signo-
reggiano, ma molti buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, un ottimo solo."
(Sansovino.) Ah, well done, Venice ! Wisdom this, indeed.
4 THE QUARRY.
racy owing its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and
wealth of some among the families of the fugitives from the
older Yenetia, and gradually organizing itself, by its unity and
heroism, into a separate body.
This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest
achievements, and the circumstances which determined her
character and position among European powers; and within
its range, as might have been anticipated, we find the names of
all her hero princes, — of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo Falier,
Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
§ v. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty
years, the most eventful in the career of Venice — the central
struggle of her life — stained with her darkest crime, the mur-
der of Carrara — disturbed by her most dangerous internal
sedition, the conspiracy of Falier — oppressed by her most fatal
war, the war of Chiozza — and distinguished by the glory of
her two noblest citizens (for in this period the heroism of her
citizens replaces that of her monarchs), Vittor Pisani and Carlo
Zeno.
I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the
death of Carlo Zeno, 8th May, 1418 ; * the visible commence-
ment from that of another of her noblest and wisest children,
the Doge Toinaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later.
The reign of Foscari followed, gloomy with pestilence and
war ; a war in which large acquisitions of territory were made
by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace, sig-
nificant as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at
Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454, Venice,
the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to
the Turk : in the same year was established the Inquisition of
State, f and from this period her government takes the perfid-
ious and mysterious form under which it is usually conceived.
In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror to the
* Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.
f Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the discovery of the
statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.
THE QUARRY. 5
••shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai
marks the period usually assigned as the commencement of the
decline of the Venetian power ; * the commercial prosperity of
Venice in the close of the fifteenth century blinding her his-
torians to the previous evidence of the diminution of her inter-
nal strength.
§ vi. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence
between the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical
powers, and the diminution of the prosperity of the state. But
this is the very question at issue ; ' and it appears to me quite
undetermined by any historian, or determined by each in ac-
cordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple question :
•first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of indi-
vidual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of
the Fall of Venice ; or (secondly) whether the establishment of
the oligarchy itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than
the cause, of national enervation ; or (lastly) whether, as I
rather think, the history of Venice might not be written
almost without reference to the construction of her senate or
the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a people
eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to
live nobly or to perish : — for a thousand years they fought for
life ; for three hundred they invited death : their battle was
rewarded, and their call was heard.
§ vn. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and,
at many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual
heroism ; and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes
(oftenost) her king, sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen.
To him no matter, nor to her: the real question is, not so
much what names they bore, or with what powers they were
entrusted, as how they were trained ; how they were made
masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of
distress, impatient of dishonor ; and what was the true reason
* Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal power (as before
to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their right of appointing
Hie clergy of their territories.
g THE (Jt'AKKY.
of the chaise from the time when she could find saviours
juMoim- those whom she had cast into prison, to that when the
voices of her own children commanded her to sign covenant
with Death.*
£ vin. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind
t,, he fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will
irivi' double interest to every detail : nor will the interest be
profitless; for the evidence which I shall be able to deduce
from the arts of Venice will be both frequent and irrefragable,
that the decline of her political prosperity was exactly coinci-
dent with that of domestic and individual religion.
I say domestic and individual ; for— and this is the second
point which I wish the reader to keep in mind — the most
curious phenomenon in all Venetian history is the vitality of
religion in private life, and its deadness in public policy.
Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or fanaticism of the other
states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to last, like a
masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her
commercial interest, — this the one motive of all her important
political acts, or enduring national animosities. She could
forgive insults to her honor, but never rivalship in her com-
merce; she calculated the glory of her conquests by their
value, and estimated their justice by their facility. The fame
of success remains, when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised
to be reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by
the nol>le>t of her princes, and whose results added most to her
military glory, was one in which while all Europe around her
was wasted by the fire of its devotion, she first calculated the
highest price she could exact from its piety for the armament
*lie furnished, and then, for the advancement of her own pri-
vate interests, at once broke her faith f and betrayed her religion.
* The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a majority of
r>12 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)
I r.y direct in»; the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince.
(Daru, liv iv. eh. iv. viii.)
THE QUARRY. 7
§ ix. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we
shall be struck again and again by the evidences of the most
noble individual feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed
in hypocrisy, though they could not blind him to the impor-
tance of the conquest of Zara. The habit of assigning to re-
ligion a direct influence over all his own actions, and all the
affairs of his own daily life, is remarkable in every great
Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state ; nor
are instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citi-
zens reaches the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the
guide of its course where the scales of expediency are doubt-
fully balanced. I sincerely trust that the inquirer would be
disappointed who should endeavor to trace any more imme-
diate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III.
against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the
character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was
provoked by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of
Venice is shown only in her hastiest councils ; her worldly
spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has time to cal-
culate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are suffi-
ciently distinct to need no calculation ; and the entire subjec-
tion of private piety to national policy is not only remarkable
throughout the almost endless series of treacheries and tyran-
nies by which her empire was enlarged and maintained, but
symbolised by a very singular circumstance in the building of
the city itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in
which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But the
principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the
palace of her prince, and called the " Chiesa Ducale." The
patriarchal church,* inconsiderable in size and mean in deco-
ration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian group,
and its name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the
greater number of travellers passing hastily through the city.
Nor is it less worthy of remark, that the two most important
temples of Venice, next to the ducal chapel, owe their size and
* Appendix 4, " San Pietro di Castello."
THE QUARRY.
magnificence, not to national effort, but to the energy of the
Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast
nr-ani/ation of those great societies on the mainland of Italy,
and countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also, in his
generation, the most wise, of all the princes of Venice,* who
now rests beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and
whose life is not satirized by the images of the Virtues which
a Tuscan sculptor has placed around his tomb.
§ x. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights
in which we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful
history of the Kivo Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep
and constant tone of individual religion characterising the
lives of the citizens of Venice in her greatness ; we find this
spirit influencing them in all the familiar and immediate con-
cerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct even of
their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation
with which a man of the world at present admits (even if it
be so in reality) that religious feeling has any influence over
tlu- minor branches of his conduct. And we find as the natu-
ral consequence of all this, a healthy serenity of mind and
energy of will expressed in all their actions, and a habit of
heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness
of this spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspond-
ent, and with its failure her decline, and that with a closeness
and precision which it will be one of the collateral objects of
the following essay to demonstrate from such accidental evi-
dence as the field of its inquiry presents. And, thus far, all
is natural and simple. But the stopping short of this religious
faith when it appears likely to influence national action, cor-
respondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with several char-
acteristics of the temper of our present English legislature, is
a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious inter-
est and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range
- Toinaso Mocenigo, above named, £ v.
THE QUARRY. 9
of my present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for
the treatment of which I must be content to furnish materials
in the light I may be able to throw upon the private tenden-
cies of the Venetian character.
§ xr. There is, however, another most interesting feature
in the policy of Venice which will be often brought before us ;
and which a Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its
irreligion ; namely, the magnificent and successful struggle
which she maintained against the temporal authority of the
Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid survey of her
career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama to
which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable
scene in the portico of St. Mark's,* the central expression in
most men's thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pon-
tifical power ; it is true that the proudest thoughts of Venice,
as well as the insignia of her prince, and the form of her chief
festival, recorded the service thus rendered to the Roman
Church. But the enduring sentiment of years more than
balanced the enthusiasm of a moment ; and the bull of Clem-
ent V., which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge,
likening them to Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a
stronger evidence of the great tendencies of the Venetian
government than the umbrella of the doge or the ring of the
Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted out
the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics
from all share in the councils of Venice became an enduring
* " In that temple porch,
(The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)
Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,
And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot
Of the proud Pontiff— thus at last consoled
For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake
On his stone pillow."
I need hardly say whence the lines are taken : Rogers' ' ' Italy" has, I be-
lieve, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries, and will
never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the spirit of
Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all else that has
been written of her.
j0 THE QUARRY.
mark of her knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Borne,
and of her defiance of it.
To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the:
Romanist will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant
their success.* The first may be silenced by a reference to the
character of the policy of the Vatican itself ; and the second by
his own shame, when he reflects that the English legislature
sicriticed their principles to expose themselves to the very
da Hirer which the Venetian senate sacrificed theirs to avoid.
$ xn. One more circumstance remains to be noted respect-
ing the Venetian government, the singular unity of the families
com]). .sing it, — unity far from sincere or perfect, but still ad-
mirable when contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily
revolutions, the restless successions of families and parties in
power, which fill the annals of the other states of Italy. That
rivalship should sometimes be ended by the dagger, or enmity
conducted to its ends under the mask of law, could not but be
anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was subjected to so-
severe a restraint : it is much that jealousy appears usually mi-
ni hurled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every instance-
in which private passion sought its gratification through public
danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the
public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with,
reverence, that of all the towers which are still seen rising like
a branchless forest from her islands, there is but one whose office
wa> other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a
watch-tower only : from first to last, while the palaces of the
other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of ram-
put. and fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and
the how, the sands >f Venice never sank under the weight of a
w it- tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed with Arabian
IT, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of lilies, f
* At i(.;,st. such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The Papal
Power in Venice."
inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are no exception to this
Statement, M far as it n-anls the city itself. They are little more than a
Mmblance of precaution airainst the attack of a foreign enemy.
THE q
§ xiii. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief
general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian peo-
ple. 1 would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of
the manner in which the testimony of Art bears upon these
questions, and of the aspect which the arts themselves assume
when they are regarded in their true connexion with the history
of the state.
1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the
Fall of Venice as far hack a;> 14 IS.
Now, John P>ellini was born in 142:5, and Titian in 1480.
John Bellini, and his brother Gentile, two years older than he,
close the line of the sacred painters of Venice. But the most
solemn spirit of religions faith animates their works to the last.
There is no religion in any work of Titian's: there is not even
the smallest evidence of religious temper or sympathies either
in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His larger sacred
subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial rhet-
oric,— composition and color. His minor works a re generally
made subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in
the church of the Fran' is a mere lay figure, introduced to form
a link of connexion between the portraits of various members
of the1 Pesaro family who surround her.
Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious
man and Titian was not. Titian and Pellini are each true rep-
resentatives of the school of painters contemporary with them;
and the difference in their artistic feeling is a consequence not
so much of difference in their own natural characters as in their
early education: liellini was brought up in faith ; Titian in
formalism. Between the years of their births the vital religion
of Venice had expired.
£ xiv. The rihtl religion, observe, not the formal. ( Jut-
ward observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator
still were painted, in almost every important instance, kneeling
before the Madonna or St. Mark; a confession of faith made
universal by the pure gold of the Venetian sequin. But ob-
serve the great picture of Titian's in the ducal palace, of the
12 THE QUARRY.
Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith : there is a
curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait
of one of Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had
become carnal. The eye is first caught by the flash of the
Doge's armor. The heart of Yenice was in her wars, not in
her worship.
The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious
than that of Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the
sacred subjects which it approaches, and sometimes forgets
itself into devotion ; but the principle of treatment is altogether
the same as Titian's : absolute subordination of the religious
subject to purposes of decoration or portraiture.
The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from
the works of Veronese, and of every succeeding painter, — that
the fifteenth century had taken away the religious heart of
Yenice.
§ xv. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of
Architecture will be our task through many a page to come ;
but I must here give a general idea of its heads.
Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Yenice in
1495, says, —
" Chascun me f eit seoir an meillieu de ces deux ambassa-
deurs qui est Phonneur d'ltalie que d'estre au meillieu ; et me
nienerent au long de la grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal
Grant, et est bien large. Les gallees y passent a travers et y ay
veu navire de quatre cens tonneaux ou plus pres des maisons :
et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit en tout le monde, et
la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les maisons sont
fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les anciennes
toutes painctes ; les aultres faictes depuis cent ans : toutes ont
le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, a cent mils
<U- la, ut encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpen-
tine sur le devant. . . . C'est la plus triumphante cite
e j'aye jamais veue et qui plus faict d'honneur a ambassa-
it estrangiers, et qui plus saigement se gouverne, et ou
ace de Dieu est le plus sollempnellement faict : et encores
v penst bien avoir d'aultres faultes, si je croy que Dieu
I
,'•
.Boys.
-ir Dmiraftan ,
C 'A rn ll-M SAX ( 'A! DAR1O .
THE QUAKKY. 13
les a en ayde pour la reverence qn'ilz portent an service de
1'Eglise." *
§ xvi. Tliis passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons.
Ol >serve, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the reli-
gion of Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still
remained with some glimmering of life in them, and were the
evidence of what the real life had been in former times. But
observe, secondly, the impression instantly made on Commynes'
mind by the distinction between the elder palaces and those
built "within this last hundred years; which all have their
fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles
away, and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpen-
tine upon their fronts."
On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of
the palaces which so struck the French ambassador, f He was
right in his notice of the distinction. There had indeed come
a change over Venetian architecture in the fifteenth century ;
and a change of some importance to us moderns : we English
owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes
to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of archi-
tecture, never since revived. But that the reader may under-
stand this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea
of the connexion of the architecture of Yenice with that of the
rest of Europe, from its origin forwards.
£ xvii. All European architecture, bad and good, old and
new, is derived from Greece through Home, and colored and
perfected from the East. The history of architecture is nothing
but the tracing of the various modes and directions of this de-
rivation. Understand this, once for all : if you hold fast this
great connecting clue, you may string all the types of successive
architectural invention upon it like so many beads. The Doric
and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Koman-
esque, massy-capitaled buildings— Norman, Lombard, Byzantine,
and what else vou can name of the kind ; and the Corinthian
* Memoires de Commynes, liv. vii. ch. xviii.
•}• Appendix 6, " Renaissance Ornaments."
14
THE QUARRY
of all Gothic, Early English, French, German, and Tuscan.
Now observe: those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave
the aivl. ; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft
and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture, are from
the race of Japheth : the spirituality and sanctity of it from
Ismael, Abraham, and Sheni.
§ xvm. There is high probability that the Greek received
his shaft system from Egypt ; but I do not care to keep this
earlier derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only neces-
sary that he should be able to refer to a fixed point of origin,
when the form of the shaft was first perfected. But it may be
incidentally observed, that if the Greeks did indeed receive
their Doric from Egypt, then the three families of the earth
have each contributed their part to its noblest architecture :
and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the sustaining or
bearing member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the
spiritual sation of both.
§ xix. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian,
are the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps,
heard of five orders ; but there are only two real orders, and
there never can be any more until doomsday. On one of these
orders the ornament is conye'x : those are Doric, Norman, and
what else you recollect of the kind. On the other the orna-
ment is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English, Deco-
ratud, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional
form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or
root of both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms
and grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species.*
§ xx. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders,
was clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particu-
lar result, until they begun to bring the arch into extensive
practical servce ; except only that the Doric capital was spoiled
in endeavors to mend it, and the Corinthian much varied and
enriched with fanciful, and often very beautiful imagery.
And in this state of things came Christianity : seized upon the
* Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."
THE QUARRY. 15
arch as her own ; decorated it, and delighted in it ; invented
a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one : and all
over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as
were nearest at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she
could. This Roman Christian architecture is the exact expres-
sion of the Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful
— but very imperfect ; in many respects .ignorant, and yet
radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination, which
flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the
Bosphorus and the ^Egean and the Adriatic Sea, and then
gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes
Corpse-light. The architecture sinks into a settled form — a
strange, gilded, and embalmed repose : it, with the religion it
expressed ; and so would have remained for ever, — so does
remain, where its languor has been undisturbed.* But rough
wakening was ordained for it.
§ xxi. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided
into two great branches, western and eastern ; one centred at
Rome, the other at Byzantium, of which the one is the early
Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and the other, car-
ried to higher imaginative perfection by Greek workmen, is
distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the reader, for
the present, to class these two branches of art together in his
mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same ;
that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence
of the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down
from the fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best work-
men who could be found — Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece ;
and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term
of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the
refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but
which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the
fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms.
And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various
* The reader will find the weak points of Byzantine architecture shrewdly
seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the opening chapter of the most delight-
ful book of travels I ever opened, — Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."
lg THE QUARRY.
branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking
,,,>fcte more or less refined, according to its proximity to the
seats of government; dependent for all its power on the vigor
all(l freshness of the religion which animated it; and as that
vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking
into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed
and incapable of advance or change.
§ xxn. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal.
While in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under
their immediate influence, this Roman art of pure descent was
practised in all its .refinement, an impure form of it— a patois
of Romanesque— was carried by inferior workmen into distant
provinces ; and still ruder imitations of this patois were exe-
cuted by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the empire.
But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth ;
and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely de-
truded art was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines
a barbarous and borrowed art was organising itself into strength
and consistency. The reader must therefore consider the his-
tory of the work of the period as broadly divided into two
-•ivat heads : the one embracing the elaborately languid succes-
sion of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the imita-
tions of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of
early organisation, on the edges of the empire, or included in
its now ninvly nominal extent.
£ xx in. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not
susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the
Alps, appear, like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the
Ostrogoths, with the enervated Italians, and give physical
strength to the mass with which they mingle, without mate-
rially aHWtinjr its intellectual character. But others, both south
and north of the empire, had felt its influence, back to the
U-urh of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice
m-eks of the North Sea on the other. On the north and west
the influence was of the Latins; on the south and east, of the
( i reeks. Tw( . nati( >ns, pre-eminent above all the rest, represent
to us tin; force of derived mind on either side. As the central
THE QUARRY. 17
power is eclipsed, the orbs of reflected light gather into their
fulness; and when sensuality and idolatry had done their
work, and the religion of the empire was laid asleep in a glit-
tering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both horizons, and
the fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over its
golden paralysis.
§ xxiv. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood
Miul system to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Chris-
tendom ; that of the Arab was to punish idolatry, and to pro-
claim the spirituality of worship. The Lombard covered every
church which he built with the sculptured representations
of bodily exercises — hunting and war.* The Arab banished
all imagination of creature form from his temples, and pro-
claimed from their minarets, " There is 110 god but God." Op-
posite in their character and mission, alike in their magnificence
of energy, they came from the ISforth and from the South, the
glacier torrent and' the lava stream : they met and contended
over the wreck of the Roman empire ; and the very centre of
the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the
opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman
wreck, is VENICE.
The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in
exactly equal proportions — the Roman, Lombard, and Arab.
It is the central building of the world.
§ xxv. The reader will now begin to understand something
of the importance of the study of the edifices of a city which
includes, within the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the
field of contest between the three pre-eminent architectures of
the world : — each architecture expressing a condition of religion ;
each an erroneous condition, yet necessary to the correction of
the others, and corrected by them.
§ xxvi. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work,
to mark the various modes in which, the northern and southern
architectures were developed from the Roman: here I must
pause only to name the distinguishing characteristics of the
* Appendix 8, " The Northern Energy."
18 THE QUARRY.
great families. The Christian Roman and Byzantine work is
round-arched, with single and well-proportioned shafts ; capitals
imitated from classical Roman ; mouldings more or less so ; and
large surfaces of walls entirely covered with imagery, mosaic,
and paintings, whether of scripture history or of sacred symbols.
The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features,
the Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs ; but
the Arab rapidly introduces characters half Persepolitan, half
Egyptian, into the shafts and capitals : in his intense love of
excitement he points the arch and writhes it into extravagant
foliations ; he banishes the animal imagery, and invents an orna-
mentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace it : this not
being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates it on
features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines
of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains
the dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite
refinement.
§ xxvn. The changes effected by the Lombard are more
curious still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more
than its decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as
I said, the whole of that of the northern barbaric nations. And
this I believe was, at first, an imitation in wood of the Christian
Roman churches or basilicas. Without staying to examine the
whole structure of a basilica, the reader will easily understand
thus much of it : that it had a nave and two aisles, the nave
much higher than the aisles ; that the nave was separated from
the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces
of flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the
upper part of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a
Cabled wooden roof.
These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone ;
but in the wooden work of the North, they must necessarily
ha vo been made of horizontal boards or timbers attached to
up rights on the top of the nave pillars, which were themselves
also of wood.* Kow, these uprights were necessarily thicker
* Appendix 9, " Woodeu Churches of the North."
THE QUARRY. 19
than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical square pilas-
ters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and civili-
sation increased, these wooden structures were changed into
stone ; but they were literally petrified, retaining the form
which had been made necessary by their being of wood. The
upright pilaster above the nave pier remains in the stone edifice,
and is the first form of the great distinctive feature of Northern
architecture — the vaulting shaft. In that form the Lombards
brought it into Italy, in the seventh century, and it remains to
this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of Pavia.
§ xxvm. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the
clerestory walls, additional members were added for its support
to the nave piers. Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for
a single pillar, gave the first idea of the grouped shaft. Be
that as it may, the arrangement of the nave pier in the form of
a cross accompanies the superimposition of the vaulting shaft ;
together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts in door-
ways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the
Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards,
may be described as rough but majestic work, round-arched,
with grouped shafts, added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery ^
of active life and fantastic superstitions.
§ xxix. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the fol-
lowing one of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever
they had flowed ; but without influencing, I think, the South-
ern nations beyond the sphere of their own presence. But the
lava stream of the Arab, even after it ceased to flow, warmed
the whole of the Northern air ; and the history of Gothic archi-
tecture is the history of the refinement and spiritualisation of
Northern work under its influence. The noblest buildings of -
the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque) Gothic,
and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools them-
selves, under its close and direct influence ; the various Gothics
of the North are the original forms of the architecture which
the Lombards brought into Italy, changing under the less direct
influence of the Arab.
§ xxx. Understanding thus much of the formation of the
2Q THE QUA KKY.
neat European styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the-
moceeaioD <>f architectures in Venice herself. From what I
sii<! of the central character of Venetian art, the reader is not,
,,f course, to conclude that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian
elements met together and contended for the mastery at the
-line period. The earliest element was the pure Christian
K<>man: hut few, if any, remains of this art exist at Venice ;
for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many
x-ttlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend
from the mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it
was not until the beginning of the ninth century that it became
the seat of government ; while the cathedral of Torcello, though
Christian Roman in general form, was rebuilt in the eleventh
century, and shows evidence of Byzantine workmanship in
many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the church
of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Eialto at Venice,
and the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings,
in which the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight ; and
which is probably very sufficiently representative of the earli-
est architecture on the islands.
§ xxxi. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809,
and the body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty
years later. The first church of St. Mark's was, doubtless,
built in imitation of that destroyed at Alexandria, and from
which the relics of the saint had been obtained. During the
ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the architecture of Venice
>eems to have been formed on the same model, and is almost
identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs,* it being quite
immaterial whether the reader chooses to call both Byzantine
or both Arabic; the workmen being certainly Byzantine, but
Weed to the invention of new forms by their Arabian masters,
;md 1 (ringing these forms into use in whatever other parts of
the world they were employed.
To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with
buc.li vestiges as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote
* Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."
THE QUARRY. 21
the first division of the following inquiry. The examples re-
maining of it consist of three noble churches (those of Torcello,
Murano, and the greater part of St. Mark's), and about ten or
twelve fragments of palaces.
§ xxxn. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a char-
acter much more distinctly Arabian : the shafts become more
slender, and the arches consistently pointed, instead of round ;
certain other changes, not to be enumerated in a sentence, tak-
ing place in the capitals and mouldings. This style is almost
exclusively secular. It was natural for the Venetians to imi-
tate the beautiful details of the Arabian dwelling-house, while
they would with reluctance adopt those of the mosque for
Christian churches.
I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style.
It appears in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner,
but outlives it. Its position is, however, fixed by the central
date, 1180, that of the elevation of the granite shafts of the
Piazetta, whose capitals are the two most important pieces of
detail in this transitional style in Venice. Examples of its ap-
plication to domestic buildings exist in almost every street of
the city, and will form the subject of the second division of the
following essay.
§ xxxni. The Venetians were always ready to receive les-
sons in art from their enemies (else had there been no Arab
work in Venice). But their especial dread and hatred of the
Lombards appears to have long prevented them from receiving
the influence of the art which that people had introduced on
the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the practice of
the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very primi-
tive condition of pointed Grothic had arisen in ecclesiastical
architecture. It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lom-
bard-Arab forms, which were attaining perfection upon the con-
tinent, and would probably, if left to itself, have been soon
merged in the Venetian- Arab school, with which it had from
the first so close a fellowship, that it will be found difficult to
distinguish the Arabian ogives from those which seem to have
been built under this early Gothic influence. The churches of
2% THE QUAERY.
San Giacopodcll1 Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the Carmine,
and one or two more, furnish the only important examples
of it. But, in the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and
Dominicans introduced from the continent their morality and
their architecture, already a distinct Gothic, curiously developed
from Lombardic and Northern (German ?) forms ; and the in-
fluence of the principles exhibited in the vast churches of St.
Paul and the Frarr began rapidly to affect the Yenetian-Arab
school. Still the two systems never became united ; the Vene-
tian policy repressed the power of the church, and the Venetian
artists resisted its example ; and thenceforward the architecture
of the city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil : the one
an ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, com-
mon to the whole peninsula, and only showing Venetian sym-
pathies in the adoption of certain characteristic mouldings ; the
other a rich, luxuriant, and entirely original Gothic, formed
from the Venetian- Arab by the influence of the Dominican and
Franciscan architecture, and especially by the engrafting upon
the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the Franciscan
work, its traceries. These various forms of Gothic, the distinct-
<'>•> architecture of Venice, chiefly represented by the churches
of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and San Stef ano, 011 the ccclesi-
astical side, and by the Ducal palace, and the other principal
Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the subject of the
third division of the essay.
^ xxxiv. Now observe. The transitional (or especially
Arabic) style of the Venetian work is centralised by the date
1180, and is transformed gradually into the Gothic, which ex-
tends in its purity from the middle of the thirteenth to the be-
iriimin- of the fifteenth century; that is to say, over the pre-
cise period which I have described as the central epoch of the
life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year 1418 ; Fos-
curi became doge five years later, and in his reign the first
•narked ^ns appear in architecture of that mighty change
'hich Philippe de Commynes notices as above, the change to
which London owes St. Paul's, Rome St. Peter's, Venice and
Vicenza the edifices commonly supposed to be their noblest,
THE QUAERY. 23
and Europe in general the degradation of every art she has
since practised.
§ xxxv. This change appears first in a loss of truth and
vitality in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare
u Seven Lamps," chap, ii.) All the Gothics in existence, south-
ern or northern, were corrupted at once : the German and
French lost themselves in every species of extravagance ; the
English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a strait-waistcoat
of perpendicular lines ; the Italian effloresced on the mainland
into the. meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia
and the Cathedral of Como (a style sometimes ignorantly called
Italian Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the
Porta della Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This cor-
ruption of all architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded
with, and marked the state of religion over all Europe, — the
peculiar degradation of the Romanist superstition, and of public
morality in consequence, which brought about the Reformation.
§ xxxvi. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great
divisions of adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England,
Rationalists in France and Italy ; the one requiring the purifi-
cation of religion, the other its destruction. The Protestant
kept the religion, but cast aside the heresies of Rome, and with
them her arts, by which last rejection he injured his own char-
acter, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one of its noblest
exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It may be a
serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has
been a consequence of this error.
The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion.
This rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance,
marked by a return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and
hallow them for Christianity, but to rank itself under them as
an imitator and pupil. In Painting it is headed by Giulio
Romano and Nicolo Poussin ; in Architecture by Sansovino
and Palladio. •
§ xxxvu. Instant degradation followed in every direction, —
.a flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at
first, then perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of
24 THE QUARRY.
the representations of Christian subjects, which had become
blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci.
Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs 'without
innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon
the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets
with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level
of abused intellect; the base school of landscape* gradually
usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into
prurient pedantry, — the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the
confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of
Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and 011 the north the
patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation of bricks and
fogs, fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and
morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together
into one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revo-
lution in France, and the condition of art in England (saved by
her Protestantism from severer penalty) in the time of George
II.
§ xxxvui. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore
done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Re-
naissance landscape painting. But the harm which has been
done by Claude and the Poussins is as nothing when compared
to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi, and Sansovino.
Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in
their works being purchased at high prices : their real influence
is very slight, and they may be left without grave indignation
to their poor mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting
stranded conversation. 'Not so the Renaissance architecture.
Raised at once into all the magnificence of which it was capable
by Michael Angelo, then taken up by men of real intellect and
imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino, Inigo Jones, and
Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its influence on
tin- European mind; and that the more, because few persons
are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger mim-
* Appendix 11, "Renaissance Landscape."
THE QUARRY. 25
~ber regard it with slight attention ; but all men are concerned
with architecture, and have at some time of their lives serious
business with it. It does not much matter that an individual
loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but
it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hun-
dred thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor is it
merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which we have
to regret in this Renaissance architecture : but we shall find in
it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant
evils of modern times — over-sophistication and ignorant clas-
sicalism ; the one destroying the health fulness of general soci-
ety, the other rendering our schools and universities useless to
a large number of the men who pass through them.
Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her
fall the most corrupt, of European states ; and as she was in her
strength the centre of the pure currents of Christian archi-
tecture, so she is in her decline the source of the Renaissance.
It was the originality and splendor of the palaces of Yicenza
and Yenice which gave this school its eminence in the eyes of
Europe ; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation, and
graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepi-
tude than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her ad-
mirers into the grave.
§ xxxix. It is in Yenice, therefore, and in Yenice only that
effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renais-
sance. Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert v
them nowhere else. This, therefore, will be the final purpose
of the following essay. I shall not devote a fourth section to
Palladio, nor weary the reader with successive chapters of vitu-
peration ; but I shall, in my account of the earlier architecture,
compare the forms of all its leading features with those into
which they were corrupted by the Classicalists ; and pause, in -
the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as
I have made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall de-
pend upon two distinct kinds of evidence : — the first, the testi-
mony borne by particular incidents and facts to a want of
thought or of feeling in the builders ; from which we may con-
.,,; THE QUARRY.
••hide that their architecture must be bad :— the second, the
sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite in the reader,
«,f 11 systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of the first
kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may
!,<• immediately useful in fixing in the reader's mind the epoch
above indicated for the commencement of decline.
xf XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have
above attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso
Mocenigo. The tomb of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a
Florentine ; but it is of the same general type and feeling as all
the Venetian tombs of the period, and it is one of the last
which retains it. The classical element enters largely into its
details, but the feeling of the whole is as yet unaffected. Like
all the lovely tombs of Yenice and Verona, it is a sarcophagus
with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful but
tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without painfulness,
of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and
1,01 lllet — his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow — his
hands are simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated,
the features large, but so pure and lordly in their natural
chiselling, that they must have looked like marble even in their
animation. They are deeply worn away by thought and
death ; the veins on the temples branched and starting ; the skin
gathered in sharp folds ; the brow high-arched and shaggy ; the
eve-ball magnificently large ; the curve of the lips just veiled
by the light mustache at the side ; the beard short, double, and
sharp-pointed: all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust
mark ing like light the stern angles of the cheek and brow.
This tomb was sculptured in 1421, and is thus described by
one of the most intelligent of the recent writers who represent
the popular feeling respecting Venetian art.
"Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non bel) sar-
cophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo. It may be called
<>nc of the last links which connect the declining art of the Middle Ages
with that <if the Renaissance, which was in its rise. We will not stay to
particularise the defeets of each of the seven figures of the front and sides,
which repn-ent the cardinal and theological virtues ; nor will AVC make any
THE QUARRY. 27
remarks upon those which stand in the niches above the pavilion, because
\ve consider them unworthy both of the age and reputation of the Floren-
tine school, which was then with reason considered the most notable in
Italy." *
It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects ; but it
might have been better to have paused a moment beside that
noble image of a king's mortality.
§ XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and
Paolo, is another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Yendramin.
This doge died in 1478, after a short reign of two years, the
most disastrous in the annals of Venice. He died of a pesti-
lence which followed the ravage of the Turks, carried to the
shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by
sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in
the blue distances of Friuli ; and there was raised to him the
most costly tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs.
§ XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue
of one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his elo-
quence beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil
the force of Italian superlative by translation.
' ' Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di proporzioni,
a quella squisitezza d' ornamenti, a quel certo sapore antico che senza ombra
d' imitazione traspare da tutta 1' opera" — &c. ' ' Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo f or-
nito di squisiti intagli s' alza uno stylobate" — &c. " Sotto le colonne, il pre-
detto stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi con bella novita di
pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un fregio il piu gentile che veder si
possa" — &c. "Non puossi lasciar senza un cenno 1' area dove sta chiuso il
doge ; capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," &c.
There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of
which the above specimens may suffice ; but there is not a
word of the statue of the dead from beginning to end. I am
myself in the habit of considering this rather an important part
of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it here, because
Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is unani-
* Selvatico, " Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.
TTIK QUARRY.
moiisly declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral
work, and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico)
" II vertice a cui 1' arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del scalpello,"
— " The very culminating point to which the Venetian arts attained by min-
istry of the chisel. "
To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and
cobwebs, I attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in
Venice, by the ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be
found in the sacristan's keeping. I was struck at first by the
excessive awkwardness and want of feeling in the fall of the
hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown oft the middle of
tin- body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the Moce-
nigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its
veins finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the del-
icacy of the veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth.
The Vendramin hand is far more laboriously cut, but its blunt
and clumsy contour at once makes us feel that all the care lias
been thrown away, and well it may be, for it has been entirely
bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as
the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had
U'cn broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the
wretched effigy had only one hand, and was a mere block on
the inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its feat-
ures, is made monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of
the forehead is wrinkled elaborately, the other left smooth ;
• •lie side only of the doge's cap is chased; one cheek only is
finished, and the other blocked out and distorted besides;
tiimlly, the ermine robe, which is elaborately imitated to its ut-
most lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side, is blocked
"lit only on the other : it having been supposed throughout the
work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from
<>nc side.
^ xi- n i. It was indeed to be so seen by nearly every one ; and
do not blame— I should, on the contrary, have praised— the
HMilptor for regulating his treatment of it by its position; if
that treatment had not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving
THE QUARRY. 29
only half a face, a monstrous mask, when we demanded true
portraiture of the dead ; and, secondly, such utter coldness of
feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of intellectual
and moral degradation : Who, with a heart in his breast, could
have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man's
countenance — unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by
the solemnities of death — could have stayed his hand, as he
reached the bend of the grey forehead, and measured out the
last veins of it at so much the zecchin ?
I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect
that much talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by
the sculptor of this base and senseless lie. The whole monu-
ment is one wearisome aggregation of that species of orna-
mental flourish, which, when it is done with a pen, is called pen-
manship, and when done with a chisel, should be called chisel-
manship ; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys
sprawling on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and
dragged along the sea by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.
But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the
whole matter. This lying monument to a dishonored doge,
this culminating pride of the Renaissance art of Venice, is at
least veracious, if in nothing else, in its testimony to the char-
acter of its sculptor. He was banis/ied from Venice for for-
gery in 1487.*
§ XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work here-
after; but I pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet
more interesting piece of evidence, which I promised.
The ducal palace has two principal f a§ades ; one towards
the sea, the other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and,
as far as the seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is
work of the early part of the fourteenth century, some of it
perhaps even earlier ; while the rest of the Piazzetta side is of
the fifteenth. The difference in age has been gravely disputed
by the Venetian antiquaries, who have examined many docu-
ments on the subject, and quoted some which they never exam-
* Selvatico, p. 221.
30 THE QUARRY.
ined. I have myself collated most of the written documents,
and one document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries
never thought of referring, — the masonry of the palace itself.
§ XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth
arch from the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of
comparatively small stones up to that point ; the fifteenth cen-
tury work instantly begins with larger stones, " brought from
Istria, a hundred miles away." * The ninth shaft from the sea
in the lower arcade, and the seventeenth, which is above it, in
the upper arcade, commence the series of fifteenth century
shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the others, and
carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe,
reader. The face of the palace, from this point to the Porta
della Carta, was built at the instance of that noble Doge Mo-
cenigo beside whose tomb you have been standing; at his
instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his successor,
Foscari ; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed ; it is
only disputed that the sea facade is earlier ; of which, however,
the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible : for not
only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower
shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper
and lower arcade : the costumes of the figures introduced in
the sea facade being purely Griottesque, correspondent with
Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel at Padua, while the cos-
tume on the other capitals is Kenaissance-Classic : and the lions'
heads between the arches change at the same point. And there
are a multitude of other evidences in the statues of the angels,
with which I shall not at present trouble the reader.
^ XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424
(remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was
obliged to follow the principal forms of the older palace. But
lie had not the wit to invent new capitals in the same style ; he
therefore clumsily copied the old ones. The palace has seven-
teen main arches on the sea facade, eighteen on the Piazzetta
de, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six pillars ;
* The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different quality.
THE QUARRY. 31
and these pillars I shall always number from right to left, from
the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that next
the Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, be-
cause I thus have the earliest shafts first numbered. So
counted, the 1st, the 18th, and the 36th, are the great supports
of the angles of the palace ; and the first of the fifteenth cen-
tury series, being, as above stated, the 9th from the sea on the
Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire series, and will always
in future be so numbered, so that all numbers above twenty-
six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it, fourteenth
century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.
Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the
7th ; the 29th, from the 9th ; the 30th, from the 10th ; the
31st, from the 8th; the 33d, from the 12th; and the 34th,
from the llth ; the others being dull inventions of the 15th
century, except the 36th, which is very nobly designed.
§ XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion
of the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be ac-
curately described hereafter ; the point I have here to notice is
in the copy of the ninth capital, which was decorated (being,
like the rest, octagonal) with figures of the eight Virtues : —
Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Temperance, Prudence, Humil-
ity (the Venetian antiquaries call it Humanity !), and Forti-
tude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are somewhat
hard-featured ; with vivid and living expression, and plain
every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of
apples (perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who
stretches his arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capi-
tal. Fortitude tears open a lion's jaws ; Faith lays her hand
on her breast, as she beholds the Cross ; and Hope is praying,
wrhile above her a hand is seen emerging from sunbeams — the
hand of God (according to that of Kevelations, " The Lord God
giveth them light") ; and the inscription above is, " Spes op-
tima in Deo."
§ XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect
chiselling, imitated by the fifteenth century workmen : the
Virtues have lost their hard features and living expression ;
32 THE QUARRY.
they have now all got Roman noses, and have had their hair
curled. Their actions and emblems are, however, preserved
until we come to Hope : she is still praying, but she is praying
to the sun only : The hand of God is gone.
Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which
had then become dominant in the world, forgetting to see
God's hand in the light He gave ; so that in the issue, when
that light opened into the Reformation on the one side, and
into full knowledge of ancient literature on the other, the one
was arrested and the other perverted ?
§ XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on
which I shall depend for the proof of the inferiority of charac-
ter in the Renaissance workmen. But the proof of the infe-
riority of the work itself is not so easy, for in this I have to
appeal to judgments which the Renaissance work has itself dis-
torted. I felt this difficulty very forcibly as I read a slight re-
view of my former work, "The Seven Lamps," in "The
Architect :" the writer noticed my constant praise of St.
Mark's: "Mr. Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building!
We," said the Architect, " think it a very ugly building." I
was not surprised at the difference of opinion, but at the thing
being considered so completely a subject of opinion. My op-
ponents in matters of painting always assume that there is
Mich a thing as a law of right, and that I do not understand it :
but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they simply
set their opinion against- mine ; and indeed there is no law at
present to which either they or I can appeal. No man can
>l>eak with rational decision of the merits or demerits of build-
ings : he may with obstinacy ; he may with resolved adherence
to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter could be
otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity of
partizanship. I had always, however, a clear conviction that
there was a law in this matter : that good architecture might
'><• i nd isjHitably discerned and divided from the bad; that the
opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly visible ;
and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about
the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for
THE QUARRY. 33
debating about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing it.
I felt also assured that this law must be universal if it were
conclusive ; that it must enable us to reject all foolish and base
work, and to accept all noble and wise work, without reference
to style or national feeling ; that it must sanction the design of
all truly great nations and times, Gothic or Greek or Arab ;
that it must cast off and reprobate the design of all foolish
nations and times, Chinese or Mexican, or modern European :
and that it must be easily applicable to all possible architec-
tural inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to
establish such a law, in full belief that men are intended, writh-
out excessive difficulty, and by use of their general common
sense, to know good things from bad ; and that it is only be-
cause they will not be at the pains required for the discern-
ment, that the world is so widely encumbered with forgeries
and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped ;
the reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I re-
quired, and the foolish things fell aside, and took themselves
away so soon as they were looked in the face. I had then,
writh respect to Venetian architecture, the choice, either to es-
tablish each division of law in a separate form, as I came to the
features with which it was concerned, or else to ask the read-
er's patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first,
and determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which
we might together make retrospective appeal. I thought this
the best, though perhaps the dullest way ; and in these first
following pages I have therefore endeavored to arrange those
foundations of criticism, on which I shall rest in my account of
Venetian architecture, in a form clear and simple enough to be
intelligible even to those who never thought of architecture
before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them
will be well known or self-evident ; but they must not be in-
dignant at a simplicity on which the whole argument depends
for its usefulness. From that which appears a mere truism
when first stated, they will find very singular consequences
sometimes following, — consequences altogether unexpected,
and of considerable importance ; I will not pause here to dwell
on
THE QUARRY.
their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done ;
for I believe most readers will at once admit the value of a
criterion of right and wrong in so practical and costly an art as
architecture, and will be apt rather to doubt the possibility of
its attainment than dispute its usefulness if attained. I invite
them, therefore, to a fair trial, being certain that even if I
should fail in my main purpose, and be unable to induce in my
reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I shall at least re-
ceive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent reasons, which
may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary prefer-
ence. And if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the
Stones of Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the moulder-
ing of her marble, poison more subtle than ever was betrayed
by the rending of her crystal ; and if thus I am enabled to
show the baseness of the schools of architecture and nearly
every other art, which have for three centuries been predomi-
nant in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be ser-
viceable for proof of a more vital truth than any at which I
have hitherto hinted. For observe : I said the Protestant had
despised the arts, and the Eationalist corrupted them. But
what has the Romanist done meanwhile ? He boasts that it
was the papacy which raised the arts ; why could it not sup-
port them when it was left to its own strength ? How came
it to yield to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and
to oppose no barrier to innovations, which have reduced the
once faithfully conceived imagery of its worship to stage deco-
ration ? Shall we not rather find that Romanism, instead of
being a promoter of the arts, has never shown itself capable of
a single great conception since the separation of Protestantism
from its side ? * So long as, corrupt though it might be, no
i-lrar witness had been borne against it, so that it still included
in its ranks a vast number of faithful Christians, so long its arts
were noble. But the witness was borne — the error made ap-
parent ; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony or forsake
the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an intel-
* Appendix 12, " Romanist Modern Art."
THE QUABBT. 35
lectual palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any
further use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has
made her worship the shame of its own shrines, and her wor-
shippers their destroyers. Come, then, if truths such as these
are worth our thoughts ; come, and let us know, before we
enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed to sub-
mit ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to
look upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted
forms of her palaces, as we should on the capricious towering
of summer clouds in the sunset, ere they sank into the deep of
night ; or whether, rather, we shall not behold in the bright-
ness of their accumulated marble, pages on which the sentence
of her luxury was to be written until the waves should efface
it, as they fulfilled — "God has numbered thy kingdom, and
finished it."
CHAPTER II.
THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE.
§ i. WE address ourselves, then, first to the task of deter-
mining some law of right which we may apply to the architec-
ture of all the world and of all time ; and by help of which,
and judgment according to which, we may easily pronounce
whether a building is good or noble, as, by applying a plumb-
line, whether it be perpendicular.
The first question will of course be, What are the possible
Virtues of architecture ?
In the main, we require from buildings, as from men, two
kinds of goodness : first, the doing their practical duty well :
then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which
last is itself another form of duty.
Then the practical duty divides itself into two branches, —
acting and talking : — acting, as to defend us from weather or
violence ; talking, as the duty of monuments or tombs, to
record facts and express feelings; or of churches, temples,
public edifices, treated as books of history, to tell such history
dearly and forcibly.
Wi> have thus," altogether, three great branches of architec-
tural virtue, and we require of any building,
1 . That it act well, and do the things it was intended to do
in the best way.
-'. That it speak well, and say the things it was intended to
say in the best words.
3. That it look well, and please us by its presence, what-
ever it has to do or say/"
* Appendix 13. "Mr. Fergusson's System."
II. THE VIKTUES OF ARCHITECTURE. 37
§ ii. Now, as regards the second of these virtues, it is evi-
dent that we can establish 110 general laws. First, because it
is not a virtue required in all buildings ; there are some which
are only for covert or defence, and from which we ask 110 con-
versation. Secondly, because there are countless methods of
expression, some conventional, some natural : each conven-
tional mode has its own alphabet, which evidently can be no
subject of general laws. Every natural mode is instinctively
employed and instinctively understood, wherever there is true
feeling ; and this instinct is above law. The choice of con-
ventional methods depends on circumstances out of calcula-
tion, and that of natural methods on sensations out of control ;
so that we can only say that the choice is right, when we feel
that the means are effective ; and we cannot always say that
it is wrong when they are not so.
A building which recorded the Bible history by means of a
series of sculptural pictures, would be perfectly useless to a
person unacquainted with the Bible beforehand ; on the other
hand, the text of the Old and New Testaments might be
written on its walls, and yet the building be a very inconven-
ient kind of book, not so useful as if it had been adorned
with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So, again, the power of
exciting emotion must vary or vanish, as the spectator be-
comes thoughtless or cold; and the building may be often
blamed for what is the fault of its critic, or endowed with a
charm which is of its spectator's creation. It is not, therefore,
possible to make expressional character any fair criterion of
excellence in buildings, until we can fully place ourselves in
the position of those to whom their expression was originally
addressed, and until we are certain that we understand every
symbol, and are capable of being touched by every association
which its builders employed as letters of their language. I
shall continually endeavor to put the reader into such sym-
pathetic temper, when I ask for his judgment of a building ;
and in every work I may bring before him I shall point out,
as far as T am able, whatever is peculiar in its expression ; nay,
I must even depend on such peculiarities for much of my best
.38 II. THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE.
evidence respecting the character of the builders. But I can-
not legalize the judgment for which I plead, nor insist upon is
if it be refused. I can neither force the reader to feel this
architectural rhetoric, nor compel him to confess that the
rhetoric is powerful, if it have produced no impression on his
own mind.
$ m. I leave, therefore, the expression of buildings for in-
cidental notice only.' But their other two virtues are proper
subjects of law, — their performance of their common and
necessary work, and their conformity with universal and
divine canons of loveliness: respecting these there can be no
d«.ubt, no ambiguity. I would have the reader discern them
M > quickly that, as he passes along a street, he may, by a glance
of the eye, distinguish the noble from the ignoble work. He
can. do this, if he permit free play to his natural instincts;
and all that I have to do for him is to remove from those
instinct* the artificial restraints which prevent their action,
and to encourage them to an unaffected and unbiassed choice
In -rween right and wrong.
.' iv. We have, then, two qualities of buildings for subjects
of separate inquiry : their action, and aspect, and the sources
of virtue in both ; that is to say, Strength and Beauty, both
of these being less admired in themselves, than as testifying
the intelligence or imagination of the builder.
K«»r we have a worthier way of looking at human than at
divine architecture: much of the value both of construction
and decoration, in the edifices of men, depends upon our
being led by the thing produced or adorned, to some contem-
plation of the powers of mind concerned in its creation or
adornment AVe are not so led by divine work, but are con-
tent t.. rest in the contemplation of the thing created. I wish
the reader to note this especially : we take pleasure, or should
take pleasure, in architectural construction altogether as the
man it estation of an admirable human intelligence ; it is not
the strength, not the size, not the finish of the work which
we are to venerate: rocks are always stronger, mountains
always laiger, all natural objects more finished; but it is the
II. THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE. 39
intelligence and resolution of man in overcoming physical
difficulty which are to be the source of our pleasure and sub-
ject of our praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is
less the actual loveliness of the thing produced, than the
choice and invention concerned in the production, which are
to delight us ; the love and the thoughts of the workman more
than his work : his work must always be imperfect, but his
thoughts and affections may be true and deep.
§ v. This origin of our pleasure in architecture I must in-
sist upon at somewhat greater length, for I would fain do away
with some of the ungrateful coldness which we show towards
the good builders of old time. In no art is there closer con-
nection between our delight in the work, and our admiration
of the workman's mind, than in architecture, and yet we rarely
ask for a builder's name. The patron at whose cost, the monk
through whose dreaming, the foundation was laid, we remem-
ber occasionally ; never the man who verily did the work.
Did the reader ever hear of William of Sens as having had
anything to do with Canterbury Cathedral? or of Pietro
Basegio as in anywise connected with the Ducal Palace of
Venice ? There is much ingratitude and injustice in this ;
and therefore I desire my reader to observe carefully how
much of his pleasure in building is derived, or should be
derived, from admiration of the intellect of men whose names
he knows not.
§ vi. The two virtues of architecture which we can justly
weigh, are, we said, its strength or good construction, and its
beauty or good decoration. Consider first, therefore, what
you mean when you say a building is well constructed or well
built ; you do not merely mean that it answers its purpose, —
this is much, and many modern buildings fail of this much ;
but if it be verily well built, it must answer this purpose in
the simplest way, and with no over-expenditure of means.
We require of a light-house, for instance, that it shall stand
firm and carry a light ; if it do not this, assuredly it has been
ill built ; but it may do it to the end of time, and yet not be
well built. It may have hundreds of tons of stone in it more
40 II. THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE.
than were needed, and have cost thousands of pounds more
than it ought. To pronounce it well or ill built, we must
know the utmost forces it can have to resist, and the besjt
arrangements of stone for encountering them, and the quickest
wavs of effecting such arrangements : then only, so far as such
arrangements have been chosen, and such methods used, is it
well built. Then the knowledge of all difficulties to be met,
and of all means of meeting them, and the quick and true
fancy or invention of the modes of applying the means to the
end, are what we have to admire in the builder, even as he is
seen through this first or inferior part of his work. Mental
power, observe: not muscular nor mechanical, nor technical,
nor empirical,— pure, precious, majestic, massy intellect ; not
to be had at vulgar price, nor received without thanks, and
without asking from whom.
£ MI. Suppose, for instance, we are present at the building
of a bridge : the bricklayers or masons have had their cen-
tring erected for them, and that centring was put together
by a carpenter, who had the line of its curve traced for him
by the architect: the masons are dexterously handling and
fitting their bricks, or, by the help of machinery, carefully
adjusting stones which are numbered for their places. There
is probably in their quickness of eye and readiness of hand
something admirable ; but this is not what I ask the reader
to admire: not the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor
anything that he can presently see and understand, but the
choice of the curve, and the shaping of the numbered stones,
and the appointment of that number ; there were many things
t<> be known and thought upon before these were decided.
The man who chose the curve and numbered the stones, had
to know the times and trdes of the river, and the strength of
its floods, and the height and How of them, and the soil of the
banks, and the endurance of it, and the weight of the stones
he had to build with, and the kind of traffic that day by day
would be carried on over his bridge, — all this specially, and all
tin- irivat u-euerjil laws of force and weight, and their working;
and in the choice of the curve and numbering of stones are
II. THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE. 41
expressed not only his knowledge of these, but such ingenuity
and nrmness as lie iud, in applying special means to overcome
the special difficulties about his bridge. There is no saying
how much wit, how much depth of thought, how much fancy,
presence of mind, courage, and fixed resolution there may
have gone to the placing of a single stone of it. This is what
we have to admire, — this grand power and heart of man in
the thing ; not his technical or empirical way of holding the
trowel and laying mortar.
§ vin. Now there is in everything properly called art this
concernment of the intellect, even in the province of the art
which seems merely practical. For observe : in this bridge-
building I suppose no reference to architectural principles;
all that I suppose we want is to get safely over the river ; the
man who has taken us over is still a mere bridge-builder,— a
1mU<lt'i\ not an architect: he maybe a rough, artless, feeling-
less man, incapable of doing any one truly fine thing all his
days. I shall call upon you to despise him presently in a sort,
but not as if he were a mere smoother of mortar ; perhaps a
great man, infinite in memory, indefatigable in labor, exhaust-
less in expedient, unsurpassable in quickness of thought.
Take good heed you understand him before you despise him.
§ ix. But why is he to be in anywise despised ? By no
means despise him, unless he happen to be without a soul,*
or at least to show no signs of it ; which possibly he may not
in merely carrying you across the river. He may be merely
what Mr. Carlyle rightly calls a human beaver after all ; and
there may be nothing in all that ingenuity of his greater than
a complication of animal faculties, an intricate bestiality, — nest
or hive building in its highest development. You need some-
thing more than this, or the man is despicable ; you need that
virtue of building through which he may show his affections
and delights ; you need its beauty or decoration.
§ x. Not that, in reality, one division of the man is more
human than another. Theologists fall into this error very
* Appendix 14, " Divisions of Humanity."
42 IIt THE VIKTUES OF ARCHITECTURE.
fatally and continually ; and a man from whom I have learned
much, Lord Lindsay, has hurt his noble book by it, speaking
ae if the spirit of the man only were immortal, and were
opposod to his intellect, and the latter to the senses ; whereas
all the divisions of humanity are noble or brutal, immortal or
mortal, according to the degree of their sanctiiication : and
there is no part of the man which is not immortal and divine
when it is once given to God, and no part of him which is
not mortal by the second death, and brutal before the first,
when it is withdrawn from God. For to what shall we trust
for our distinction from the beasts that perish? To our
higher intellect ? — yet are we not bidden to be wise as the
serpent, and to consider the ways of the ant? — or to our
affections ? nay ; these are more shared by the lower animals
than our intelligence. Hamlet leaps into the grave of his
beloved, and leaves it, — a dog had stayed. Humanity and
immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love ; not in the
body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the
thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it, — but in the dedica-
tion of them all to Him who will raise them Tip at the last
day.
§ XL. It is not, therefore, that the signs of his affections,
which man leaves upon his work, are indeed more ennobling
than the signs of his intelligence; but it is the balance of
both whose expression we need, and the signs of the govern-
ment of them all by Conscience ; and Discretion, the daughter
of Conscience. So, then, the intelligent part of man being
eminently, if not chiefly, displayed in the structure of his
\v<>i-k, his affectionate part is to be shown in its decoration;
and, that decoration may be indeed lovely, two things are
n<v(k>.l : first, that the affections be vivid, and honestly shown ;
secondly, that they be fixed on the right things.
jj xn. You think, perhaps, I have put the requirements in
wrono- order. Logically I have; practically I have not: for
l necessary first to teach men to speak out, and say what
they like, truly; and, in the second place, to teach them
Which of their likings are ill set, and which justly. If a
man
II. THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE. 43
is cold in his likings and dislikings, or if lie will not tell you
what he likes, you can make nothing of him. Only get him
ta feel quickly and to speak plainly, and you may set him
right. And the fact is, that the great evil of all recent
architectural effort has not been that men liked wrong things :
but that they either cared nothing about any, or pretended
to like what they did not. Do you suppose that any modern
architect likes what he builds, or enjoys it \ Not in the least.
He builds it because he has been told that such and such
things arc fine, and that he should like them. He pretends
to like them, and gives them a false relish of vanity. Do you
seriously imagine, reader, that any living soul in London likes
triglyphs ? * — or gets any hearty enjoyment out of pedi-
ments ? f You are much mistaken. Greeks did : English
people never did, — never will. Do you fancy that the archi-
tect of old Burlington Mews, in Kegent Street, had any
particular satisfaction in putting the blank triangle over the
archway, instead of a useful garret window ? By no manner
of means. He had been told it was right to do so, and
thought he should be admired for doing it. Very few faults
of architecture are mistakes of honest choice : they are almost
always hypocrisies.
§ xni. So, then, the first thing we have to ask of the dec-
oration is that it should indicate strong liking, and that
honestly. It matters not so much what the thing is, as that
the builder should really love it and enjoy it, and say so
plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorns ;
so he has covered his porch with hawthorn, — it is a perfect.
Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you would try
to gather it forthwith, but for fear of being pricked. The
old Lombard architects liked hunting ; so they covered their
work with horses and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two
* Triglyph. Literally, " Three Cut." The awkward upright ornament
with two notches in it, and a cut at each side, to be seen everywhere at the
tops of Doric colonnades, ancient and modern.
\ Pediment. The triangular space above Greek porticos, as on the
Mansion House or Royal Exchange.
44 n. THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE.
van Is long. The base Kenaissance architects of Venice liked
ina sluing and fiddling; so they covered their work with
comic masks and musical instruments. Even that was better
than our English way of liking nothing, and professing to like
triglyphs.
§ xiv. But the second requirement in decoration, is a sign
of our liking the right thing. And the right thing to be liked
is God's work, which He made for our delight and content-
ment in this world. And all noble ornamentation is the ex-
pression of man's delight in God's work.
§ xv. So, then, these are the two virtues of building : first,
the signs of man's own good work ; secondly, the expression
of man's delight in better work than his own. And these are
the two virtues of which I desire my reader to be able- quickly
to judge, at least in some measure ; to have a definite opinion
up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point he cannot form
one. When the science of the building is great, great science
is of course required to comprehend it ; and, therefore, of diffi-
cult bridges, and light-houses, and harbor walls, and river
dykes, and railway tunnels, no judgment may be rapidly
formed. But of common buildings, built in common circum-
stances, it is very possible for every man, or woman, or child,
to form judgment both rational and rapid. Their necessary,
or even possible, features are but few ; the laws of their con-
struction are as simple as they are interesting. The labor of
a few hours is enough to render the reader master of their
main points; and from that moment he will find in himself a
power of judgment which can neither be escaped nor deceived,
and discover subjects of interest where everything before had
appeared barren. For though the laws are few and simple,
the modes of obedience to them are not so. Every building
presents its own requirements and difficulties; and every good
building has peculiar appliances or contrivances to meet them.
nderetand the laws of structure, and you will feel the special
ifficulty in every new building which you approach ; and you
know also, or feel instinctively,- whether it has been
* Appendix 15: "Instinctive Judgments."
II. THE VIRTUES (^ARCHITECTURE. 45
f
wisely met or otherwise. And an enormous number of build-
ings, arid of styles of buildings, you will be able to cast aside
at once, as at variance with these constant laws of structure,
and therefore unnatural and monstrous.
§ xvi. Then, as regards decoration, I want you only to
consult your own natural choice and liking. There is a right
and wrong in it ; but you will assuredly like the right if you
suffer your natural instinct to lead you. Half the evil in this
world comes from people not knowing what they do like, not
deliberately setting themselves to find out what they really
enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for instance :
they don't know that, — they rather think they like keeping it ;
and they do keep it under this false impression, often to their
great discomfort. Every body likes to do good ; but not one
in a hundred finds this out. Multitudes think they like to do
evil ; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God
made the world.
So in this lesser matter of ornament. It needs some little
care to try experiments upon yourself : it needs deliberate
question and upright answer. But there is no difficulty to be
overcome, no abstruse reasoning to be gone into ; only a little
watchfulness needed, and thoughtfulness, and so much honesty
as will enable you to confess to yourself and to all men, that
you enjoy things, though great authorities say you should not.
§ xvii. This looks somewhat like pride ; but it is true hu-
mility, a trust that you have been so created as to enjoy what
is fitting for you, and a willingness to be pleased, as it was
intended you should be. It is the child's spirit, which we are
then most happy when we most recover ; only wiser than
children in that we are ready to think it subject of thankful-
ness that we can still be pleased with a fair color or a dancing
light. And, above all, do not try to make all these pleasures
reasonable, nor to connect the delight which you take in orna-
ment with that which you take in construction or usefulness.
They have no connection ; and every effort that you make to
reason from one to the other will blunt your sense of beauty,
or confuse it with sensations altogether inferior to it. You
46 II. THE VIKTUES OF AKCHITECTURE.
were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things
which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased
by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn. to
other account than mere delight. Remember that the most
beautiful things in the world are the most useless ; peacocks
and lilies for instance ; at least I suppose this quill I hold in
my hand writes better than a peacock's would, and the peas-
ants of Yevay, whose fields in spring time are as white with
lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me the hay
was none the better for them.
§ xvin. Our task therefore divides itself into two branches,
and these I shall follow in succession. I shall first consider
the construction of buildings, dividing them into their really
necessary members or features; and I shall endeavor so to
lead the reader forward from the foundation upwards, as that
he may find out for himself the best way of doing everything,
and having so discovered it, never forget it. I shall give him
stones, and bricks, and straw, chisels, and trowels, and the
ground, and then ask him to build ; only helping him, as I can,
if I find him puzzled. And when he has built his house or
church, I shall ask him to ornament it, and leave it to him to
choose the ornaments as I did to find out the construction : I
shall use no influence with him whatever, except to counter-
act previous prejudices, and leave him, as far as may be, free.
And when he has thus found out how to build, and chosen his
forms of decoration, I shall do what I can to confirm his con-
fidence in what he has done. I shall assure him that no one
in the world could, so far, have done better, and require him
to condemn, as futile or fallacious, whatever has no resem-
blance to Lis own performances.
CHAPTER III.
THE SIX DIVISIONS OF ARCHITECTURE.
§ i. THE practical duties of buildings are twofold.
They have either (1), to hold and protect something ; or
(2), to place or carry something.
1. Architecture of Protection. This is architecture intended
to protect men or their possessions from violence of
any kind, whether of men or of the elements. It will
include all churches, houses, and treasuries ; fortresses,
fences, and ramparts ; the architecture of the hut and
sheepf old ; of the palace and the citadel : of the dyke,
breakwater, and sea-wall. And the protection, when
of living creatures, is to be understood as including
commodiousness and comfort of habitation, wherever
these are possible under the given circumstances.
2. Architecture of Position. This is architecture intended
to carry men or things to some certain places, or to
hold them there. This will include all bridges, aque-
ducts, and road architecture ; light-houses, which have
to hold light in appointed places ; chimneys to carry
smoke or direct currents of air ; staircases ; towers,
which are to be watched from or cried from, as in
mosques, or to hold bells, or to place men in positions
of offence, as ancient moveable attacking towers, and
most fortress towers.
§ IT. Protective architecture has to do one or all of three
things : to wall a space, to roof it, and to give access to it, of
48 HI- THE SIX I>IVISIO:N"S OF AKCHITECTUKE.
persons, light, and air; and it is therefore to be considered
under the three divisions of walls, roofs, and apertures.
We will take, first, a short, general view of the connection
of these members, and then examine them in detail : endeav-
oring always to keep the simplicity of our first arrangement
in view ; for protective architecture has indeed no other mem-
bers than these, unless flooring and paving be considered
architecture, which it is only when the flooring is also a roof;
the laying of the stones or timbers for footing being pavior's
or carpenter's work, rather than architect's ; and, at all events,
work respecting the well or ill doing of which we shall hardly
find much difference of opinion, except in points of aesthetics.
We shall therefore concern ourselves only with the construction
of walls, roofs, and apertures.
§ in. 1. Watts. — A wall is an even and united fence,
whether of wood, earth, stone, or metal. When meant for
purposes of mere partition or enclosure, it remains a wall
l>r«> JHT: but it has generally also to sustain a certain vertical
or lateral pressure, for which -its strength is at first increased
1 > v some general addition to its thickness ; but if the pressure
becomes very great, it is gathered up into piers to resist ver-
tical pressure, and supported by buttresses to resist lateral
pressure.
It' its functions of partition or enclosure are continued, to-
nvrluT with that of resisting vertical pressure, it remains as a
wall veil between the piers into which it has been partly gath-
ered ; but if it is required only to resist the vertical or roof
pressure, it is gathered up into piers altogether, loses its wall
character, and becomes a group or line of piers.
On the other hand, if the lateral pressure be slight, it may
ivtaiu its character of a wall, being supported against the
pressure by buttresses at intervals; but if the lateral pressure
' very great, it is supported against such pressure by a con-
tinuous buttress, loses its wall character, and becomes a dyke
"I1 rampart.
.* iv. We shall have therefore (A) first to get a general idea
a wall, and of right construction of walls ; then (B) to see
III. THE SIX DIVISIONS OF AKCHITECTURE.
49
how this wall is gathered into piers ; and to get a general idea
of piers and the right construction of piers ; then (C) to see
how a wall is supported by buttresses, and to get a general idea
of buttresses and the right construction of buttresses. This is
surely very simple, and it is all we shall have to do with walls
and their divisions.
§ v. 2. Roofs. — :A roof is the covering of a space, narrow
or wide. It will be most conveniently studied by first con-
sidering the forms in which it may be carried over a narrow
Fig. I.
space, and then expanding these on a wide plan ; only there
is some difficulty here in the nomenclature, for an arched roof
over a narrow space has (I believe) no name, except that
which belongs properly to the piece of stone or wood compos-
ing such a roof, namely, lintel. But the reader will have no
difficulty in understanding that he is first to consider roofs on
the section only, thinking how best to construct a narrow bar
or slice of them, of whatever form ; as, for instance, a?, y, or
2, over the plan or area a, Fig. I. Having done this, let him
50 HI- THE SIX DIVISIONS OF ARCHITECTURE.
imagine these several divisions, first moved along (or set side
by side) over a rectangle, J, Fig. I., and then revolved round a
point (or crossed at it) over a polygon, c, or circle, d, and he will
huve every form of simple roof : the arched section giving suc-
cessively the vaulted roof and dome, and the gabled section
giving the gabled roof and spire.
As we go farther into the subje ct, we shall only have to
add one or two forms to the sections here given, in order to
embrace all the uncombined roofs in existence ; and we shall
not trouble the reader with many questions respecting cross-
vaulting, and other modes of their combination.
§ vi. Now, it also happens, from its place in buildings, that
the sectional roof over a narrow space will need to be consid-
ered before we come to the expanded roof over a broad one.
For when a wall has been gathered, as above explained, into
piers, that it may better bear vertical pressure, it is generally
necessary that it should be expanded again at the top into a
continuous wall before it carries the true roof. Arches or
lintels are, therefore, thrown from pier to pier, and a level
preparation for carrying the real roof is made above them.
After we have examined the structure of piers, therefore, we
shall have to see how lintels or arches are thrown from pier to
pier, and the whole prepared for the superincumbent roof ; this
arrangement being universal in all good architecture prepared
for vertical pressures : and we shall then examine the condition
of the great roof itself. And because the structure of the
roof very often introduces certain lateral pressures which have
much to do with the placing of buttresses, it will be well to do
all this before we examine the nature of buttresses, and, there-
fore, between parts (B) and (C) of the above plan, § iv. So
II..NV we shall have to study: (A) the construction of walls;
(B) that of piers ; (C) that of lintels or arches prepared for
roofing ; (D) that of roofs proper ; and (E) that of buttresses.
§ vii. 3. Apertures. — There must either be intervals be-
tween the piers, of which intervals the character will be deter-
mined by that of the piers themselves, or else doors or win-
dows in the walls proper. And, respecting doors or windows,
III. THE SIX DIVISIONS OF ARCHITECTURE. 51
we have to determine three things : first, the proper shape of
the entire aperture ; secondly, the way in which it is to be
filled with valves or glass ; and thirdly, the modes of protect-
ing it on the outside, and fitting appliances of convenience to
it, as porches or balconies. And this will be our division F ;
and if the reader will have the patience to go through these
six heads, which include every possible feature of protective
architecture, and to consider the simple necessities, and fit-
nesses of each, I will answer for it, he shall never confound
good architecture with bad any more. For, as to architec-
ture of position, a great part of it involves necessities of con-
struction with which the spectator cannot become generally
acquainted, and of the compliance with which he is therefore
never expected to judge, — as in chimneys, light-houses^ &c. :
and the other forms of it are so closely connected with those
of protective architecture, that a few words in Chap. XIX. re-
specting staircases and towers, will contain all with which the
reader need be troubled on the subject.
CHAPTEK IV.
T HE WALL BASE.
§ i. OUR first business, then, is with Wall, and to find out
wherein lies the true excellence of the " "Wittiest Partition."
For it is rather strange that, often as we speak of a " dead "
wall, and that with considerable disgust, we have not often,
since Snout's time, heard of a living one. But the common
epithet of opprobrium is justly bestowed, and marks a right
feeling. A wall has no business to be dead. It ought to have
members in its make, and purposes in its existence, like an or-
ganized creature, and to answer its ends in a living and ener-
getic way ; and it is only when we do not choose to put any
strength nor organization into it, that it offends us by its dead-
ness. Every wall ought to be a " sweet and lovely wall." I
do not care about its having ears ; but, for instruction and ex-
hortation, I would often have it to " hold up its fingers." What
its necessary members and excellences are, it is our present
business to discover.
§ n. A wall has been defined to be an even and united
fence of wood, earth, stone, or metal. Metal fences, however,
seldom, if ever, take the form of walls, but of railings ; and,
like all other metal constructions, must be left out of our
present investigation; as maybe also walls composed merely
of light planks or laths for purposes of partition or inclosure.
Substantial walls, whether of wood or earth (I use the word
earth as including clay, baked or unbaked, and stone), have,
in their perfect form, three distinct members ; — the Founda-
tion. I'.u.ly or Veil, and Cornice.
•5 in. The foundation is to the wall what the paw is to an
IV. THE WALL BASE. 53
animal. It is a long foot, wider than the wall, on which the
wall is to stand, and which keeps it from settling into the
ground. It is most necessary that this great element of
security should be visible to the eye, and therefore made a
part of the structure above ground. Sometimes, indeed, it
becomes incorporated with the entire foundation of the build-
ing, a vast table on which walls or piers are alike set : but
even then, the eye, taught by the reason, requires some ad-
ditional preparation or foot for the wall, and the building is
felt to be imperfect without it. This foundation we shall call
the Base of the wall.
§ iv. The body of the wall is of course the principal mass
of it, formed of mud or clay, of bricks or stones, of logs or
hewn timber; the condition of structure being, that it is of
equal thickness everywhere, below and above. It may be
half a foot thick, or six feet thick, or fifty feet thick ; but if
of equal thickness everywhere, it is still a wall proper : if to
its fifty feet of proper thickness there be added so much as
an inch of thickness in particular parts, that added thickness
is to be considered as some form of buttress or pier, or other
appliance.*
In perfect architecture, however, the walls are generally
kept of moderate thickness, and strengthened by piers or
buttresses; and the part of the wall between these, being
generally intended only to secure privacy, or keep out the
slighter forces of weather, may be properly called a Wall
Yeil. I shall always use this word " Veil " to signify the even
portion of a wall, it being more expressive than the term
Body.
§ v. When the materials with which this veil is built are
very loose, or of shapes which do not fit well together, it
sometimes becomes necessary, or at least adds to security, to
* Many walls are slightly sloped or curved towards their tops, and have
buttresses added to them (that of the Queen's Bench Prison is a curious
instance of the vertical buttress and inclined wall); but in all such instances
the slope of the wall is properly to be considered a condition of incorporated
buttress.
54 IV. THE WALL BASE.
introduce courses of more solid material. Thus, bricks
alternate with rolled pebbles in the old walls of Yerona, and
lu'wn stones with brick in its Lombard churches. A banded
>tnirturt>, almost a stratification of the wall, is thus produced;
and the courses of more solid material are sometimes deco-
rated with carving. Even when the wall is not thus banded
through its whole height, it frequently becomes expedient to
lav a course of stone, or at least of more carefully chosen
materials, at regular heights ; and such belts or bands we may
call String courses. These are a kind of epochs in the wall's
existence ; something like periods of rest and reflection in human
life, before entering on a new career. Or else, in the building,
they correspond to the divisions of its stories within, express its
internal structure, and mark off some portion of the ends of
its existence already attained.
§ vi. Finally, on the top of the wall some protection from
the weather is necessary, or some preparation for the recep-
tion of superincumbent weight, called a coping, or Cornice.
1 shall use the wrord Cornice for both ; for, in fact, a coping
is a roof to the wall itself, and is carried by a small cornice
as the roof of the building by a large one. In either case, the
cornice, small or large, is the termination of the wall's existence,
the accomplishment of its work. When it is meant to carry
some superincumbent weight, the cornice may be considered as
its hand, opened to carry something above its head ; as the base
was considered its foot : and the three parts should grow out
of each other and form one whole, like the root, stalk, and bell
of a flower.
These three parts we shall examine in succession ; and, first,
the Base.
S vii. It may be sometimes in our power, and it is always
expedient, to prepare for the whole building some settled
ition, level and firm, out of sight. But this has not
one in some of the noblest buildings in existence It
t always be done perfectly, except at enormous expense ;
reasoning upon the superstructure, we shall never
Bupposeit to be done. The mind of the spectator does not
IV. THE WALL BASE.
55
Fig. II.
conceive it ; and he estimates 'the merits of the edifice on the
supposition of its being built upon the ground. Even if there
be a vast table land of foundation elevated for the whole of
it, accessible by steps all round, as at Pisa, the surface of this
table is always conceived as capable of yielding somewhat to
superincumbent weight, and generally is so ; and we shall
base all our arguments on the widest possible supposition,
that is to say, that the building stands on a surface either of
earth, or, at all events, capable of yielding in some degree to
its weight.
§ vin. Now, let the reader simply ask himself how, on
such a surface, he would
set about building a sub-
stantial wall, that should be
able to bear weight and to
stand for ages. He would
assuredly look about for the
largest stones he had at
his disposal, and, rudely lev-
elling the ground, he would
lay these well together over
a considerably larger width
than he required the wall to
be (suppose as at «, Fig. IT.),
in order to equalise the pressure of the wall over a large sur-
face, and form its foot. On the top of these he would perhaps
lay a second tier of large stones, b, or even the third, c, making
the breadth somewhat less each time, so as to prepare for the
pressure of the wall on the centre, and, naturally or neces-
sarily, using somewhat smaller stones above than below (since
we supposed him to look about for the largest first), and
cutting them more neatly. His third tier, if not his second,
will probably appear a sufficiently secure foundation for finer
work ; for if the earth yield at all, it will probably yield pretty
equally under the great mass of masonry now knit together
over it. So he will prepare for the wall itself at once by
doping off the next tier of stones to the right diameter, as
56 iv. THE WALL BASE.
at d. If there be any joints in this tier within the wall, he
may perhaps, for further security, lay a binding stone across
them, e, and then begin the work of the wall veil itself,
whether in bricks or stones.
£ ix. I have supposed the preparation here to be for a large
wall, because such a preparation will give us the best general
type. But it is evident that the essential features of the ar-
rangement are only two, that is to say, one tier of massy work
fo/foundation, suppose c, missing the first two ; and the reced-
ing tier or real foot of the wall, 'd. The reader will find these
members, though only of brick, in most of the considerable
and independent walls in the suburbs of London.
§ x. It is evident, however, that the general type, Fig. II.,
wilf be subject to many different modifications in different
circumstances. Sometimes the ledges of the tiers a and b
may be of greater width; and when the building is in a
secure place, and of finished masonry, these may be sloped
off also like the main foot d. In Venetian buildings these
lower ledges are exposed to the sea, and therefore left rough
hewn ; but in fine work and in important positions the lower
ledges may be bevelled and decorated like the upper, or
another added above d; and all these parts may be in
different proportions, according to the disposition of the
building above them. But we have nothing to do with any
of these variations at present, they being all more or less
dependent upon decorative considerations, except only one of
very great importance, that is to say, the widening of the
lower ledge into a stone seat, which may be often done in
buildings of great size with most beautiful effect : it looks
kind and hospitable, and preserves the work above from
violence. In St. Mark's at Venice, which is a small and low
church, and needing no great foundation for the wall veils
of it, we find only the three members, J, c, and d. Of these
the first rises about a foot above the pavement of St. Mark's
Place, and forms an elevated dais in some of the recesses of
the porches, chequered red and white ; c forms a seat which
follows the line of tne walls, while its basic character is
IV. THE WALL BASE. 57
marked by its also carrying certain shafts with which we
have here no concern ; d is of white marble ; and all are
enriched and decorated in the simplest and most perfect
manner possible, as we shall see in Chap. XXY. And thus
much may serve to fix the type of wall bases, a type of tener
followed in real practice than any other we shall hereafter be
enabled to determine : for wall bases of necessity must' be
solidly built, and the architect is therefore driven into the
adoption of the right form ; or if he deviate from it, it is
generally in meeting some necessity of peculiar circumstances,
as in obtaining cellars and underground room, or in preparing
for some grand features or particular parts of the wall, or in
some mistaken idea of decoration, — into which errors we had
better not pursue him until we understand something more
of the rest of the building : let us therefore proceed to consider
the wall veil.
CHAPTER Y.
THE WALL VEIL.
§ i. THE summer of the year 1849 was spent by the writer
in researches little bearing upon his present subject, and
connected chiefly with proposed illustrations of the mountain
forms in the works of J. M. W. Turner. But there are some-
times more valuable lessons to be learned in the school of
nature than in that of Vitruvius, and a fragment of building
among the Alps is singularly illustrative of the chief feature
which I have at present to develope as necessary to the
perfection of the wall veil.
It is a fragment of some size ; a group of broken walls, one
of them overhanging; crowned with a cornice, nodding some
hundred and fifty feet over its massy flank, three thousand
above its glacier base, and fourteen thousand above the sea,
— a wall truly of some majesty, at once the most precipitous
and the strongest mass in the whole chain of the Alps, the
Mont Cervin.
§ ii. It has been falsely represented as a peak or tower.
It is a vast ridged promontory, connected at its western root
with the Dent d'Erin, and lifting itself like a rearing horse
with its face to the east. All the way along the flank of it,
for half a day's journey on the Zmutt glacier, the grim black
terraces of its foundations range almost without a break ; and
the clouds, when their day's work is done, and they are
weary, lay themselves down on those foundation steps, and
»v>t till dawn, each with his leagues of grey mantle stretched
al«'iiir tin- grisly ledge, and the cornice'of the mighty wall
L'lc:miiii«r in the moonlight, three thousand feet above.
CONSTRUCTION. V. THE WALL VEIL. 59
§ in. The eastern face of the promontory is hewn down,
as if by the single sweep of a sword, from the crest of it to
the base ; hewn concave and smooth, like the hollow of a
wave: on each flank of it there is set a buttress, both of
about equal height, their heads sloped out from the main wall
about seven hundred feet below its summit. That on the
north is the most important ; it is as sharp as the frontal angle
of a bastion, and sloped sheer away to the north-east,
throwing out spur beyond spur, until it terminates in a long
low curve of russet precipice, at whose foot a great bay of the
glacier of the Col de Cervin lies as level as a lake. This spur
is one of the few points from which the mass of the Mont
Cervin is in anywise approachable. It is a continuation of the
masonry of the mountain itself, and affords us the means of
examining the character of its materials.
§ iv. Few architects would like to build with them. The
slope of the rocks to the north-west is covered two feet deep
with their ruins, a mass of loose and slaty shale, of a dull
brick-red color, which yields beneath the foot like ashes, so
that, in running down, you step one yard, and slide three.
The rock is indeed hard beneath, but still disposed in thin
courses of these cloven shales, so finely laid that they look in
places more like a heap of crushed autumn leaves than a rock ;
and the first sensation is one of unmitigated surprise, as if the
mountain were upheld by miracle ; but surprise becomes more
intelligent reverence for the great builder, when we find, in
the middle of the mass of these dead leaves, a course of living
rock, of quartz as white as the snow that encircles it, and
harder than a bed of steel.
§ v. It is one only of a thousand iron bands that knit the
strength of the mighty mountain. Through the buttress and
the wall alike, the courses of its varied masonry are seen in
their successive order, smooth and true as if laid by line and
plummet,* but of thickness and strength continually varying,
and with silver cornices glittering along the edge of each,
* On the eastern side: violently contorted on the northern and western.
^ y. THE WALL VEIL. CONSTRUCTION.
laid by the snowy winds and carved by the sunshine, — stainless
ornaments of the eternal temple, by which "neither the
hammer nor the axe, nor any tool, was heard while it was in
building."
$ vi. I do not, however, bring this forward as an instance
ofimv universal law of natural building; there are solid as
well as coursed masses of precipice, but it is somewhat curious
that the most noble cliff in Europe, which this eastern front
of the Cervin is, I believe, without dispute, should be to us
an example of the utmost possible stability of precipitousness
attained with materials of imperfect and variable character ;
and, what is more, there are very few cliffs which do not
display alternations between compact and friable conditions
of their material, marked in their contours by bevelled slopes
when the bricks are soft, and vertical steps when they are
harder. And, although we are not hence to conclude that it
is well to introduce courses of bad materials when we can
get perfect material, I believe we may conclude with great
certainty that it is better and easier to strengthen a wall
necessarily of imperfect substance, as of brick, by introducing
carefully laid courses of stone, than by adding to its thickness ;
and the first impression we receive from the unbroken aspect
of a wall veil, unless it be of hewn stone throughout, is that
it must be both thicker and weaker than it would have been,
had it been properly coursed. The decorative reasons for
adopting the coursed arrangement, which we shall notice
hereafter, are so weighty, that they would alone be almost
sufficient to enforce it ; and the constructive ones will apply
universally, except in the rare cases in which the choice of
perfect or imperfect material is entirely open to us, or where
the general system of the decoration of the building requires
absolute unity in its surface.
§vn. As regards the arrangement of the intermediate
parts themselves, it is regulated by certain conditions of
ending and fitting the stones or bricks, which the reader
hardly be troubled to consider, and which I wish that
icklayers themselves were always honest enough to observe.
pie
r
CONSTRUCTION. V. THE WALL VEIL. 61
But I hardly know whether to note under the head of aesthetic
or constructive law, this important principle, that masonry is
always bad which appears to have arrested the attention of
the architect more than absolute conditions of strength
require. Nothing is more contemptible in any work than an
appearance of the slightest desire on the part' of the builder
to direct attention to the way its stones are put together, or of
any trouble taken either to show or to conceal it more than
was rigidly necessary : it may sometimes, on the one hand, be
necessary to conceal it as far as may be, by delicate and close
fitting, when the joints would interfere with lines of sculpture
or of mouldings ; and it may often, on the other hand, be
delightful to show it, as it is delightful in places to show the
anatomy even of the most delicate human frame : but studious-
ly to conceal it is the error of vulgar painters, who are afraid to
show that their figures have bones ; and studiously to display
it is the error of the base pupils of Michael Angelo, who turned
heroes' limbs into surgeons' diagrams, — but with less excuse
than theirs, for there is less interest in the anatomy displayed.
Exhibited masonry is in most cases the expedient of architects
who do not know how to fill up blank spaces, and many a
building, which would have been decent enough if let alone,
has been scrawled over with
straight lines, as in Fig. III.,
on exactly the same princi-
ples, and with just the same
ount of intelligence as a
boy's in scrawling his copy-
book when he cannot write,
he device was thought inge-
nious at one period of archi-
ral history; St. Paul's
and Whitehall are covered
with it, and it is in this I imagine that some of our modern
architects suppose the great merit of those buildings to consist.
There is, however, no excuse for errors in disposition of
masonry, for there is but one law upon the subject, and that
i i i i i
I- i I
i i i i
i i i i i
I.I.I
ill
i i i i i i
J L
Q2 V. THE WALL VEIL. CONSTRUCTION.
easily complied with, to avoid all affectation and all unneces-
sary expense, either in showing or concealing. Every one
knows a building is built of separate stones ; nobody will ever
object to seeing that it is so, but nobody wants to count them.
The divisions of a church are much like the divisions of a
sermon ; they are always right so long as they are necessary
to edification, and always wrong when they are thrust upon the
attention as divisions only. There may be neatness in carving
when there is richness in feasting ; but I have heard many a
discourse, and seen many a church wall, in which it was all
carving and no meat.
CHAPTEK VI.
THE WALL CORNICE.
§ i. WE have lastly to consider the close of the wall's exist-
ence, or its cornice. It was above stated, that a cornice has
one of two offices: if the wall have nothing to carry, the
cornice is its roof, and defends it from the weather ; if there
is weight to be carried above the wall, the cornice is its hand,
and is expanded to carry the said weight.
There are several ways of roofing or protecting indepen-
dent walls, according to the means nearest at hand : sometimes
the wall has a true roof all to itself ; sometimes it terminates
in a small gabled ridge, made of bricks set slanting, as constantly
in the suburbs of London ; or of hewn stone, in stronger work ;
or in a single sloping face, inclined to the outside. We need
not trouble ourselves at present about these small roofings,
which are merely the diminutions of large ones ; but we must
examine the important and constant member of the wall struct-
ure, which prepares it either for these small roofs or for
weights above, and is its true cornice.
§ ii. The reader will, perhaps, as heretofore, be kind
enough to think for himself, how, having carried up his wall
veil as high as it may be needed, he will set about protecting
it from weather, or preparing it for weight. Let him imagine
the top of the unfinished wall, as it would be seen from above
with all the joints, perhaps uncemented, or imperfectly filled
up with cement, open to the sky ; and small broken materials
filling gaps between large ones, and leaving cavities ready for
the rain to soak into, and loosen and dissolve the cement, and
split, as it froze, the whole to pieces. I am much mistaken if
64
VI. THE WALL CORNICE.
CONSTBUCTION.
his first impulse would not be to take a great flat stone and lay
it on the top ; or rather a series of such, side by side, project-
ing well over the edge of the wall veil. If, also, he proposed
to lay a weight (as, for instance, the end of a beam) on the wall,
he would feel at once that the pressure of this beam on, or
rather among, the small stones of the wall veil, might very
possibly dislodge or disarrange some of them ; and the first
impulse would be, in this case, also to lay a large flat stone on
the top of all to receive the beam, or any
other weight, and distribute it equally
among the small stones below, as at $, Fig.
a
§ in. We must therefore have our flat
stone in either case; and let b, Fig. IV.,
l)e the section or side of it, as it is set across
the wall. J^ow, evidently, if by any
chance this weight happen to be thrown
more on the edges of this stone than the
centre, there will be a chance of these
edges breaking off. Had we not better,
0 therefore, put another stone, sloped off to
the wall, beneath the projecting one, as at
c. But now our cornice looks somewhat
too heavy for the wall ; and as the upper
stone is evidently of needless thickness,
we will thin it somewhat, and we have the
form (L Now observe : the lower or bevelled stone here at d
corresponds to d in the base (Fig. II., page 59). That was the
foot of the wall ; this is its hand. And the top stone here,
which is a constant member of cornices, corresponds to the
under stone c, in Fig. II., which is a constant member of bases.
The reader has no idea at present of the enormous importance
<>f these members; but as we shall have to refer to them
perpetually, I must ask him to compare them, and fix their
relations well in his mind : and, for convenience, I shall call
the bevelled or sloping stone, X, and the upright edged stone,
Y. The reader may remember easily which is which ; for X
CONSTRUCTION.
VI. THE WALL CORNICE.
65
is an intersection of two slopes, and may therefore properly
mean either of the two sloping stones ; and Y is a figure with
a perpendicular line and two slopes, and may therefore fitly
stand for the upright stone in relation to each of the sloping
ones ; and as we shall have to say much more about cornices
than about bases, let X and Y stand for the stones of the cor-
nice, and Xb and Yb for those of the base, when distinction is
needed.
§ iv. Now the form at d, Fig. IV., is the great root and
primal type of all cornices whatsoever. In order to see what
forms may be developed from it, let us take its profile a little
Fig. V.
"h
larger — #, Fig. V., with X and Y duly marked. Now this
form, being the root of all cornices, may either have to finish
the wall and so keep off rain ; or, as so often stated, to carry
weight. If the former, it is evident that, in its present profile,
the rain will run back down the slope of X ; and if the latter,
that the sharp angle or edge of X, at k, may be a little too
weak for its work, and run a chance of giving way. To avoid
the evil in the first case, suppose we hollow the slope of X
inwards, as at I ; and to avoid it in the second case, suppose
we strengthen X by letting it bulge outwards, as at c.
§ v. These (b and c) are the profiles of two vast families of
66
VI. THE WALL CORNICE. CONSTRUCTION.
cornices, springing from the same root, which, with a third
arising from their combination (owing its origin to aesthetic
considerations, and inclining sometimes to the one, sometimes
to the other), have been employed, each on its third part of
the architecture of the whole world throughout all ages, and
must continue to be so employed through such time as is yet
to come. We do not at present speak of the third or com-
bined group ; but. the relation of the two main branches to
each other, and to the line of origin, is given at e, Fig. V. ;
where the dotted lines are the representatives of the two
families, and the straight line of the root. The slope of this
right line, as well as the nature of the curves, here drawn as
segments of circles, we leave undetermined : the slope, as well
as the proportion of the depths of X and Y to each other, vary
according to the wreight to be carried, the strength of the
stone, the size of the cornice, and a thousand other accidents ;
and the nature of the curves according to aesthetic laws. It is
in these infinite fields that the invention of the architect is per-
mitted to expatiate, but not in the alteration of primitive
forms.
§ vi. But to proceed. It will doubtless appear to the
reader, that, even allowing for some of these permissible vari-
ations in the curve or slope of X, neither the form at &, nor
any approximation to that form, would be sufficiently undercut
to keep the rain from running back upon it. This is true ;
but we have to consider that the cornice, as the close of the
wall's life, is of all its features that which is best fitted for
honor and ornament. It has been esteemed so by almost all
builders, and has been lavishly decorated in modes hereafter to
be considered. But it is evident that, as it is high above the
eye, the fittest place to receive the decoration is the slope of
X, which is inclined towards the spectator ; and if we cut away
or hollow out this slope more than we have done at &, all dec-
oration will be hid in the shadow. If, therefore, the climate
fine, and rain of long continuance not to be dreaded, we
shall not hollow the stone X further, adopting the curve at I
merely as the most protective in our power. But if the climate
CONSTRUCTION. TI. THE WALL CORNICE. 67
be one in which rain is frequent and dangerous, as in alterna-
tions with frost, we may be compelled to consider the cornice
in a character distinctly protective, and to hollow out X
farther, so as to enable it thoroughly to accomplish its purpose.
A cornice thus treated loses its character as the crown or
honor of the wall, takes the office of its protector, and is called
a DRIPSTONE. The dripstone is naturally the attribute of
Northern buildings, and therefore especially of Gothic archi-
tecture ; the true cornice is the attribute of Southern buildings,
and therefore of Greek and Italian architecture ; and it is one
of their peculiar beauties, and eminent features of superiority.
§ vn. Before passing to the dripstone, however, let us
examine a little farther into the nature of the true cornice.
We cannot, indeed, render either of the forms ~b or <?, Fig. Y.,
perfectly protective from rain, but we can help them a little
in their duty by a slight advance of their upper ledge. This,
with the form &, we can best manage by cutting off the sharp
upper point of its curve, which is evidently weak and useless ;
and we shall have the form f. By a slight advance of the
upper stone <?, we shall have the parallel form g.
These two cornices, f and g, are characteristic of early
Byzantine work, and are found on all the most lovely
examples of it in Venice. The type a is rarer, but occurs
pure in the most exquisite piece of composition in Venice —
the northern portico of St. Mark's ; and will be given in due
time.
§ vm. Now the reader has doubtless noticed that these
forms of cornice result, from considerations of fitness and
necessity, far more neatly and decisively than the forms of the
base, which we left only very generally determined. The
reason is, that there are many ways of building foundations,
and many good ways, dependent upon the peculiar accidents
of the ground and nature of accessible materials. There is
also room to spare in width, and a chance of a part of the
arrangement being concealed by the ground, so as to modify
height. But we have no room to spare in width on the top
of a wall, and all that we do must be thoroughly visible ; and
68
VI. THE WALL COKNICE.
CONSTRUCTION.
we can but have to deal with bricks, or stones of a certain
degree of fineness, and not with mere gravel, or sand, or
clay,— so that as the conditions are limited, the forms become
determined; and our steps will be more clear and certain the
farther we advance. The sources of a river are usually half
lost among moss and pebbles, and its first movements doubtful
in direction ; but, as the current gathers force, its banks are
determined, and its branches are numbered.
§ ix. So far of the true cornice : we have still to determine
the form of the dripstone.
We go back to our primal type or root of cornice, a of
Fig. V. We take this at a in Fig. VI., and we are to con-
sider it entirely as a protection against rain. Now the only
way in which the rain can be kept from running back on the
Fig. VI.
>
slope of X is by a bold hollowing out of it upwards, 5. But
dearly, by thus doing, we shall so weaken the projecting part
of it that the least shock would break it at the neck, c / we
must therefore cut the whole out of one stone, which will give
us the form d. That the water may not lodge on the upper
ledge of this, we had better round it off ; and it will better
protect the joint at the bottom of the slope if we let the stone
project over it in a roll, cutting the recess deeper above.
These two changes are made in e : e is the type of dripstones;
the projecting part being, however, more or less rounded into
an approximation to the shape of a falcon's beak, and often
reaching it completely. But the essential part of the arrange-
ment is the up and under cutting of the curve. Wherever we
lind this, we are sure that the climate is wet, or that the
CONSTRUCTION. VI. THE WALL CORNICE. 69
builders have been bred in a wet country, and that the rest of
the building will be prepared for rough weather. The up cut-
ting of the curve is sometimes all the distinction between the
mouldings of far-distant countries and utterly strange nations.
Fig. VII. representing a moulding with an outer and inner
curve, the latter under-cut. Take the F. yn
outer line, and this moulding is one con-
stant in Venice, in architecture traceable
to Arabian types, and chiefly to the early
mosques of Cairo. But take the inner
line ; it is a dripstone at Salisbury. In
that narrow interval between the curves
there is, when we read it rightly, an ex-
pression of another and mightier curve, —
the orbed sweep of the earth and sea, be-
tween the desert of the Pyramids, and the green and level
fields through which the clear streams of Sarum wind so
slowly.
And so delicate is the test, that though pure cornices are
often found in the north, — borrowed from classical models, — so
surely as we find a true dripstone moulding in the South, the
influence of Northern
_ builders has been at
^ work ; and this will
/• — \/ be one of the princi-
y pal evidences which I
"^ V £ shall use in detecting
Lombard influence on
Arab work; for the
true Byzantine and
Arab mouldings are
all open to the sky and
light, but the Lom-
bards brought with
them from the North the fear of rain, and in all the Lombardic
Gothic we instantly recognize the shadowy dripstone : a, Fig.
VIII., is from a noble fragment at Milan, in the Piazza dei
70
VI. THE WALL CORNICE. CONSTRUCTION.
Mercanti ; £, from the Broletto of Como. Compare them
with c and d, both from Salisbury ; e and/ from Lisieux, Nor-
mandy ; g and h from Wenlock Abbey, Shropshire.
§ x. The reader is now master of all that he need know
about the construction of the general wall cornice, fitted
either to become a crown of the wall, or to carry weight
above. If, however, the weight above become considerable,,
it may be necessary to support the cornice at intervals with
brackets ; especially if it be required to project far, as well
as to carry weight; as, for instance, if there be a gallery
on top of the wall. This kind of bracket-cornice, deep or
shallow, forms a separate family, essentially connected with
roofs and galleries ; for if there be no superincumbent weight,
it is evidently absurd to put brackets to a plain cornice or drip-
stone (though this is sometimes done in carrying out a style) ;.
so that, as soon as we see a bracket put to a cornice, it implies,
or should imply, that there is a roof or gallery above it.
Hence this family of cornices I shall consider in connection
with roofing, calling them "roof cornices," while what we
have hitherto examined are proper "wall cornices." The roof
cornice and wall cornice are therefore treated in division D.
We are not, however, as yet nearly ready for our roof.
"We have only obtained that which was to be the object of
our first division (A); we have got, that is to say, a general
idea of a wall and of the three essential parts of a wall ; and
we have next, it will be remembered, to get an idea of a pier
and the essential parts of a pier, which were to be the subjects
of our second division (B).
CHAPTER VII.
THE PIER BASE.
§ i. IN § in. of Chap. III., it was stated that when a wall had
to sustain an addition of vertical pressure, it was first fitted to
sustain it by some addition to its own thickness ; but if the
pressure became very great, by being gathered up into PIEES.
I must first make the reader understand what I mean by a
wall's being gathered up. Take a piece of tolerably thick
drawing-paper, or thin Bristol board, five or six inches square.
Set it on its edge on the table, and put a small octavo book
on the edge or top of it, and it will bend instantly. Tear it
into four strips all across, and roll up each strip tightly. Set
these rolls on end on the table, and they will carry the small
octavo perfectly well. Now the thickness or substance of the
paper employed to carry the weight is exactly the same as it
was before, only it is differently arranged, that is to say,
" gathered up." * If therefore a wall be gathered up like the
Bristol board, it will bear greater weight than it would if it
remained a wall veil. The sticks into which you gather it are
called Piers. A pier is a coagulated wall.
§ u. Now you cannot quite treat the wall as you did the
Bristol board, and twist it up at once ; but let us see how you
can treat it. Let A, Fig. IX., be the plan of a wall which you
* The experiment is not quite fair in this rude fashion ; for the small
rolls owe their increase of strength much more to their tubular form than
their aggregation of material ; but if the paper be cut up into small strips,
and tied together firmly in three or four compact bundles, it will exhibit
increase of strength enougli to show the principle. Vide, however, Appen-
dix 16, "Strength of Shafts."
VII. THE PIER BASE.
CONSTRUCTION.
have made inconveniently and expensively thick, and which
still appears to be slightly too weak for what it must carry :
divide it, as at B, into equal spaces, a, &, a, 1), &c. Cut out a
thin slice of it at every a on each side, and put the slices you
cut out on at every b on each side, and you will have the plan
at B, with exactly the same quantity of bricks. But your wall
is now so much concentrated, that, if it was only slightly too
Fig. IX.
HI IP
weak before, it will be stronger now than it need be ; so you
may spare some of your space as well as your bricks by cut-
ting off the corners of the thicker parts, as suppose c, c, c, c,
at c : and you have now a series of square piers connected by
a wall veil, which, on less space and with less materials, will
do the work of the wall at A perfectly well.
§ in. I do not say how much may be cut away in the corners
c, c,— that is a mathematical question with which we need not
CONSTRUCTION. VII. THE PIEK BASE. 73
trouble ourselves : all that we need know is, that out of every
slice we take from the " J's " and put on at the " a's," we may
keep a certain percentage of room and bricks, until, supposing
that we do not want the wall veil for its own sake, this latter
is thinned entirely away, like the girdle of the Lady of Avenel,
and finally breaks, and we have nothing but a row of square
piers, i).
§ iv. But have we yet arrived at the form which will spare
most room, and use fewest materials. No ; and to get farther
we must apply the general principle to our wall, which is
equally true in morals and mathematics, that the strength of
materials, or of men, or of minds, is always most available
when it is applied as closely as possible to a single point.
Let the point to which we wish the strength of our square
piers to be applied, be chosen. Then we shall of course put
them directly under it, and the point will be in their centre.
But now some of their materials are not so near or close to
this point as others. Those at the corners are farther off than
the rest,
Now, if every particle of the pier be brought as near as
possible to the centre of it, the form it assumes is the circle.
The circle must be, therefore, the best possible form of
plan for a pier, from the beginning of time to the end of it.
A circular pier is called a pillar or column, and all good archi-
tecture adapted to vertical support is made up of pillars, has
always been so, and must ever be so, as long as the laws of the
universe hold.
The final condition is represented at E, in its relation to that
at r>. It will be observed that though each circle projects a
little beyond the side of the square out of which it is formed,
the space cut off at the angles is greater than that added at
the sides; for, having our materials in a more concentrated
arrangement, we can afford to part with some of them in this
last transformation, as in all the rest.
§ v. And now, what have the base and the cornice of the
wall been doing while we have been cutting the veil to pieces
and gathering it together ?
VII. THE PIER BASE.
CONSTRUCTION.
The base is also cut to pieces, gathered together, and be-
comes the base of the column.
The cornice is cut to pieces, gathered together, and be-
comes the capital of the column. Do not be alarmed at the
new word, it does not mean a new thing ; a capital is only the
cornice of a column, and you may, if you like, call a cornice
the capital of a wall.
We have now, therefore, to examine these three concen-
trated forms of the base, veil, and cornice : first, the concen-
trated base, still called the BASE of the column ; then the
concentrated veil, called the SHAFT of the column ; then the
concentrated cornice, called the CAPITAL of the column.
And first the Base :—
§ vi. Look back to the main type, Fig. II., page 55, and
apply its profiles in due proportion to the feet of the pillars at
Fig. X.
E in Fig. IX. p. 72 : If each step in Fig. II. were gathered
accurately, the projection of the entire circular base would be
k-ss in proportion to its height than it is in Fig. II. ; but the
approximation to the result in Fig. X. is quite accurate enough
for our purposes. (I pray the reader to observe that I have
not made the smallest change, except this necessary expres-
sion of a reduction in diameter, in Fig. II. as it is applied
in Fig. X., only I have not drawn the joints of the stones
because these would confuse the outlines of the bases; and
I have not represented the rounding of the shafts, because
CONSTRUCTION.
VII. THE PIEfc BASE.
75
it does not bear at present on the argument.) Now it would
hardly be convenient, if we had to pass between the pillars, to
have to squeeze ourselves through one of those angular gaps
or breches de Koland in Fig. X. Our first impulse would be
to cut them open ; but we cannot do this, or our piers are
unsafe. We have but one other resource, to fill them up until
we have a floor wide enough to let us pass easily : this we may
perhaps obtain at the first ledge, we are nearly sure to get it
at the second, and we may then obtain access to the raised
interval, either by raising the earth over the lower courses of
foundation, or by steps round the entire building.
Fig. XI. is the arrangement of Fig. X. so treated.
Fig. XL
§ vii. But suppose the pillars are so vast that the lowest
chink in Fig. X. would be quite wide enough to let us pass
through it. Is there then any reason for filling it up 1 Yes.
It will be remembered that in Chap. IV. § viu. the chief reason
for the wide foundation of the wall was stated to be " that it
might equalise its pressure over a large surface ;" but when
the foundation is cut to pieces as in Fig. X., the pressure is
thrown on a succession of narrowed and detached spaces of
that surface. If the ground is in some places more disposed
to yield than in others, the piers in those places will sink more
than the rest, and this distortion of the system will be probably
of more importance in pillars than in a wall, because the adjust-
VQ YH. THE PIEE BASE. CONSTRUCTION.
incut of the weight above is more delicate; we thus actually
want the weight of the stones between the pillars, in order
that the whole foundation may be bonded into one, and sink
together if it sink at all : and the more massy the pillars, the
more we shall need to fill the intervals of their foundations.
In the best form of Greek architecture, the intervals are filled
up to the root of the shaft, and the columns have no indepen-
dent base ; they stand on the even floor of their foundation.
§ vm. Such a structure is not only admissible, but, when
the column is of great thickness in proportion to its height,
and the sufficient firmness, either of the ground or prepared floor,
is evident, it is the best of all, having a strange dignity in its
excessive simplicity. It is, or ought to be, connected in our
minds with the deep meaning of primeval memorial. "And
Jacob took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it
up for a pillar." I do not fancy that he put a base for it first.
If you try to put a base to the rock-piers of Stonehenge, you
will hardly find them improved ; and two of the most perfect
buildings in the world, the Parthenon and Ducal palace of
Venice, have no bases to their pillars : the latter has them,
indeed, to its upper arcade shafts ; and had once, it is said, a
continuous raised base for its lower ones : but successive eleva-
tions of St. Mark's Place have covered this base, and parts of
the shafts themselves, with an inundation of paving stones ;
and yet the building is, I doubt not, as grand as ever. Finally,
the two most noble pillars in Venice, those brought from Acre,
stand on the smooth marble surface of the Piazzetta, with no
independent bases whatever. They are rather broken away
beneath, so that you may look under parts of them, and stand
(not quite erect, but leaning somewhat) safe by their own
massy weight. Nor could any bases possibly be devised that
would not spoil them.
§ ix. But it is otherwise if the pillar be so slender as to look
doubtfully balanced. It would indeed stand quite as safely
without an independent base as it would with one (at least,
unless the base be in the form of a socket). But it will not
appear so safe to the eye. And here for the first time, I have
CONSTRUCTION. VII. THE PIEJt BASE. 77
to express and apply a principle, which I believe the reader
will at once grant, — that features necessary to express security
to the imagination, are often as essential parts of good archi-
tecture as those required for security itself. It was said that
the wall base was the foot or paw of the wall. Exactly in the
same way, and with clearer analogy, the pier base is the foot
or paw of the pier. Let us, then, take a hint from nature.
A foot has two offices, to bear up, and to hold firm. As far
as it has to bear up, it is uncloven, with slight projection, —
look at an elephant's (the Doric base of animality) ; * but as
far as it has to hold firm, it is divided and clawed, with wide
projections, — look at an eagle's.
§ x. Now observe. In proportion to the massiness of the
column, we require its foot to express merely the power of
bearing up ; in fact, it can do without a foot, like the Squire
in Chevy Chase, if the ground only be hard enough. But if
the column be slender, and look as if it might lose its balance,
we require it to look as if it had hold of the ground, or the
ground hold of it, it does not matter which, — some expression
of clawr, prop, or socket. Now let us go back to Fig. XI., and
take up one of the bases there, in the state in which we left it.
We may leave out the two lower steps (with which we have
nothing more to do, as they have become the united floor or
foundation of the whole), and, for the sake of greater clear-
ness, I shall not draw the bricks in the shaft, nor the flat stone
which carries them, though the reader is to suppose them re-
maining as drawn in Fig. XI. ; but I shall only draw the shaft
and its two essential members of base, Xb and Yb, as explained
at p. 65, above : and now, expressing the rounding of these
numbers on a somewhat larger scale, we have the profile <zr
Fig. XII. ; 5, the perspective appearance of such a base seen
from above ; and c, the plan of it.
§ xi. Now I am quite sure the reader is not satisfied of the
stability of this form as it is seen at I ; nor would he ever be
so with the main contour of a circular base. Observe, we have
* Appendix 17, "Answer to Mr. Garbett."
78
VII. THE PIER BASE.
CONSTRUCTION.
taken some trouble to reduce the member Yb into this round
form, and all that we have gained by so doing, is this unsatis-
factory and unstable look of the base; of which the chief
reason is, that a circle, unless enclosed by right lines, has never
an appearance of fixture, or definite place, * — we suspect it of
motion, like an orb of heaven ; and the second is, that the
Fig. XII.
whole base, considered as the foot of the shaft, has no grasp
nor hold : it is a club-foot, and looks too blunt for the limb,—
it wants at least expansion, if not division.
. § XIL SllPpose, then, instead of taking so much trouble
with the member Yb, we save time and labor, and leave it a
* Yet more so than any other figure enclosed by a curved line: for the
>, m its relations to its own centre, is the curve of greatest stability.
Compare § xx. of Chap. XX
CONSTRUCTION. VII. THE PIER BASE. 79
square block. Xb must, however, evidently follow the pillar,
as its condition is that it slope to the very base of the wall veil,
and of whatever the wall veil becomes. So the corners of Yb
will project beyond the circle of Xb, and we shall have (Fig.
XII.) the profile d, the perspective appearance e, and the plan
f. I am quite sure the reader likes e much better than he did
I. The circle is now placed, and we are not afraid of its roll-
ing away. The foot has greater expansion, and we have saved
labor besides, with little loss of space, for the interval between
the bases is just as great as it was before, — we have only filled
up the corners of the squares.
But is it not possible to mend the form still further ? There
is surely still an appearance of separation between XI) and Yb,
as if the one might slip off the other. The foot is expanded
enough ; but it needs some expression of grasp as well. It has
no toes. Suppose we were to put a spur or prop to Xb at each
corner, so as to hold it fast in the centre of Yb. We will do
this in the simplest possible form. We will have the spur, or
small buttress, sloping straight from the corner of Yb up to
the top of Xb, and as seen from above, of the shape of a tri-
angle. Applying such spurs in Fig. XII., we have the diago-
nal profile at g, the perspective A, and the plan i.
§ xin. I am quite sure the reader likes this last base the
best, and feels as if it were the firmest. But he must carefully
distinguish between this feeling or imagination of the eye, and
the real stability of the structure. That this real stability has
been slightly increased by the changes between b and A, in Fig.
XII., is true. There is in the base h somewhat less chance of
accidental dislocation, and somewhat greater solidity and weight.
But this very slight gain of security is of no importance what-
ever when compared with the general requirements of the
structure. The pillar must be perfectly secure, and more than
secure, with the base I, or the building will be unsafe, what-
ever other base you put to the pillar. The changes are made,
not for the sake of the almost inappreciable increase of security
they involve, but in order to convince the eye of the real secu-
rity which the base b appears to compromise. This is espe-
VII. THE PIER BASE. CONSTRUCTION..
ally the case with regard to the props or spurs, which are
absolutely useless in reality, but are of the highest importance
as an expression of safety. And this will farther appear when
we observe that they have been above quite arbitrarily supposed
to be of a triangular form. Why triangular \ Why should
not the spur be made wider and stronger, so as to occupy the
whole width of the angle of the square, and to become a com-
plete expansion qf Xb to . the edge of the square ? Simply
because, whatever its width, it has, in reality, no supporting
power whatever; and the expression of support is greatest
where it assumes a form approximating to that of the spur or
claw of an animal. We shall, however, find hereafter, that it
ought indeed to be much wider than it is in Fig. XII., where
it is narrowed in order to make its structure clearly intelli-
gible.
§ xiv. If the reader chooses to consider this spur as an
aesthetic feature altogether, he is at liberty to do so, and to
transfer what we have here said of it to the beginning of Chap.
XXY. I think that its true place is here, as an expression of
safety, and not a means of beauty ; but I will assume only, as
established, the form e of Fig. XII., which is absolutely, as a
construction, easier, stronger, and more perfect than 1). A
word or two now of its materials. The wall base, it will be
remembered, was built of stones more neatly cut as they were
higher in place ; and the members, Y and X, of the pier base,
were the highest members of the wall base gathered. But,
exactly in proportion to this gathering or concentration in
form, should, if possible, be the gathering or concentration of
substance. For as the whole weight of the building is now to
rest upon few and limited spaces, it is of the greater importance
that it should be there received by solid masonry. Xb and Yb
are therefore, if possible, to be each of a single stone ; or, when
the shaft is small, both cut out of one block, and especially if
spurs ure to be added to Xb. The .reader must not be angry
with me for stating things so self-evident, for these are all
necessary steps in the chain of argument which I must not
break. Even this change from detached stones to a single
CONSTRUCTION.
VII. THE riEK BASE. 81
block is not without significance; for it is part of the real
service and value of the member Yb to provide for the recep-
tion of the shaft a surface free from joints ; and the eye always
conceives it as a firm covering over all inequalities or fissures
in the smaller masonry of the floor.
§ xv. I have said nothing yet of the proportion of the
height of Yb to its width, nor of that of Yb and Xb to each
other. Both depend much on the height of shaft, and are be-
sides variable within certain limits, at the architect's discretion.
But the limits of the height of Yb may be thus generally
stated. If it looks so thin as that the weight of the column
above might break it, it is too low ; and if it is higher than its
own width, it is too high. The utmost admissible height is
that of a cubic block ; for if it ever become higher than it is
wide, it becomes itself a part of a pier, and not the base of
one.
§ xvi. I have also supposed Yb, when expanded from
beneath Xb, as always expanded into a square, and four spurs
only to be added at the angles. But Yb may be expanded into
a pentagon, hexagon, or polygon ; and Xb then may have five,
six, or many spurs. In proportion, however, as the sides
increase in number, the spurs become shorter and less energetic
in their effect, and the square is in most cases the best form.
^ xvn. We have hitherto conducted the argument entirely
on the supposition of the pillars being numerous, and in a
range. Suppose, however, that we require only a single pillar :
as we have free space round it, there is no need to fill up the
first ranges of its foundations ; nor need we do so in order to
equalise pressure, since the pressure to be met is its own alone.
Under such circumstances, it is well to exhibit the lower tiers
of the foundation as well as Yb and Xb. The noble bases of
the two granite pillars of the Piazzetta at Venice are formed
by the entire series of members given in Fig. X., the lower
courses expanding into steps, with a superb breadth of propor-
tion to the shaft. The member Xb is of course circular, having
its proper decorative mouldings, not here considered ; Yb is
octagonal, but filled up into a square by certain curious groups
82
VII. THE PIER BASE. CONSTRUCTION.
of figures representing the trades of Venice. The three
courses below are octagonal, with their sides set across the
angles of the innermost octagon, Yb. The shafts are 15 feet
in circumference, and the lowest octagons of the base 56 (7
feet each side).
§ xvm. Detached buildings, like our own Monument, are
not pillars, but towers built in imitation of Pillars. As towers
they are barbarous, being dark, inconvenient, and unsafe,
besides lying, and pretending to be what they are not. As
shafts they are barbarous, because they were designed at a time
when the Renaissance architects had introduced and forced into
acceptance, as de rigueur, a kind of columnar high-heeled shoe,
— a thing which they called a pedestal, and which is to a true
base exactly what a Greek actor's cothurnus was to a Greek
gentleman's sandal. But the Greek actor knew better, I be-
lieve, than to exhibit or to decorate his cork sole ; and, with
shafts as with heroes, it is rather better to put the sandal off
than the cothurnus on. There are, indeed, occasions on which
a pedestal may be necessary ; it may be better to raise a shaft
from a sudden depression of plinth to a level with others, its
companions, by means of a pedestal, than to introduce a higher
shaft ; or it may be better to place a shaft of alabaster, if
otherwise too short for our purpose, on a pedestal, than to use
a larger shaft of coarser material ; but the pedestal is in each
case a make-shift, not an additional perfection. It. may, in the
like manner, be sometimes convenient for men to walk on
stilts, but not to keep their stilts on as ornamental parts of
dress. The bases of the Nelson Column, the Monument, and
the column of the Place Yendome, are to the shafts, exactly
what highly ornamented wooden legs would be to human
beings.
§ xix. So far of bases of detached shafts. As we do not
yet know in what manner shafts are likely to be grouped, we
can say nothing of those of grouped shafts until we know more
of what they are to support.
Lastly ; we have throughout our reasoning upon the base
supposed the pier to be circular. But circumstances mav occur
•CONSTRUCTION.
VII. THE PIEE BASE.
83
to prevent its being reduced to this form, and it may remain
square or rectangular ; its base will then be simply the wall,
base following its contour, and we have no spurs at the angles.
Thus much may serve respecting pier bases ; we have next to
examine the concentration of the Wall Veil, or the Shaft.
CHAPTER YIIL
THE SHAFT.
§ i. WE have seen in the last Chapter how, in converting
the wall into the square or cylindrical shaft, we parted at every
change of form with some quantity of material. In proportion
to the quantity thus surrendered, is the necessity that what we
retain should be good of its kind, and well set together, since
everything now depends on it.
It is clear also that the best material, and the closest con-
centration, is that of the natural crystalline rocks ; and that, by
having reduced our wall into the shape of shafts, we may be
enabled to avail ourselves of this better material, and to
exchange cemented bricks for crystallised blocks of stone.
Therefore, the general idea of a perfect shaft is that of a single
stone hewn into a form more or less elongated and cylindrical.
U^ider this form, or at least under the ruder one of a long
stone set upright, the conception of true shafts appears first
to have occurred to the human mind ; for the reader must note
this carefully, once for all, it does not in the least follow that
the order of architectural features which is most reasonable in
their arrangement, is most probable in their invention. I have
theoretically deduced shafts from walls, but shafts were never
s< » reasoned out in architectural practice. The man who first
propped a thatched roof with poles was the discoverer of their
principle ; and he who first hewed a long stone into a cylinder,
the perfecter of their practice.
£ 1 1. It is clearly necessary that shafts of this kind (we will
call them, for convenience, Hock shafts) should be composed
CONSTRUCTION. Till. THE SHAFT. 85
of stone not liable to flaws or fissures ; and therefore that we
must no longer continue our argument as if it were always
possible to do what is to be done in the best way ; for the
style of a national architecture may evidently depend, in great
measure, upon the nature of the rocks of the country.
Our own English rocks, which supply excellent building
stone from their thin and easily divisible beds, are for the most
part entirely incapable of being worked into shafts of any size,
except only the granites and whinstones, whose hardness ren-
ders them intractable for ordinary purposes ; — and English
architecture therefore supplies no instances of the block shaft
applied on an extensive scale ; while the facility of obtaining
large masses of marble has in Greece and Italy been partly the
cause of the adoption of certain noble types of architectural
form peculiar to those countries, or, when occurring elsewhere,
derived from them.
We have not, however, in reducing our walls to shafts, cal-
culated on the probabilities of our obtaining better materials
than those of which the walls were built ; and we shall there-
fore first consider the form of shaft which will be best when
we have the best materials ; and then consider how far we can
imitate, or how far it will be wise to imitate, this form with
any materials we can obtain.
§ in. Now as I gave the reader the ground, and the stones,
that he might for himself find out how to build his wall, I
shall give him the block of marble, and the chisel, that he may
himself find out how to shape his column. Let him suppose
the elongated mass, so given him, rudely hewn to the thickness
which he has calculated will be proportioned to the weight it
has to carry. The conditions of stability will require that
some allowance be made in finishing it for any chance of slight
disturbance or subsidence of the ground below, and that, as
everything must depend on the uprightness of the shaft, as
little chance should be left as possible of its being thrown off
its balance. It will therefore be prudent to leave it slightly
thicker at the base than at the top. This excess of diameter at
the base being determined, the reader is to ask himself how
86
VIII. THE SHAFT.
CONSTRUCTION.
most easily and simply to smooth the column from one extrem-
ity to the other. To cut it into a true straight-sided cone
would be a matter of much trouble and nicety, and would
incur the continual risk of chipping into it too deep. Why
not leave some room for a chance stroke, work it slightly, very
slightly convex, and smooth the curve by the eye between the
two extremities ? you will save much trouble and time, and
the shaft will be all the stronger.
This is accordingly the natural form of a detached block
shaft. It is the best. No other will ever be so agreeable to
the mind or eye. I do not mean that it is not capable of
more refined execution, or of the application of some of the
Fig. XIII.
- t
,_.- d
B
laws of aesthetic beauty, but that it is the best recipient of
execution and subject of law ; better in either case than if you
had taken more pains, and cut it straight.
xj iv. You will observe, however, that the convexity is to be
very slight, and that the shaft is not to bulge in the centre, but
t<> taper from the root in a curved line; the peculiar character
"f the curve you will discern better by exaggerating, in a dia-
gram, the conditions of its sculpture.
Let «, a, 5, I, at A, Fig. XIII., be the rough block of the
^haft, laid on the ground; and as thick as yoii can by any
chance require it to be ; you will leave it of this full thickness
at its base at A, but at the other end you will mark off upon it.
the diameter c, <#, which you intend it to have at the summit ^
CONSTRUCTION.
VIII. THE SHAFT. 87
you will then take your mallet and chisel, and working from c
and d you will roughly knock off the corners, shaded in the
figure, so as to reduce the shaft to the figure described by the
inside lines in A and the outside lines in B ; you then proceed
to smooth it, you chisel away the shaded parts in B, and leave
your finished shaft of the form of the inside lines <?, g^f^ h.
The result of this operation will be of course that the shaft
tapers faster towards the top than it does near the ground.
Observe this carefully ; it is a point of great future importance.
§ v. So far of the shape of detached or block shafts. We
can carry the type no farther on merely structural considera-
tions : let us pass to the shaft of inferior materials.
Unfortunately, in practice, this step must be soon made.
It is alike difficult to obtain, transport, and raise, block shafts
more than ten or twelve feet long, except in remarkable posi-
tions, and as pieces of singular magnificence. Large pillars
are therefore always composed of more than one block of
stone. Such pillars are either jointed like basalt columns, and
composed of solid pieces of stone set one above another ; or
they are filled up towers, built of small stones cemented into
a mass, with more or less of regularity : Keep this distinction
carefully in mind, it is of great importance ; for the jointed
column, every stone composing which, however thin, is (so to
speak) a complete slice of the shaft, is just as strong as the
block pillar of one stone, so long as no forces are brought into
action upon it which would have a tendency to cause horizon-
tal dislocation. But the pillar which is built as a filled-up
tower is of course liable to fissure in any direction, if its cement
give way.
But, in either case, it is evident that all constructive reason
of the curved contour is at once destroyed. Far from being
an easy or natural procedure, the fitting of each portion of
the curve to its fellow, in the separate stones, would require
painful care and considerable masonic skill ; while, in the case
of the filled-up tower, the curve outwards would be even
unsafe ; for its greatest strength (and that the more in propor-
tion to its careless building) lies in its bark, or shell of outside
gg VIII. THE SHAFT. CONSTBUCTION.
stone ; and this, if curved outwards, would at once burst out-
wards, if heavily loaded above.
If, therefore, the curved outline be ever retained in such
shafts, it must be in obedience to aesthetic laws only.
§ vi. But farther. Not only the curvature, but even the
tapering by straight lines, would be somewhat difficult of
execution in the pieced column. Where, indeed, the entire
shaft is composed of four or five blocks set one upon another,
the diameters may be easily determined at the successive joints,
and the stones chiselled to the same slope. But this becomes
sufficiently troublesome when the joints are numerous, so that
the pillar is like a pile of cheeses ; or when it is to be built of
small and irregular stones. We should be naturally led, in
the one case, to cut all the cheeses to the same diameter ; in
the other to build by the plumb-line ; and in both to give up
the tapering altogether.
§ vii. Farther. Since the chance, in the one case, of hori-
zontal dislocation, in the other, of irregular fissure, is much
increased by the composition of the shaft out of joints or
small stones, a larger bulk of shaft is required to carry the
given weight ; and, cceteris paribus, jointed and cemented
shafts must be thicker in proportion to the weight they carry
than those which are of one block.
We have here evidently natural causes of a very marked
division in schools of architecture: one group composed of
buildings whose shafts are either of a single stone or of few
joints; the shafts, therefore, being gracefully tapered, and
reduced by successive experiments to the narrowest possible
diameter proportioned to the weight they carry : and the other
group embracing those buildings whose shafts are of many
joints or of small stones; shafts which are therefore not
tapered, and rather thick and ponderous in proportion to the
weight they carry ; the latter school being evidently somewhat
imperfect and inelegant as compared with the former.
It may perhaps appear, also, that this arrangement of the
materials in cylindrical shafts at all would hardly have sug-
gested itself to n people who possessed no large blocks out of
CONSTRUCTION. VIII. THE SHAFT. 89
which to hew them ; and that the shaft built of many pieces
is probably derived from, and imitative of the shaft hewn
from few or from one.
§ vin. If, therefore, you take a good geological map of
Europe, and lay your finger upon the spots where volcanic
influences supply either travertin or marble in accessible and
available masses, you will probably mark the points where
the types of the first school have been originated and devel-
oped. If, in the next place, you will mark the districts where
broken and rugged basalt or whinstone, or slaty sandstone,
supply materials on easier terms indeed, but fragmentary and
unmanageable, you will probably distinguish some of the
birthplaces of the derivative and less graceful school. You
will, in the first case, lay your finger on Psestum, Agrigentum,
and Athens ; in the second, on Durham and Lindisfarne.
The shafts of the great primal school are, indeed, in their
first form, as massy as those of the other, and the tendency
of both is to continual diminution of their diameters : but in
the first school it is a true diminution in the thickness of the
independent pier; in the last, it is an apparent diminution,
obtained by giving it the appearance of a group of minor
piers. The distinction, however, with which we are concerned
is not that of slenderness, but of vertical or curved contour ;
and we may note generally that while throughout the whole
range of Northern work, the perpendicular shaft appears in
continually clearer development, throughout every group
wnich has inherited the spirit of the Greek, the shaft retains
its curved or tapered form ; and the occurrence of the vertical
detached shaft may at all times, in European architecture, be
regarded as one of the most important collateral evidences of
Northern influence.
§ ix. It is necessary to limit this observation to European
architecture, because the Egyptian shaft is often untapered,
like the Northern. It appears that the Central Southern, or
Greek shaft, was tapered or curved on aesthetic rather than
constructive principles ; and the Egyptian which precedes, and
the Northern which follows it, are both vertical, the one
90
VIII. THE SHAFT. CONSTRUCTION,
because the best form had not been discovered, the other
because it could not be attained. Both are in a certain degree
barbaric ; and both possess in combination and in their orna-
ments a power altogether different from that of the Greek
shaft, and at least as impressive if not as admirable.
§ x. We have hitherto spoken of shafts as if their number
were fixed, and only their diameter variable according to the
weight to be borne. But this supposition is evidently gratu-
itous; for the same weight may be carried either by many
and slender, or by few and massy shafts. If the reader will
look back to Fig. IX., he will find the number of shafts into
which the wall was reduced to be dependent altogether upon
the length of the spaces a, I, a, b, &c., a length which was
arbitrarily fixed. .We are at liberty to make these spaces of
what length we choose, and, in so doing, to increase the num-
ber and diminish the diameter of the shafts, or vice versa.
§ xi. Supposing the materials are in each case to be of the
same kind, the choice is in great part at the architect's
discretion, only there is a limit on the one hand to the
multiplication of the slender shaft, in the inconvenience of the
narrowed interval, and on the other, to the enlargement of
the massy shaft, in the loss of breadth to the building.*
That will be commonly the best proportion which is a natural
mean between the two limits ; leaning to the side of grace or
of grandeur according to the expressional intention of the
work. I say, commonly the best, because, in some cases, this-
expressional invention may prevail over all other considera-
tions, and a column of unnecessary bulk or fantastic slightness
be adopted in order to strike the spectator with awe or with
surprise. f The architect is, however, rarely in practice com-
* In saying this, it is assumed that the interval is one which is to be
traversed by men; and that a certain relation of the shafts and intervals to
the size of the human figure is therefore necessar}^. When shafts are used
in the upper stories of buildings, or on a scale which ignores all relation to
the human figure, no such relative limits exist either to slenderness or
solidity.
f Vide the interesting discussion of this point in Mr. Fergusson's ac-
count of the Temple of Karnak? "Principles of Beauty in Art," p. 219.
CONSTRUCTION. VIII. THE SHAFT. 91
pelled to use one kind of material only; and his choice lies
frequently between the employment -of a larger number of
solid and perfect small shafts, or a less number of pieced and
cemented large ones. It is often possible to obtain from
quarries near at hand, blocks which might be cut into shafts,
eight or twelve feet long and four or five feet round, when
larger shafts can only be obtained in distant localities; and
the question then is between the perfection of smaller features
and the imperfection of larger. We shall find numberless
instances in Italy in which the first choice has been boldly,
and I think most wisely made; and magnificent buildings
have been composed of systems of small but perfect shafts,
multiplied and superimposed. So long as the idea of the
symmetry of a perfect shaft remained in the builder's mind,
his choice could hardly be directed otherwise, and the adoption
of the built and tower-like shaft appears to have been the result
of a loss of this sense of symmetry consequent on the employ-
ment of intractable materials.
§ xii. But farther : we have up to this point spoken of
shafts as always set in ranges, and at equal intervals from each
other. But there is no necessity for this ; and material differ-
ences may be made in their diameters if two or more be
grouped so as to do together the work of one large one, and
that within, or nearly within, the space which the larger one
would have occupied.
§ xm. Let A, B, c, Fig. XIY., be three surfaces, of which
B and c contain equal areas, and each of them double that of
A : then supposing them all loaded to the same height, B
or c would receive twice as much weight as A ; therefore,
to carry B or c loaded, we should need a shaft of twice the
strength needed to carry A. Let s be the shaft required to
carry A, and s2 the shaft required to carry B or c ; then s
may be divided into two shafts, or s2 into four shafts, as at s3,
all equal in area or solid contents ;* and the mass A might be
* I have assumed that the strength of similar shafts of equal height is
as the squares of their diameters ; which, though not actually a correct ex-
pression, is sufficiently so for all our present purposes.
VIII. THE SHAFT.
CONSTRUCTION.
Fig. XIV.
B
carried safely by two of
them, and the masses B
and c, each by four of
them.
Now if we put the
single shafts each under
the centre of the mass
they have to bear, as rep-
resented by the shaded
circles at a, a^ a», the
masses A and c are both
of them very ill support-
ed, and even B insuffi-
ciently ; but apply the
four and the two shafts
as at &, &2, Js, and they
are supported satisfacto-
rily. Let the weight on
each of the masses be
doubled, and the shafts
doubled in area, then we
shall have such arrange-
ments as those at c, ca, c, ;
and if again the shafts
and weight be doubled,
we shall have d, ch, d3.
§ xiv. Now it will at
once be observed that the
arrangement of the shafts
in the series of B and c is
always exactly the same
in their relations to each
other ; only the group of
B is set evenly, and the
group of c is set obliquely, — the one carrying a square, the
other a cross.
You have in these two series the primal representations of
CONSTRUCTION.
VIII. THE SHAFT. 93
shaft arrangement in the Southern and Northern schools ;
while the group &, of which £>2 is the double, set evenly, and
<\ the double, set obliquely, is common to both. The reader
will be surprised to find how all the complex and varied forms
of shaft arrangement will range themselves into one or other
of these groups ; and still more surprised to find the oblique
or cross set system on the one hand, and the square set system
on the other, severally distinctive of Southern and Northern
work. The dome of St. Mark's, and the crossing of the nave
and transepts of Beauvais, are both carried by square piers ;
but the piers of St. Mark's are set square to the walls of the
church, and those oi; Beauvais obliquely to them: and this
difference is even a more essential one than that between the
smooth surface of the one and the reedy complication of the
other. The two squares here in the margin (Fig. XV.) are
exactlv of the same size, but their
"FMs* XV
expression is altogether different,
and in that difference lies one of
the most subtle distinctions be-
tween the Gothic and Greek spirit,
— from the shaft, which bears the
building, to the smallest decoration.
The Greek square is by preference set evenly, the Gothic
square obliquely; and that so constantly, that wherever we
find the level or even square occurring as a prevailing form,
either in plan or decoration, in early northern work, there we
may at least suspect the presence of a southern or Greek
influence ; and, on the other hand, wherever the oblique
square is prominent in the south, we may confidently look for
farther evidence of the influence of the Gothic architects.
The rule must not of course be pressed far when, in either
schooi, there has been determined search for every possible
variety of decorative figures ; and accidental circumstances
may reverse the usual system in special cases ; but the evidence
drawn from this character is collaterally of the highest value,
and the tracing it out is a pursuit of singular interest. Thus,
the Pisan Romanesque might in an instant be pronounced to
VIII. THE SHAFT.
CONSTRUCTION.
Fig. XVI.
have been formed under some measure of Lombardic influ-
ence, from the oblique squares set under its arches ; and in
it we have the spirit of northern Gothic affecting details of
the southern ; — obliquity of square, in magnificently shafted
Romanesque. At Monza, on the other hand, the levelled
square is the characteristic figure of the entire decoration of
the facade of the Duomo, eminently giving it southern char-
acter; but the details are derived almost entirely from the
northern Gothic, Here then we have southern spirit and
northern detail. Of the cruciform outline of the load of the
shaft, a still more positive test of northern work, we shall
have more to say in the 28th Chapter ; we must at present
note certain farther changes in the form of the grouped shaft,
which open the way to every branch of its endless combina-
tions, southern or northern.
§ xv. 1. If the group at ds, Fig. XIY., be taken from under
its loading, and have its centre
filled up, it will become a qua-
trefoil ; and it will represent,
in their form of most frequent
occurrence, a family of shafts,
whose plans are foiled figures,
trefoils, quatrefoils, cinquefoils,
&c. ; of which a trefoiled exam-
ple, from the Frari at Venice, is
the third in Plate II., and a
quatrefoil from Salisbury the
eighth. It is rare, however, to
find in Gothic architecture
shafts of this family composed
of a large number of foils,
because multifoiled shafts are
seldom true grouped shafts, but
are rather canaliculated condi-
tions of massy piers. The repre-
sentatives of this family may be
considered as the quatrefoil on the Gothic side of the Alps ;
CONSTRUCTION.
VIII. THE SHAFT. 95
and the Egyptian multifoiled shaft on the south, approximat-
ing to the general type, J, Fig. XYI.
§ xvi. Exactly opposed to this great family is that of shafts
which have concave curves instead of convex on each of their
sides ; but these are not, properly speaking, grouped shafts at
all, and their proper place is among decorated piers ; only
they must be named here in order to mark their exact opposi-
tion to the foiled system. In their simplest form, represented
by <?, Fig. XYI., they have no representatives in good archi-
tecture, being evidently weak and meagre ; but approximations
to them exist in late Gothic, as in the vile cathedral of Orleans,
and in modern cast-iron shafts. In their fully developed form
they are the Greek Doric, «, Fig. XYI., and occur in caprices
of the Komanesque and Italian Gothic : d, Fig. XYI., is from
the Duomo of Monza,
§ xvn. 2. Between cs and d3 of Fig. XIY. there may be
evidently another condition, represented at 6, Plate II., and
formed by the insertion of a central shaft within the four
external ones. This central shaft we may suppose to expand
in proportion to the weight it has to carry. If the external
shafts expand in the same proportion, the entire form remains
unchanged ; but if they do not expand, they may (1) be pushed
out by the expanding shaft, or (2) be gradually swallowed up
in its expansion, as at 4, Plate II. If they are pushed out, they
are removed farther from each other by every increase of the
central shaft ; and others may then be introduced in the vacant
spaces ; giving, on the plan, a central orb with an ever increas-
ing host of satellites, 10, Plate II. ; the satellites themselves
often varying in size, and perhaps quitting contact with the
central shaft. Suppose them in any of their conditions fixed,
while the inner shaft expands, and they will be gradually bur-
ied in it, forming more complicated conditions of 4, Plate II.
The combinations are thus altogether infinite, even supposing
the central shaft to be circular only ; but their infinity is mul-
tiplied by many other infinities when the central shaft itself
becomes square or crosslet on the section, or itself multifoiled
(8, Plate II.) with satellite shafts eddying about its recesses and
gg VIII. THE SHAFT. CONSTRUCTION,
angles, in every possible relation of attraction. Among these,
endless conditions of change, the choice of the architect is f ree,.
this only being generally noted : that, as the whole value of
such piers depends, first, upon their being wisely fitted to the
weight above them, and, secondly, upon their all working
together : and one not failing the rest, perhaps to the ruin of
all, he must never multiply shafts without visible cause in the
disposition of members superimposed : * and in his multiplied
group he should, if possible, avoid a marked separation between
the large central shaft and its satellites ; for if this exist, the
satellites will either appear useless altogether, or else, which is
worse, they will look as if they were meant to keep the central
shaft together by wiring or caging it in ; like iron rods set
round a supple cylinder, — a fatal fault in the piers of West-
minster Abbey, and, in a less degree, in the noble nave of the
cathedral of Bourges.
§ xviii. While, however, we have been thus subdividing or
assembling our shafts, how far has it been possible to retain
their curved or tapered outline ? So long as they remain dis-
tinct and equal, however close to each other, the independent
curvature may evidently be retained. But when once they
come in contact, it is equally evident that a column, formed of
shafts touching at the base and separate at the top, would
appear as if in the very act of splitting asunder. Hence, in all
the closely arranged groups, and especially those with a central
shaft, the tapering is sacrificed ; and with less cause for regret,
because it was a provision against subsidence or distortion,
which cannot now take place with the separate members of
the group. Evidently, the work, if safe at all, must be execu-
ted with far greater accuracy and stability when its supports
are so delicately arranged, than would be implied by such pre-
caution. In grouping shafts, therefore, a true perpendicular
line is, in nearly all cases, given to the pier ; and the reader
will anticipate that the two schools, which we have already
found to be distinguished, the one by its perpendicular and
How far this condition limits the system of shaft grouping we shall see
presently. The reader must remember, that we at present reason respecting
shafts in the abstract only.
CONSTRUCTION.
VIII. THE SHAFT. 97
pieced shafts, and the other by its curved and block shafts, will
be found divided also in their employment of grouped shafts ;
— it is likely that the idea of grouping, however suggested,
will be fully entertained and acted upon by the one, but hesi-
tatingly by the other ; and that we shall find, on the one hand,
buildings displaying sometimes massy piers of small stones,
sometimes clustered piers of rich complexity, and on the other,
more or less regular succession of block shafts, each treated as
entirely independent of those around it.
§ xix. Farther, the grouping of shafts once admitted, it is
probable that the complexity and richness of such arrangements
would recommend them to the eye, and induce their frequent,
even their unnecessary introduction ; so that weight which
might have been borne by a single pillar, would be in prefer-
ence supported by four or five. And if the stone of the
country, whose fragmentary character first occasioned the
building and piecing of the large pier, were yet in beds con-
sistent enough to supply shafts of very small diameter, the
strength and simplicity of such a construction might justify it,
as well as its grace. The fact, however, is that the charm
which the multiplication of line possesses for the eye has
always been one of the chief ends of the work in the grouped
schools ; and that, so far from employing the grouped piers in
order to the introduction of very slender block shafts, the most
common form in which such piers occur is that of a solid
jointed shaft, each joint being separately cut into the contour
of the group required.
§ xx. We have hitherto supposed that all grouped or clus-
tered shafts have been the result or the expression of an actual
gathering and binding together of detached shafts. This is
not, however, always so : for some clustered shafts are little
more than solid piers channelled on the surface, and their form
appears to be merely the development of some longitudinal
furrowing or striation on the original single shaft. That clus-
tering or striation, whichever we choose to call it, is in this
case a decorative feature, and to be considered under the head
of decoration.
§ xxi. It must be evident to the reader at a glance, that the
VIII. THE SHAFT. CONSTRUCTION.
»/o
real serviceableness of any of these grouped arrangements must
depend upon the relative shortness of the shafts, and that,
when the whole pier is so lofty that its minor members become
mere reeds or rods of stone, those minor members can no
longer be charged with any considerable weight. And the
fact is, that in the most complicated Gothic arrangements,
when the pier is tall and its satellites stand clear of it, no real
work is given them to do, and they might all be removed
without endangering the building. They are merely the ex-
pression of a great consistent system, and are in architecture
what is often found in animal anatomy, — a bone, or process of
a bone, useless, under the ordained circumstances of its life, to
the particular animal in which it is found, and slightly devel-
oped, but yet distinctly existent, and representing, for the sake
of absolute consistency, the same bone in its appointed, and
generally useful, place, either in skeletons of all animals, or in
the genus to which the animal itself belongs.
§ xxii. Farther : as it is not easy to obtain pieces of stone
long enough for these supplementary shafts (especially as it is
always unsafe to lay a stratified stone with its beds upright)
they have been frequently composed of two or more short
shafts set upon each other, and to conceal the unsightly junc-
tion, a flat stone has been interposed, carved into certain
mouldings, which have the appearance of a ring on the shaft.
Now observe : the whole pier was the gathering of the whole
wall, the base gathers into base, the veil into the shaft, and
the string courses of the veil gather into these rings; and
when this is clearly expressed, and the rings do indeed corre-
spond with the string courses of the wall veil, they are per-
fectly admissible and even beautiful ; but otherwise, and
occurring, as they do in the shafts of Westminster, in the
middle of continuous lines, they are but sorry make-shifts, and
of late since gas has been invented, have become especially
offensive from their unlucky resemblance to the joints of gas-
pipes, or common water-pipes. There are two leaden ones,
for instance, on the left hand as one enters the abbey at Poet's
Corner, with their solderings and funnels looking exactly like
CONSTRUCTION.
VIII. THE SHAFT. 99
rings and capitals, and most disrespectfully mimicking the
shafts of the abbey, inside.
Thus far we have traced the probable conditions of shaft
structure in pure theory ; I shall now lay before the reader
a brief statement of the facts of the thing in time past and
present.
§ xxiii. In the earliest and grandest shaft architecture
which we know, that of Egypt, we have no grouped arrange-
ments, properly so called, but either single and smooth shafts,
or richly reeded and furrowed shafts, which represent the ex-
treme conditions of a complicated group bound together to
sustain a single mass ; and are indeed, without doubt, nothing
else than imitations of bundles of reeds, or of clusters of lotus :*
but in these shafts there is merely the idea of a group, not the
actual function or structure of a group ; they are just as much
solid and simple shafts as those which are smooth, and merely
by the method of their decoration present to the eye the image
of a richly complex arrangement.
§ xxiv. After these we have the Greek shaft, less in scale,
and losing all suggestion or purpose of suggestion of complex-
ity, its so-called nutings being, visibly as actually, an external
decoration.
§ xxv. The idea of the shaft remains absolutely single in
the Roman and Byzantine mind ; but true grouping begins in
Christian architecture by the placing of two or more separate
shafts side by side, each having its own work to do ; then three
or four, still with separate work ; then, by such steps as those
above theoretically pursued, the number of the members in-
creases, while they coagulate into a single mass ; and we have
finally a shaft apparently composed of thirty, forty, fifty, or
more distinct members; a shaft which, in the reality of its
service, is as much a single shaft as the old Egyptian one ; but
which differs from the Egyptian in that all its members, how
many soever, have each individual work to do, and a separate
rib of arch or roof to carry : and thus the great Christian
* The capitals being formed by the flowers, or by a representation of the
bulging out of the reeds at the top, under the weight of the architrave.
J^Q VIII. THE SHAFT. CONSTRUCTION.
truth of distinct services of the individual soul is typified in
the Christian shaft ; and the old Egyptian servitude of the
multitudes, the servitude inseparable from the children of
Ham, is typified also in that ancient shaft of the Egyptians,
which in its gathered strength of the river reeds, seems, as the
sands of the desert drift over its ruin, to be intended to remind
VLB for ever of the end of the association of the wicked. " Can
the rush grow up without mire, or the flag grow without
water? — So are the paths of all that forget God; and the
hypocrite's hope shall perish."
§ xxvi. 'Let the reader then keep this distinction of the
three systems clearly in his mind : Egyptian system, an ap-
parent cluster supporting a simple capital and single weight ;
Greek and Roman system, single shaft, single weight;
Gothic system, divided shafts, divided weight : at first actually
and simply divided, at last apparently and infinitely divided ;
so that the fully formed Gothic shaft is a return to the Egyp-
tian, but the weight is divided in the one and undivided in the
other.
§ xxvn. The transition from the actual to the apparent
cluster, in the Gothic, is a question of the most curious
interest ; I have thrown together the shaft sections in Plate
II. to illustrate it, and exemplify what has been generally
stated above.*
1. The earliest, the most frequent, perhaps the most beauti-
ful of all the groups, is also the simplest ; the two shafts ar-
ranged as at b or c, (Fig. XIV.) above, bearing an oblong mass,
and substituted for the still earlier structure a, Fig. XIV. In
Plate XVII. (Chap. XXVII.) are three examples of the transi-
tion : the one on the left, at the top, is the earliest single-
shafted arrangement, constant in the rough Eomanesque
windows; a huge hammer-shaped capital being employed to
sustain the thickness of the wall. It was rapidly superseded
* I have not been at the pains to draw the complicated piers in this plate
with absolute exactitude to the scale of each: they are accurate enough for
tfceir purpose: those of them respecting which we shall have farther ques-
tion will be given on a much larger scale.
II.
Tj
e
'
9
Jilt
14:
uf br$*
CONSTRUCTION.
VIII. THE SHAFT. 101
by the double shaft, as on the right of it ; a very early example
from the cloisters of the Duomo, Verona. Beneath, is a most
elaborate and perfect one from St. Zeno of Verona, where the
group is twice complicated, two shafts being used, both with
quatrefoil sections. The plain double shaft, however, is by
far the most frequent, both in the Northern and Southern
Gothic, but for the most part early ; it is very frequent in
cloisters, and in the singular one -of St. Michael's Mount, ^or-
mandy, a small pseudo-arcade runs along between the pairs of
shafts, a miniature aisle. The group is employed on a mag-
nificent scale, but ill proportioned, for the main piers of the
apse of the cathedral of Coutances, its purpose being to conceal
one shaft behind the other, and make it appear to the spectator
from the nave as if the apse were sustained by single shafts, of
inordinate sleriderness. The attempt is ill-judged, and the re-
sult unsatisfactory.
§ xxvni. 2. When these pairs of shafts come near each
other, as frequently at the turnings of angles (Fig. XVIIJ),
the quadruple group results, b 2, Fig. XI V., of Fig. xvn.
which the Lombardic sculptors were excessively 4 ^ ^
fond, usually tying the shafts together in their 4} §> 9
•centre, in a lover's knot. They thus occur in
Plate Y., from the Broletto of Como; at the
.angle of St. Michele of Lucca, Plate XXI. ;
and in the balustrade of St. Mark's. This is a group, hoMr-
ever, which I have never seen used on a large scale. *
§ xxix. 3. Such groups, consolidated by a small square in their
centre, form the shafts of St. Zeno, just spoken of, and figured
in Plate XVIL, which are among the most interesting piece's
of work I know in Italy. I give their entire arrangement in
Fig. XVIII. : both shafts have the same section, but one re-
ceives a half turn as it ascends, giving it an exquisite spiral
contour : the plan of their bases, with their plinth, is given at
2, Plate II. ; and note it carefully, for it is an epitome of all
that we observed above, respecting the oblique and even square.
* The largest I remember support a monument in St. Zeno of Verona;
they are of red marble, some ten or twelve feet high.
iQ2 VIII. THE SHAFT. CONSTRUCTION.
It was asserted that the oblique belonged to the north, the
even to the south : we have here the northern Lombardic
Fig xvm. nation naturalised in Italy, and, behold, the ob-
lique and even quatrefoil linked together; not
confused, but actually linked by a bar of stone, as
seen in Plate XVIL, under the capitals.
4. Next to these, observe the two groups of
five shafts each, 5 and 6, Plate II., one oblique,
the other even. Both are from upper stories ;
the oblique one from the trif orium of Salisbury ;
the even one from the upper range of shafts in
the facade of St. Mark's at Venice.*
§ xxx. Around these central types are grouped,
in Plate II., four simple examples of the satel-
litic cluster, all of the Northern Gothic : -t, from
the Cathedral of Amiens ; 7, from that of Lyons
(nave pier) ; 8, the same from Salisbury ; 10,
from the porch of Notre Dame, Dijon, having satellites of
three magnitudes : 9 is one of the piers between the doors of
the same church, with shafts of four magnitudes, and is an
instance of the confusion of mind of the Northern architects
between piers proper and jamb mouldings (noticed farther in
the next chapter, § xxxi.) : for this fig. 9, which is an angle
at the meeting of two jambs, is treated like a rich independent
shaft, and the figure below, 12, which is half of a true shaft,
is treated like a meeting of jambs.
All these four examples belonging to the oblique or North-
ern system, the curious trefoil plan, 3, lies bel/ween the two, as
the double quatrefoil next it unites the two. The trefoil is
from the Frari, Venice, and has a richly worked capital in the
Byzantine manner,— an imitation, I think, of the Byzantine
work by the Gothic builders : 1 is to be compared with it,
being one of the earliest conditions of the cross shaft, from the
atrium of St. Ambrogio at Milan. 13 is the nave pier of St.
Michele at Pavia, showing the same condition more fully de-
* The effect of this last is given in Plate VI. of the folio series.
CONSTRUCTION. VIII. THE SHAFT. 103
veloped : and 11 another nave pier from Yienne, on the Rhone,
of far more distinct Roman derivation, for the flat pilaster is
set to the nave, and is fluted like an antique one. 12 is the
grandest development I have ever seen of the cross shaft,
with satellite shafts in the nooks of it : it is half of one of
the great western piers of the cathedral of Bourges, measuring
eight feet each side, thirty-two round.* Then the one below
(15) is half of a nave pier of Rouen Cathedral, showing the
mode in which such conditions as that of Dijon (9) and that of
Bourges (12) were fused together into forms of inextricable
complexity (inextricable I mean in the irregularity of propor-
tion and projection, for all of them are easily resolvable into
simple systems in connexion with the roof ribs). This pier
of Rouen is a type of the last condition of the good Gothic ;
from this point the small shafts begin to lose shape, and run
into narrow fillets and ridges, projecting at the same time
farther and farther in weak tongue-like sections, as described
in the " Seven Lamps." I have only here given one example
of this family, an unimportant but sufficiently characteristic
one (16) from St. Gervais of Falaise. One side of the nave of
that church is Norman, the other Flamboyant, and the two
piers 14 and 16 stand opposite each other. It would be useless
to endeavor to trace farther the fantasticism of the later
Gothic shafts ; they become mere aggregations of mouldings
very sharply and finely cut, their bases at the same time run-
ning together in strange complexity and their capitals diminish-
ing and disappearing. Some of their conditions, which, in their
rich striation, resemble crystals of beryl, are very massy and
grand ; others, meagre, • harsh, or effeminate in themselves, are
redeemed by richness and boldness of decoration ; and I have
long had it in my mind to reason out the entire harmony of
this French Flamboyant system, and fix its types and possible
* The entire development of this cross system in connexion with the
vaulting ribs, has been most clearly explained by Professor Willis (Archi
tecture of Mid. Ages, Chap. IV.); and I strongly recommend every reader
who is inclined to take pains in the matter, to read that chapter. I have
been contented, in my own text, to pursue the abstract idea of shaft form.
104 VIH. THE SHAFT. CONSTRUCTION.
power. But this inquiry is foreign altogether to our present
purpose, and we shall therefore turn back from the Flamboyant
to the Norman side of the Falaise aisle, resolute for the future
that all shafts of which we may have the ordering, shall be
permitted, as with wisdom we may also permit men or cities,
to gather themselves into companies, or constellate themselves
into clusters, but not to fuse themselves into mere masses of
nebulous aggregation.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CAPITAL.
§ i. THE reader will remember that in Chap. VII. § v. it
was said that the cornice of the wall, being cut to pieces and
gathered together, formed the capital of the column. We
have now to follow it in its transformation.
We must, of course, take our simplest form or root of cor-
nices (a, in Fig. V., above). We will take X and Y there, and
we must necessarily gather them together as we did Xb and Yb
in Chap. VII. Look back to the tenth paragraph of Chap.
VII., read or glance it over again, substitute X and Y for Xb
and Yb, read capital for base, and, as we said that the capital
was the hand of the pillar, while the base was its foot, read
also fingers for toes ; and as you look to the plate, Fig. XII.,
turn it upside down. Then A, in Fig. XII., becomes now your
best general form of block capital, as before of block base.
§ ii. You will thus have a perfect idea of the analogies
between base and capital ; our farther inquiry is into their
differences. You cannot but have noticed that when Fig. XII.
is turned upside down, the square stone (Y) looks too heavy
for the supporting stone (X) ; and that in the profile of cornice
(a of Fig. V.) the proportions are altogether different. You
will feel the fitness of this in an instant when you consider
that the principal function of the sloping part in Fig. XII. is
as a prop to the pillar to keep it from slipping aside / but the
function of the sloping stone in the cornice and capital is to
carry weight above. The thrust of the slope in the one case
should therefore be lateral, in the other upwards.
§ in. We will, therefore, take the two figures, e and h of
Fig. XII., and make this change in them as we reverse them,
106
IX. THE CAPITAL.
CONSTRUCTION.
using now the exact profile of the cornice #, — the father of
cornices ; and we shall thus have a and 5, Fig. XIX.
Both of these are
sufficiently ugly,
the reader thinks;
so do I ; but we
will mend them be-
fore we have done
with them : that at
a is assuredly the
ugliest, — like a tile
on a flower-pot. It
is, nevertheless, the
father of capitals;
being the simplest
condition of the
gathered father of
cornices. But it is
to be observed that
the diameter of the
shaft here is arbi-
trarily assumed to
be small, in order
more clearly to
show the general
relations of the slo-
ping stone to the
shaft and upper
stone ; and this
smallness of the
shaft diameter is inconsistent with the serviceableness and beau-
ty of the arrangement at a, if it were to be realised (as we shall
see presently) ; but it is not inconsistent with its central charac-
ter, as the representative of every species of possible capital ;
n or is its tile and flower-pot look to be regretted, as it may
remind the reader of the reported origin of the Corinthian
<-;tI>ital. The stones of the cornice, hitherto called X and Y,
CONSTRUCTION. IX. THE CAPITAL. 107
receive, now that they form the capital, each a separate name ;
the sloping stone is called the Bell of the capital, and that laid
above it, the Abacus. Abacus means a board or tile : I wish
there were an English word for it, but I fear there is no substi-
tution possible, the term having been long fixed, and the reader
will find it convenient to familiarise himself with the Latin
one.
§ iv. The form of base, e of Fig. XII., which corresponds
to this first form of capital, &, was said to be objectionable only
because it looked insecure ; and the spurs were added as a kind
of pledge of stability to the eye. But evidently the projecting
corners of the abacus at », Fig. XIX., are actually insecure ;
they may break off, if great weight be laid upon them. This
is the chief reason of the ugliness of the form ; and the spurs
in 5 are now no mere pledges of apparent stability, but have
very serious practical use in supporting the angle of the abacus.
If, even with the added spur, the support seems insufficient,
we may fill up the crannies between the spurs and the bell,
and we have the form c.
Thus a, though the germ and type of capitals, is itself
(except under some peculiar conditions) both ugly and insecure ;
I is the first type of capitals which carry light weight ; c, of
capitals which carry excessive weight.
§ v. I fear, however, the reader may think he is going
slightly too fast, and may not like having the capital forced
upon him out of the cornice ; but would prefer inventing a
capital for the shaft itself, without reference to the cornice at
all. We will do so then ; though we shall come to the same
result.
The shaft, it will be remembered, has to sustain the same
weight as the long piece of wall which was concentrated into
the shaft ; it is enabled to do this both by its better form and
better knit materials ; and it can carry a greater weight than
the space at the top of it is adapted to receive. The first point,
therefore, is to expand this space as far as possible, and that in
a form more convenient than the circle for the adjustment of
the stones above. In general the square is a more convenient
108
IX. THE CAPITAL.
CONSTRUCTION.
Fig. XX.
form than any other ; but the hexagon or octagon is sometimes
better fitted for masses of work which divide in six or eight
directions. Then our first impulse would be to put a square
or hexagonal stone on the top of the
shaft, projecting as far beyond it as
might be safely ventured ; as at a, Fig.
XX. This is the abacus. Our next idea
would be to put a conical shaped stone
beneath this abacus, to support its outer
edge, as at J. This is the bell.
§ vi. Now the entire treatment of the
capital depends simply on the manner in
which this bell-stone is prepared for fit-
ting the shaft below and the abacus above.
Placed as at a, in Fig. XIX., it gives us
the simplest of possible forms ; with the
spurs added, as at 5, it gives the germ of
the richest and most elaborate forms : but
there are two modes of treatment more dexterous than the one,
and less elaborate than the other, which are of the highest
possible importance, — modes in which the bell is brought to its
proper form by truncation.
§ vii. Let d and/, Fig. XIX., be two bell-stones ; d is part
of a cone (a sugar-loaf upside down, with its point cut off) ; f
part of a four-sided pyramid. Then, assuming the abacus to
be square, d will already fit the shaft, but has to be chiselled
to fit the abacus ; f will already fit the abacus, but has to be
chiselled to fit the shaft.
From the broad end of d chop or chisel off, in four vertical
planes, as much as will leave its head an exact square. The
vertical cuttings will form curves on the sides of the cone
(curves of a curious kind, which the reader need not be troubled
to examine), and we shall have the form at 6, which is the root
of the greater number of Norman capitals.
From/ cut off the angles, beginning at the corners of the
square and widening the truncation downwards, so as to give
the form at g, where the base of the bell is an octagon, and its
CONSTRUCTION.
IX. THE CAPITAL. 109
top remains a square. A very slight rounding away of the
angles of the octagon at the base of g will enable it to fit the
circular shaft closely enough for all practical purposes, and this
form, at ^, is the root of nearly all Lombardic capitals.
If, instead of a square, the head of the bell were hexagonal
or octagonal, the operation of cutting would be the same on
each angle ; but there would be produced, of course, six or
eight curves on the sides of 0, and twelve or sixteen sides to
the base of g.
§ vin. The truncations in e and g may of course be executed
on concave or convex forms of d and f $ but e is usually
worked on a straight-sided bell, and the .
truncation of g often becomes concave
while the bell remains straight ; for this
simple reason, — that the sharp points at the
angles of </, being somewhat difficult to cut,
and easily broken off, are usually avoided
by beginning the truncation a little way
down the side of the bell, and then recover-
ing the lost ground by a deeper cut inwards, as here, Fig. XXI.
This is the actual form of the capitals of the balustrades of St.
Mark's : it is the root of all the Byzantine Arab capitals, and
of all the most beautiful capitals in the world, whose function
is to express lightness.
§ ix. We have hitherto proceeded entirely on the assumption
that the form of cornice which was gathered together to pro-
duce the capital was the root of cornices, a of Fig. "V. But
this, it will be remembered, was said in § vi. of Chap. "VI. to
be especially characteristic of southern work, and that in north-
ern and wet climates it took the form of a dripstone.
Accordingly, in the northern climates, the dripstone gather-
ed together forms a peculiar northern capital, commonly called
the Early English,* owing to its especial use in that style.
There would have been no absurdity in this if shafts were
always to be exposed to the weather ; but in Gothic construc-
* Appendix 19, " Early English Capitals."
110
IX. THE CAPITAL.
CONSTRUCTION.
tions the most important shafts are in the inside of the build-
ing. The dripstone sections of their capitals are therefore un-
necessary and ridiculous.
§ x. They are, however, much worse than unnecessary.
The edge of the dripstone, being undercut, has no bearing
power, and the capital fails, therefore, in
its own principal function ; and besides
this, the undercut contour admits of no
distinctly visible decoration ; it is, there-
fore, left utterly barren, and the capital
looks as if it had been turned in a lathe.
The Early English capital has, therefore,
the three greatest faults that any design
can have : (1) it fails in its own proper
purpose, that of support ; (2) it is adapted
to a purpose to which it can never be put,
that of keeping off rain ; (3) it cannot be
decorated.
The Early English capital is, therefore,
a barbarism of triple grossness, and de-
grades the style in which it is found,
otherwise very noble, to one of second-rate
order.
§ xi. Dismissing, therefore, the Early
English capital, as deserving no place in
our system, let us reassemble in one view
the forms which have been legitimately
developed, and which are to become here-
after subjects of decoration. To the f orms
a, £, and c, Fig. XIX., we must add the
two simplest truncated forms e and g. Fig.
XIX., putting their abaci on them (as we
considered their contours in the bells only),
and we shall have the five forms now given in parallel per-
spective in Fig. XXII., which are the roots of all good capi-
s existing, or capable of existence, and whose variations,
infinite and a thousand times infinite, are all produced by
CONSTRUCTION.
IX. THE CAPITAL.
Ill
introduction of various curvatures into their contours, and the
endless methods of decoration superinduced on such curva-
tures.
§ xii. There is, however, a kind of variation, also infinite,
which takes place in these radical forms, before they receive
either curvature or decoration. This is the variety of propor-
tion borne by the different lines of the capital to each other,
and to the shafts. This is a structural question, at present to
be considered as far as is possible.
§ xni. All the five capitals (which are indeed five orders
with legitimate distinction ; very different, however, from the
five orders as commonly understood) may be represented by
the same profile, a section through the sides of «, J, d, and e,
or through the angles of <?, Fig. XXII. This profile we will
put on the top of a shaft, as at A, Fig. XXIII., which shaft
we will suppose of equal diameter above and below for the
sake of greater simplicity : in this simplest condition, how-
ever, relations of proportion exist between five quantities, any
one, or any two, or any three, or any four of which may change,
irrespective of the others. These five quantities are :
1. The height of the shaft, a J ;
2. Its diameter, b c •
•Q2 IX. THE CAPITAL. CONSTRUCTION.
3. The length of slope of bell, I d;
4. The inclination of this slope, or angle c b d;
5. The depth of abacus, d e.
For every change in any one of these quantities we have
a new proportion of capital : five infinities, supposing change
only in one quantity at a time : infinity of infinities in the sum
of possible changes.
It is, therefore, pnly possible to note the general laws of
change ; every scale of pillar, and every weight laid upon it
admitting, within certain limits, a variety out of which the
architect has his choice ; but yet fixing limits which the pro-
portion becomes ugly when it approaches, and dangerous
when it exceeds. But the inquiry into this subject is too
difficult for the general reader, and I shall content myself with
proving four laws, easily understood and "generally applicable ;
for proof of which if the said reader care not, he may miss the
next four paragraphs without harm.
§ xiv. 1. The more slender the shaft, the greater, propor-
tionally, may be the projection of the abacus. For, looking
back to Fig. XXIII., let the height a ~b be fixed, the length
d b, the angle d~bc, and the depth d e. Let the single quantity
It c be variable, let B be a capital and shaft which are found to
be perfectly safe in proportion to the weight they bear, and
let the weight be equally distributed over the whole of the
abacus. Then this weight may be represented by any number
of equal divisions, suppose four, as I, m, n, r, of brickwork
above, of which each division is one fourth of the whole
weight ; and let this weight be placed in the most trying way
on the abacus, that is to say, let the masses I and r be detached
from m and n, and bear with their full weight on the outside of
the capital. We assume, in B, that the width of abacus efis
twice as £reat as that of the shaft, b c, and on these conditions
we assume the capital to be safe.
I'ut 1) c, is allowed to be variable. Let it become b2c2 at C,
which is a length representing about the diameter of a shaft
containing half the substance of the shaft B, and, therefore,
able, to sustain not more than half the weight sustained by B.
CONSTRUCTION.
IX. THE CAPITAL.
113
But the slope h d and depth d e remaining unchanged, we have
the capital of C, which we are to load with only half the
weight of /, m, n, r, i. e., with I and r alone. Therefore the
weight of I and r, now represented by the masses 12, r%, is dis-
tributed over the whole of the capital. But the weight r was
adequately supported by the projecting piece of the first capi-
tal hf c: much more is it now adequately supported by*//,
f2 c2. Therefore, if the capital of B was safe, that of C is
more than safe. Now in B the length ef was only twice 1) c /
but in C, e2 f% will be found more than twice that of hz <?2-
Therefore, the more slender the shaft, the greater may be the
proportional excess of the abacus over its diameter.
§ xv. 2. The smaller the scale of the building, the greater
-may he the excess of the abacus over the diameter of the shaft.
This principle requires, I think, 110 very lengthy proof : the
reader can understand at once that the cohesion and strength
of stone which can sustain a small projecting mass, will not
sustain a vast one overhanging in the same proportion. A
bank even of loose earth, six feet high, will sometimes over-
hang its base a foot or two, as you may see any day in the
gravelly banks of the lanes of Hampstead : but make the bank
of gravel, equally loose, six hundred feet high, and see if you
can get it to overhang a hundred or two ! much more if there
Fig. XXIV.
r
be weight above it increased in the same proportion. Hence,
let any capital be given, whose projection is just safe, and no
more, on its existing scale ; increase its proportions every way
equally, though ever so little, and it is unsafe ; diminish them
equally, and it becomes safe in the exact degree of the dimi-
nution.
114
IX. THE CAPITAL.
CONSTRUCTION.
Let, then, the quantity e d, and angle d b c, at A of Fig.
XXIIL, be invariable, and let the length d ~b vary : then we
shall have such a series of forms as may be represented by
a, ^ c, Fig. XXIV., of which a is a proportion for a colossal
building, b for a moderately sized building, while c could only
be admitted on a very small scale indeed.
§ xvi. 3. The greater the excess of abacus, the steeper must
be the slope of the bell, the shaft diameter being constant.
This will evidently follow from the considerations in the
last paragraph ; supposing only that, instead of the scale of
shaft and capital varying together, the scale of the capital varies
alone. For it will then still be true, that, if the projection of
Fig. xxv. the capital be just safe on a given scale,
I | as its excess over the shaft diameter
increases, the projection will be unsafe,
if the slope of the bell remain constant.
But it may be rendered safe by making
this slope steeper, and so increasing its
supporting power.
Thus let the capital a, Fig. XXV.,
be just safe. Then the capital b, in
which the slope is the same but the
excess greater, is unsafe. But the capi-
tal c, in which, though the excess equals
that of b, the steepness of the support-
ing slope is increased, will be as safe as
b, and probably as strong as a*
xvn. 4. The steeper the slope of the bell, the thinner may
be the abacus.
The use of the abacus is eminently to equalise the pressure
over the surface of the bell, so that the weight may not by
any accident be directed exclusively upon its edges. In pro-
portion to the strength of these edges, this function of the
abacus is superseded, and these edges' are strong in proportion
* In this case the weight borne is supposed to increase as the abacus
the illustration would have been clearer if I had assumed the
ireadth of abacus to be constant, and that of the shaft to vary
CONSTRUCTION. IX. THE CAPITAL. 115
to the steepness of the slope. Thus in Fig. XXVL, the bell
at a would carry weight safely enough without any abacus,
but that at c would not : it would pro-
Fig XXVL
bably have its edges broken off. The
abacus superimposed might be on a
very thin, little more than formal, as at
I • but on c must be thick, as at d.
§ xvin. These four rules are all that
are necessary for general criticism ; and
observe that these are only semi-impera- ^ s
tive, — rules of permission, not of com- c \
pulsion. Thus Law 1 asserts that the
.slender shaft may have greater excess of capital than the
thick shaft ; but it need not, unless the architect chooses ; his
thick shafts must have small excess, but his slender ones
need not have large. So Law 2 says, that as the building is
smaller, the excess may be greater ; but it need not, for the
excess which is safe in the large is still safer in the small. So
Law 3 says that capitals of great excess must have steep
slopes ; but it does not say that capitals of small excess may
not have steep slopes also, if we choose. And lastly, Law 4
asserts the necessity of the thick abacus for the shallow bell ;
but the steep bell may have a thick abacus also.
§ xix. It will be found, however, that in practice some con-
fession of these laws will always be useful, and especially of
the two first. The eye always requires, on a slender shaft, a
more spreading capital than it does on a massy one, and a
bolder mass of capital on a small scale than on a large. And,
in the application of the first rule, it is to be noted that a shaft
becomes slender either by diminution of diameter or increase
of height ; that either mode of change presupposes the weight
above it diminished, and requires an expansion of abacus. I
know no mode of spoiling a noble building more frequent in
actual practice than the imposition of flat and slightly ex-
panded capitals on tall shafts.
§ xx. The reader must observe, also, that, in the demonstra-
tion of the four lawTs, I always assumed the weight above to be
-Qg IX. THE CAPITAL. CONSTRUCTION.
given. By the alteration of tins weight, therefore, the archi-
tect has it in his power to relieve, and therefore alter, the forms
of his capitals. By its various distribution on their centres or
edges, the slope of their bells and thickness of abaci will be
affected also ; so that he has countless expedients at his com-
mand for the various treatment of his design. He can divide
his weights among more shafts ; he can throw them in different
places and different directions on the abaci ; he can alter slope
of bells or diameter of shafts ; he can use spurred or plain bells,
thin or thick abaci ; and all these changes admitting of infinity
in their degrees, and infinity a thousand times told in their
relations : and all this without reference to decoration, merely
with the five forms of block capital !
§ xxi. In the harmony of these arrangements, in their fit-
ness, unity, and accuracy, lies the true proportion of every
building, — proportion utterly endless in its infinities of change,
with unchanged beauty. And yet this connexion of the frame
of their building into one harmony has, 1 believe, never been
so much as dreamed of by architects. It has been instinctively
done in some degree by many, empirically in some degree by
many more ; thoughtfully and thoroughly, I believe, by none.
§ xxii. We have hitherto considered the abacus as necessa-
rily a separate stone from the bell : evidently, however, the
strength of the capital will be undiminished if both are cut out
of one block. This is actually the case in many capitals, espe-
cially those on a small scale ; and in others the detached upper
stone is a mere representative of the abacus, and is much thin-
ner than the form of the capital requires, while the true abacus
is united with the bell, and concealed by its decoration, or
made part of it.
§ xxm. Farther. We have hitherto considered bell and
abacus as both derived from the concentration of the cornice.
But it must at once occur to the reader, that the projection of
the under stone and the thickness of the upper, which are quite
enough for the work of the continuous cornice, may not be
enough always, or rather are seldom likely to be so, for the
harder work of the capital. Both may have to be deepened
CONSTRUCTION.
IX. THE CAPITAL.
117
Fig. XXVII.
and expanded : but as this would cause a want of harmony in
the parts, when they occur on the same level, it is better in
such case to let the entire cornice form the abacus of the capi-
tal, and put a deep capital bell beneath it.
§ xxiv. The reader will understand both arrangements in-
stantly by two examples. Fig. XXVII. represents two windows,
more than usually beautiful
examples of a very frequent
Venetian form. Here the
deep cornice or string course
which runs along the wall
of the house is quite strong
enough for the work of the
capitals of the slender shafts :
its own upper stone is there-
fore also theirs ; its own lower
stone, by its revolution or
concentration, forms their
bells : but to mark the increas-
ed importance of its function
in so doing, it receives deco-
ration, as the bell of the cap-
ital, which it did not receive
as the under stone of the cor-
nice.
In Fig. XXVIII., a little bit of the church of Santa Fosca
at Torcello, the cornice or string course, which goes round
every part of the church, is not strong enough to form the
capitals of the shafts. It therefore forms their abaci only;
and in order to mark the diminished importance of its func-
tion, it ceases to receive, as the abacus of the capital, the
decoration which it received as the string course of the
wall.
This last arrangement is of great frequency in Venice,
occurring most characteristically in St. Mark's : and in the
Gothic of St John and Paul we find the two arrangements
beautifully united, though in great simplicity; the string
118
IX. THE CAPITAL. CONSTRUCTION.
courses of the walls form the capitals of the shafts of the tra-
ceries, and the abaci of the vaulting shafts of the apse.
Fig. XXVHI.
§ xxv. We have hitherto spoken of capitals of circular
shafts only : those of square piers are more frequently formed
bv the cornice only ; otherwise they are like those of circular
piers, without the difficulty of reconciling the base of the bell
with its head.
§ xxvi. "When two or more shafts are grouped together,
their capitals are usually treated as separate, until they come
into actual contact. If there be any awkwardness in the
junction, it is concealed by the decoration, and one abacus
serves, in most cases, for all. The double group, Fig. XX VII.,
is the simplest possible type of the arrangement. In the richer
Northern Gothic groups of eighteen or twenty shafts cluster
together, and sometimes the smaller shafts crouch under the
capitals of the larger, and hide their heads in the crannies, with
small nominal abaci of their own, while the larger shafts carry
the serviceable abacus of the whole pier, as in the nave of Rou-
en. There is, however, evident sacrifice of sound principle in
this system, the smaller abaci being of no use. They are the
exact contrary of the rude early abacus at Milan, given in Plate
CONSTRUCTION IX. THE CAPITAL. 119
XVII. There one poor abacus stretched itself out to do all the
work : here there are idle abaci getting up into corners and
doing none.
£ xxvii. Finally, we have considered the capital hitherto
entirely as an expansion of the bearing power of the shaft,
supposing the shaft composed of a single stone. But, evidently,
the capital has a function, if possible, yet more important,
when the shaft is composed of small masonry. It enables all
that masonry to act together, and to receive the pressure from
above collectively and with a single strength. And thus, con-
sidered merely as a large stone set on the top of the shaft, it is
a feature of the highest architectural importance, irrespective
of its expansion, which indeed is, in some very noble capitals.
exceedingly small. And thus every large stone set at any
important point to reassemble the force of smaller masonry and
prepare it for the sustaining of weight, is a capital or " head "
stone (the true meaning of the word) whether it project or not.
Thus at 0, in Plate IV., the stones which support the thrust of
the brickwork are capitals, which have no projection at all ;
and the large stones in the window above are capitals projecting
in one direction only.
£ xxvin. The reader is now master of all he need know
respecting construction of capitals : and from what has been
laid before him. must assuredly feel that there can never be
any new system of architectural forms invented ; but that all
vertical support must be, to the end of time, best obtained by
shafts and capitals. It has been so obtained by nearly every
nation of builders, with more or less refinement in the manage-
ment of the details ; and the later Gothic builders of the Xorth
stand almost alone in their effort to dispense with the natural
development of the shaft, and banish the capital from their
compositions.
They were gradually led into this error through a series of
steps which it is not here our business to trace. But they may
be generalised in a few words.
§ xxix. All classical architecture, and the Eomanesque
which is legitimately descended from it, is composed of bold
120 IX- THE CAPITAL. CONSTRUCTION.
independent shafts, plain or fluted, with bold detached capitals,
forming arcades or colonnades where they are needed ; and of
walls whose apertures are surrounded by courses of parallel
iines called mouldings, which are continuous round the aper
tures; and have neither shafts nor capitals. The shaft system
and moulding system are entirely separate.
The Gothic architects confounded the two. They clustered
the shafts till they looked like a group of mouldings. They
shod and capitaled the mouldings till they looked like a group
of shafts. So that a pier became merely the side of a door or
window rolled up, and the side of the window a pier unrolled
(vide last Chapter, § xxx.), both being composed of a series of
small shafts, each with base and capital. The architect seemed
to have whole mats of shafts at his disposal, like the rush mats
which one puts under cream cheese. If he wanted a great pier
he rolled up the mat ; if he wanted the side of a door he spread
out the mat : and now the reader has to add to the other dis-
tinctions between the Egyptian and the Gothic shaft, already
noted in § xxvi. of Chap. VIIL, this one more— the most im-
portant of all— that while the Egyptian rush cluster has only
one massive capital altogether, the Gothic rush mat has a sepa-
rate tiny capital to every several rush.
§ xxx. The mats were gradually made of finer rushes, until
it became troublesome to give each rush its capital. In fact,
when the groups of shafts became excessively complicated,
the expansion of their small abaci was of no use : it was dis-
pensed with altogether, and the mouldings of pier and jamb
ran up continuously into the arches.
This condition, though in many respects faulty and false,
'•& yet the eminently characteristic state of Gothic : it is the
definite formation of it as a distinct style, owing no farther aid
to classical models ; and its lightness and complexity render it,
when well treated, and enriched with Flamboyant decoration,
a very glorious means of picturesque effect. It is, in fact, this
>nn of Gothic which commends itself most easily to the gen-
1 mind, and which has suggested the innumerable foolish
leories about the derivation of Gothic from tree trunks and
CONSTRUCTION. IX. THE CAPITAL. 121
avenues, which have from time to time been brought forward
by persons ignorant of the history of architecture.
§ xxxi. When the sense of picturesqueness, as well as that
of justness and dignity, had been lost, the spring of the contin-
uous mouldings was replaced by what Professor Willis calls
the Discontinuous impost ; which, being a barbarism of the
basest and most painful kind, and being to architecture what
the setting of a saw is to music, I shall not trouble the reader
to examine. For it is not in my plan to note for him all the
various conditions of error, but only to guide him to the appre-
ciation of the right ; and I only note even the true Continuous
or Flamboyant Gothic because this is redeemed by its beautiful
decoration, afterwards to be considered. For, as far as struct-
ure is concerned, the moment the capital vanishes from the
shaft, that moment we are in error : all good Gothic has true
capitals to the shafts of its jambs and traceries, and all Gothic
is debased the instant the shaft vanishes. It matters not how
slender, or how small, or how low, the shaft may be : wherever
there is indication of concentrated vertical support, then the
capital is a necessary termination. I know how much Gothic,
otherwise beautiful, this sweeping principle condemns ; but it
condemns not altogether. We may still take delight in its
lovely proportions, its rich decoration, or its elastic and reedy
moulding ; but be assured, wherever shafts, or any approxima-
tions to the forms of shafts, are employed, for whatever office,
or on whatever scale, be it in jambs or piers, or balustrades, or
traceries, without capitals, there is a defiance of the natural
laws of construction ; and that, wherever such examples are
found in ancient buildings, they are either the experiments of
barbarism, or the commencements of decline.
CHAPTEE X.
THE ARCH LINE.
§ i. WE have seen in the last section how our means of ver-
tical support may, for the sake of economy both of space and
material, be gathered into piers or shafts, and directed to the
sustaining of particular points. The next question is how to
connect these points or tops of shafts with each other, so as to
be able to lay on them a continuous roof. This the reader, as
before, is to favor me by finding out for himself, under these
following conditions.
Let s, s, Fig. XXIX, opposite, be two shafts, with their
capitals ready prepared for their work ; and &, £>, J, and
c, c, <?, be six stones of different sizes, one very long and large,
and two smaller, and three smaller still, of which the reader is
to choose which he likes best, in order to connect the tops of
the shafts.
I suppose he will first try if he can lift the great stone a,
and if he can, he will put it very simply on the tops of the two
pillars, as at A.
Very well indeed : he has done already what a number of
Greek architects have been thought very clever for having
done. But suppose he cannot lift the great stone «, or suppose
I will not give it to him, but only the two smaller stones at
I, I; he will doubtless try to put them up, tilted against each
other, as at d. Yery awkward this ; worse than card-house
building. But if he cuts off the corners of the stones, so as to
make each of them of the form <?, they will stand up very
securely, as at B.
But suppose he cannot lift even these less stones, but can
CONSTRUCTION.
X. THE ARCH LINE.
123
raise those at c, c, c. Then, cutting each of them into the
form at e, he will doubtless set them up as at/*.
§ n. This last arrangement looks a little dangerous. Is
there not a chance of the stone in the middle pushing the
Fig. XXIX.
others out, or tilting them up and aside, and slipping down
itself between them ? There is such a chance : and if by some-
what altering the form of the stones, we can diminish this
chance, all the better. I must say " we " now, for perhaps I
may have to help the reader a little.
124
X. THE ARCH LINE. CONSTRUCTION.
The danger is, observe, that the midmost stone at /pushes
out the side ones : then if we can give the side ones such a
shape as that, left to themselves, they would fall heavily for-
ward, they will resist this push out by their weight, exactly in
proportion to their own particular inclination or desire to tum-
ble in. Take one of them separately, standing up as at g ; it
is just possible it may stand up as it is, like the Tower of Pisa :
but we want it to fall forward. Suppose we cut away the
parts that are shaded at h and leave it as at i, it is very certain
it cannot stand alone now, but will fall forward to our entire
satisfaction.
Farther : the midmost stone at /is likely to be troublesome
chiefly by its weight, pushing down between the others ; the
more we lighten it the better : so we will cut it into exactly
the same shape as the ^side ones, chiselling away the shaded
parts, as at h. We shall then have all the three stones &, Z, m,
of the same shape ; and now putting them together, we have,
at 0, what the reader, I doubt not, will perceive at once to be
a much more satisfactory arrangement than that at/.
§ m. We have now got three arrangements ; in one using
only one piece of stone, in the second two, and in the third
three. The first arrangement has no particular name, except
the '< horizontal :" but the single stone (or beam, it may be,) is
called a lintel ; the second arrangement is called a " Gable ;"
the third an « Arch."
We might have used pieces of wood instead of stone in all
these arrangements, with no difference in plan, so long as the
beams were kept loose, like the stones ; but as beams can be
securely nailed together at the ends, we need not trouble our-
selves so much about their shape or balance, and therefore the
plan at /is a peculiarly wooden construction (the reader will
doubtless recognise in it the profile oT many a farm-house
roof) : and again, because beams are tough, and light, and long,
as compared with stones, they are admirably adapted for the
constructions at A and B, the plain lintel and gable, while that
at C is, for the most part, left to brick and stone.
§ TV. But farther. The constructions, A, B, and C, though
CONSTRUCTION. X. THE ARCH LINE. 125
very conveniently to be first considered as composed of one,
two, and three pieces, are by no means necessarily so. When
we have once cut the stones of the arch into a shape like that
of &, I, and m, they will hold together, whatever their num-
ber, place, or size, as at n; and the great value of the arch is,
that it permits small stones to be used with safety instead of
large ones, which are not always to be had. Stones cut into
the shape of &, I, and m, whether they be short or long (I
have drawn them all sizes at n on purpose), are called Vous-
soirs ; this is a hard, ugly French name ; but the reader will
perhaps be kind enough to recollect it ; it will save us both
some trouble : and to make amends for this infliction, I will
relieve him of the term keystone. One voussoir is as much a
keystone as another ; only people usually call the stone which
is last put in the keystone ; and that one happens generally -to
be at the top or middle of the arch.
§ v. Not only the arch, but even the lintel, may be built of
many stones or bricks. The reader may see lintels built in this
way over most of the windows of our brick London houses, and
so also the gable : there are, therefore, two distinct questions
respecting each arrangement ; — First, what is the line or direc-
tion of it, which gives it its strength ? and, secondly, what is the
manner of masonry of it, which gives it its consistence ? The
first of these I shall consider in this Chapter under the head
of the Arch Line, using the term arch as including all man-
ner of construction (though we shall have no trouble except
about curves) ; and in the next Chapter I shall consider the
second, under the head, Arch Masonry.
§ vi. Now the arch line is the ghost or skeleton of the arch ;
or rather it is the spinal marrow of the arch, and the voussoirs
are the vertebrae, which keep it safe and sound, and clothe it.
This arch line the architect has first to conceive and shape in
his mind, as opposed to, or having to bear, certain forces
which will try to distort it this way and that; and against
which he is first to direct and bend the line itself into as strong
resistance as he may, and then, with his voussoirs and what else
he can, to guard it, and help it, and keep it to its duty and in
126 X. THE ARCH LINE. CONSTRUCTION.
its shape. So the arch line is the moral character of the arch,
and the adverse forces are its temptations ; and the voussoirs,
and what else we may help it with, are its armor and its
motives to good conduct.
§ vu. This moral character of the arch is called by archi-
tects its " Line of Resistance." There is a great deal of nicety
in calculating it with precision, just as there is sometimes in
finding out very precisely what is a man's true line of moral
conduct ; but this, in arch morality and in man morality, is a
very simple and easily to be understood principle, — that if
either arch or man expose themselves to their special tempta-
tions or adverse forces, outside of the voussoirs or proper
and appointed armor, both will fall. An arch whose line of
resistance is in the middle of its voussoirs is perfectly safe :
in proportion as the said line runs near the edge of its voussoirs,
the arch is in danger, as the man is who nears temptation ; and
the moment the line of resistance emerges out of the voussoirs
the arch falls.
§ vni. There are, therefore, properly speaking, two arch
lines. One is the visible direction or curve of the arch, which
may generally be considered as the under edge of its voussoirs,
and which has often no more to do with the real stability of
the arch, than a man's apparent conduct has with his heart.
The other line, which is the line of resistance, or line of good
behavior, may or may not be consistent with the outward and
apparent curves of the arch ; but if not, then the security of
the arch depends simply upon this, whether the voussoirs
which assume or pretend to the one line are wide enough to
include the other.
§ ix. Now when the reader is told that the line of resistance
varies with every change either in place or quantity of the
weight above the arch, he will see at once that we have no
chance of arranging arches by their moral characters : we can
only take the apparent arch line, or visible direction, as a
ground of arrangement. We shall consider the possible or
probable forms or contours of arches in the present Chapter,
and in the succeeding one the forms of voussoir and other help
CONSTRUCTION. .X. THE ARCH LINE. 127
which may best fortify these visible lines against every tempta-
tion to lose their consistency.
§ x. Look back to Fig. XXIX. Evidently the abstract or
ghost line of the arrangement at A is a plain horizontal line,
as here at a, Fig. XXX. The abstract line of the arrange-
ment at B, Fig. XXIX., is composed of two straight lines, set
against each other, as here at &. The abstract line of C,
Fig:. XXIX., is a curve
P& , . , Fig. XXX.
oi some kind, not at
present determined, sup-
pose 0, Fig. XXX.
Then, as 5 is two of the
straight lines at a, set up
against each other, we
may conceive an arrange-
ment, 67, made up of two
of the curved lines at <?,
set against each other.
This is called a pointed arch, which is a contradiction in terms :
it ought to be called a curved gable ; but it must keep the
name it has got.
Now «, J, c, d, Fig. XXX., are the ghosts of the lintel, the
gable, the arch, and the pointed arch. With the poor lintel
ghost we need trouble ourselves no farther; there are no
changes in him : but there is much variety in the other three,
and the method of their variety will be best discerned by
studying ft and d, as subordinate to and connected with the
simple arch at c.
§ xi. Many architects, especially the worst, have been very
curious in designing out of the way arches, — elliptical arches,
and four-centred arches, so called, and other singularities. The
good architects have generally been content, and we for the
present will be so, with God's arch, the arch of the rain-
bow and of the apparent heaven, and which the sun shapes rf or
us as it sets and rises. Let us watch the sun for a moment as
it climbs : when it is a quarter up, it will give us the arch «,
Fig. XXXI. ; when it is half up, &, and when three quarters
128
X. THE ARCH LINE.
CONSTRUCTION.
up, c. There will be an infinite number of arches between
these, but we will take these as sufficient representatives of all.
Then a is the low arch, 1} the central or pure arch, c the high
arch, and the rays of the sun would have drawn for us their
voussoirs.
§ xii. We will take these several arches successively, and
fixing the top of each accurately, draw two right lines thence
to its base, d, e,f, Fig. XXXI. Then these lines give us the
relative gables of each of the arches; d is the Italian or
southern gable, e the central gable, /' the Gothic gable.
Fig. XXXI.
§ xin. We will again take the three arches with their
gables in succession, and on each of the sides of the gable,
between it and the arch, we will describe another arch, as at
y, k, i. Then the curves so described give the pointed arches,
belonging to each of the round arches ; g, the flat pointed
arch, A, the central pointed arch, and i, the lancet pointed
arch.
§ xiv. If the radius with which these intermediate curves
are drawn be the base of/, the last is the equilateral pointed
CONSTRUCTION. X. THE ARCH LINE. 129
arch, one of great importance in Gothic work. But between
the gable and circle, in all the three figures, there are an infi-
nite number of pointed arches, describable with different radii ;
and the three round arches, be it remembered, are themselves
representatives of an infinite number, passing from the flattest
conceivable curve, through the semicircle and horseshoe, up to
the full circle.
The central and the last group are the most important.
The central round, or semicircle, is the Roman, the Byzantine,
and Norman arch ; and its relative pointed includes one wide
branch of Gothic. The horseshoe round is the Arabic and
Moorish arch, and its relative pointed includes the whole range
of Arabic and lancet, or Early English and French Gothics.
I mean of course by the relative pointed, the entire group of
which the equilateral arch is the representative.
Between it and the outer horseshoe, as this latter
rises higher, the reader will find, on experiment,
the great families of what may be called the
horseshoe pointed, — curves of the highest impor-
tance, but which are all included, with English
lancet, under the term, relative pointed of the horseshoe arch.
§ xv. The groups above described are all formed of circular
arcs, and include all truly useful and beautiful arches for ordi-
nary work. I believe that singular and complicated curves are
made use of in modern engineering, but with these the general
reader can have no concern : the Ponte della Trinita at Florence
is the most graceful instance I know of such structure ; the
arch made use of being very subtle, and approximating to the
low ellipse ; for which, in common work, a barbarous pointed
arch, called four-centred, and composed of bits of circles, is
substituted by the English builders. The high ellipse, I believe,
exists in eastern architecture. I have never myself met with
it on a large scale ; but it occurs in the niches of the later por-
tions of the Ducal palace at Venice, together with a singular
hyperbolic arch, a in Fig. XXXIII., to be described hereafter :
with such caprices we are not here concerned.
§ xvi. We are, however, concerned to notice the absurdity
130
X. THE ARCH LINE. CONSTRUCTION.
of another form of arch, which, with the four-centred, belongs
to the English perpendicular Gothic.
Taking the gable of any of the groups in Fig. XXXI.
(suppose the equilateral), here at b, in Fig. XXXIII., the
dotted line representing the relative pointed arch, we may
evidently conceive an arch formed by reversed curves on the
inside of the gable, as here shown by the inner curved lines.
I imagine the reader by this time knows enough of the nature
of arches to understand that, whatever strength or stability
was gained by the curve on the outside of the gable, exactly
so much is lost by curves on the inside. The natural tendency
of such an arch to dissolution by its own mere weight renders
it a feature of detestable ugliness, wherever it occurs on a large
scale. It is eminently characteristic of Tudor work, and it is
Fig. XXXHI.
the profile of the Chinese roof (I say on a large scale, because
this as well as all other capricious arches, may be made secure
by their masonry when small, but not otherwise). Some allow-
able modifications of it will be noticed in the chapter on Roofs.
§ xvii. There is only one more form of arch which we have
to notice. When the last described arch is used, not as the
principal arrangement, but .as a mere heading to a common
pointed arch, we have the form c, Fig. XXXIII. Now this is
better than the entirely reversed arch for two reasons ; first,
less of the line is weakened by reversing ; secondly, the double
curve has a very high aesthetic value, not existing in the mere
segments of circles. For these reasons arches of this kind are
not only admissible, but even of great desirableness, when
their scale and masonry render them secure, but above a certain
scale they are altogether barbarous; and, with the reversed
CONSTRUCTION.
X. THE ARCH LINE. 131
Tudor arch, wantonly employed, are the characteristics of the
worst and meanest schools of architecture, past or present.
This double curve is called the Ogee ; it is the profile of
many German leaden roofs, of many Turkish domes (there
more excusable, because associated and in sympathy with ex-
quisitely managed arches of the same line in the walls below),
of Tudor turrets, as in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and it is
at the bottom or top of sundry other blunders all over the
world.
§ xvm. The varieties of the ogee curve are infinite, as the
reversed portion of it may be engrafted on every other form
of arch, horseshoe, round, or pointed. Whatever is generally
worthy of note in these varieties, and in other arches of
caprice, we shall best discover by examining their masonry ; for
it is by their good masonry only that they are rendered either
stable or beautiful. To this question, then, let us address our-
selves.
CHAPTEK XL
THE AKCH MASONRY.
§ i. ON the subject of- the stability of arches, volumes have
been written and volumes more are required. The reader
will not, therefore, expect from me any very complete ex-
planation of its conditions within the limits of a single chapter.
But that which is necessary for him to know is very simple
and very easy ; and yet, I believe, some part of it is very little
known, or noticed.
We must first have a clear idea of what is meant by an
arch. It is a curved shell of firm materials, on whose back a
burden is to be laid of loose materials. So far as the materials
above it are not loose, but themselves hold together, the open-
ing below is not an arch, but an excavation. Note this differ-
ence very carefully. If the King of Sardinia tunnels through
the Mont Cenis, as he proposes, he will not require to build
a brick arch under his tunnel to carry the weight of the
Mont Cenis: that would need scientific masonry indeed.
The Mont Cenis will carry itself, by its own cohesion, and a
succession of invisible granite arches, rather larger than the
tunnel. But when Mr. Brunei tunnelled the Thames bottom,
he needed to build a brick arch to carry the six or seven feet
of mud and the weight of water above. That is a type of all
a relies proper.
§ n. Now arches, in practice, partake of the nature of the
two. So far as their masonry above is Mont-Cenisian, that is
to say, colossal in comparison of them, and granitic, so that
the arch is a mere hole in the rock substance of it, the form
of the arch is of no consequence whatever : it may be rounded,
CONSTRUCTION. XI. THE ARCH MASONRY. 133
or lozenged, or ogee'd, or anything else ; and in the noblest
architecture there is always some character of this kind given
to the masonry. It is independent enough not to care about
the holes cut in it, and does not subside into them like sand.
But the theory of arches does not presume on any such con-
dition of things ; it allows itself only the shell of the arch
proper; the vertebrae, carrying their marrow of resistance;
and, above this shell, it assumes the wall to be in a state of
flux, bearing down on the arch, like water or sand, with its
whole weight. And farther, the problem which is to be
solved by the arch builder is not merely to carry this weight,
but to carry it with the least thickness of shell. It is easy to
carry it by continually thickening your voussoirs : if you have
six feet depth of sand or gravel to carry, and you choose to
employ granite voussoirs six feet thick, no question but your
arch is safe enough. But it is perhaps somewhat too costly :
the thing to be done is to carry the sand or gravel with brick
voussoirs, six inches thick, or, at any rate, with the least
thickness of voussoir which will be safe ; and to do this re-
quires peculiar arrangement of the lines of the arch. There
are many arrangements, useful all in their way, but we have
only to do, in the best architecture, with the simplest and
most easily understood. We have first to note those which
regard the actual shell of the arch, and then we shall give a
few examples of the superseding of such expedients by Mont-
Cenisian masonry.
§ in. What we have to say will apply to all arches, but the
central pointed arch is the best for general illustration. Let
a, Plate III., be the shell of a pointed arch with loose loading
above; and suppose you find that shell not quite thick enough;
and that the weight bears too heavily on the top of the arch,
and is likely to break it in : you proceed to thicken your shell,
but need you thicken it all equally? Not so ; you would only
waste your good voussoirs. If you have any common sense
you will thicken it at the top, where a Mylodon's skull is
thickened for the same purpose (and some human skulls, I
fancy), as at I. The pebbles and gravel above will now shoot
134 XL THE AKCH MASONRY. CONSTRUCTION.,
off it right and left, as the bullets do off a cuirassier's breast-
plate, and will have no chance of beating it in.
If still it be not strong enough, a farther addition may be
made, as at c, now thickening the voussoirs a little at the base
also. But as this may perhaps throw the arch inconveniently
high, or occasion a waste of voussoirs at the top, we may
employ another expedient.
§ iv. I imagine the reader's common sense, if not his pre-
vious knowledge, will enable him to understand that if the
arch at #, Plate III., burst in at the top, it must burst out at
the sides. Set up two pieces of pasteboard, edge to edge, and
press them down with your hand, and you will see them bend
out at the sides. Therefore, if you can keep the arch from
starting out at the points j?, j?, it cannot curve in at the top,
put what weight on it you will, unless by sheer crushing of the
stones to fragments.
§ v. Now you may keep the arch from starting out at p by
loading it at j9, putting more weight upon it and against it at
that point ; and this, in practice, is the way it is usually done.
But we assume at present that the weight above is sand or
water, quite unmanageable, not to be directed to the points
we choose; and in practice, it may sometimes happen that
we cannot put weight upon the arch at p. We may perhaps
want an opening above it, or it may be at the side of the
building, and many other circumstances may occur to hinder
us.
§ vi. But if we are not sure that we can put weight above
it, we are perfectly sure that we can hang weight under it.
You may always thicken your shell inside, and put the weight
upon it as at x x, in d, Plate III. Not much chance of its
bursting out at p, now, is there ?
§ vn. Whenever, therefore, an arch has to bear vertical
pressure, it will bear it better when its shell is shaped as at b
or d, than as at a : ~b and d are, therefore, the types of arches
built to resist vertical pressure, all over the world, and from
the beginning of architecture to its end. None others can
be compared with them : all are imperfect except these.
III.
CONSTRUCTION. XI. THE ARCH MASONRY. 135
The added projections at x x, in d, are called CUSPS, and
they are the very soul and life of the best northern Gothic ;
yet never thoroughly understood nor found in perfection,
except in Italy, the northern builders working often, even in
the best times, with the vulgar form at a.
The form at 5 is rarely found in the north : its perfection
is in the Lombardic Gothic ; and branches of it, good and bad
according to their use, occur in Saracenic work.
§ vin. The true and perfect cusp is single only. But it
was probably invented (by the Arabs ?) not as a constructive,
but a decorative feature, in pure fantasy ; and in early northern
work it is only the application to the arch of the foliation, so
called, of penetrated spaces in stone surfaces, already enough
explained in the " Seven Lamps," Chap. III., p. 85 et seq. It
is degraded in dignity, and loses its usefulness, exactly in
proportion to its multiplication on the arch. In later archi-
tecture, especially English Tudor, it is sunk into dotage, and
becomes a simple excrescence, a bit of stone pinched up out of
the arch, as a cook pinches the paste at the edge of a pie.
§ ix. The depth and place of the cusp, that is to say, its
exact application to the shoulder of the curve of the arch,
varies with the direction of the weight to be sustained. I have
spent more than a month, and that in hard work too, in merely
trying to get the forms of cusps into perfect order : whereby
the reader may guess that I have not space to go into the
subject now ; but I shall hereafter give a few of the leading
and most perfect examples, with their measures and masonry.
§ x. The reader now understands all that he need about the
shell of the arch, considered as an united piece of stone.
He has next to consider the shape of the voussoirs. This,
as much as is required, he will be able best to comprehend by
a few examples ; by which I shall be able also to illustrate, or
rather which will force me to illustrate, some of the methods
of Mont-Cenisian masonry, which were to be the second part
of our subject.
§ xi. 1 and 2, Plate IV., are two cornices ; 1 from St.
Antonio, Padua ; 2, from the Cathedral of Sens. I want them
-jog XI. THE ARCH MASONRY. CONSTRUCTION.
for cornices ; but I have put them in this plate because, though
their arches are filled up behind, and are in fact mere blocks
of stone with arches cut into their faces, they illustrate the con-
stant masonry of small arches, both in Italian and Northern
Romanesque, but especially Italian, each arch being cut out
of its own proper block of stone : this is Mont-Cenisian enough,
on a small scale.
3 is a window from Carnarvon Castle, and very primitive
and interesting in manner, — one of its arches being of one
stone, the other of two. And here we have an instance of a
form of arch which would be barbarous enough on a large
scale, and of many pieces ; but quaint and agreeable thus mas-
sively built.
4 is from a little belfry in a Swiss village above Yevay ; one
fancies the window of an absurd form, seen in the distance,
but one is pleased with it on seeing its masonry. It could
hardly be stronger.
§ xii. These then are arches cut of one block. The next
step is to form them of two pieces, set together at the head
of the arch. 6, from the Eremitani, Padua, is very quaint
and primitive in manner : it is a curious church altogether,
and has some strange traceries cut out of single blocks. One
is given in the " Seven Lamps," Plate VII., in the left-hand
corner at the bottom.
7, from the Frari, Venice, very firm and fine, and admirably
decorated, as we shall see hereafter. 5, the simple two-pieced
construction, wrought with the most exquisite proportion and
precision of workmanship, as is everything else in the glorious
church to which it belongs, San Fermo of Verona. The
addition of the top piece, which completes the circle, does not
affect the plan of the beautiful arches, with their simple and
perfect cusps ; but it is highly curious, and serves to show how
the idea of the cusp rose out of mere foliation. The whole of
the architecture of this church may be characterised as exhibit-
ing the maxima of simplicity in construction, and perfection in
workmanship, — a rare unison : for, in general, simple designs
are rudely worked, and as the builder perfects his execution,
CONSTRUCTION. XI. THE ARCH MASONRY. 137
lie complicates his plan. Nearly all the arches of San Fermo
are two-pieced.
§ xm. We have seen the construction with one and two
pieces : a and £, Fig. 8, Plate IV., are the general types of
the construction with three pieces, uncusped and cusped ; v
and d with five pieces, uncusped and cusped. Of these the
three-pieced construction is of enormous importance, and must
detain us some time. The five-pieced is the three-pieced with
a joint added on each side, and is also of great importance.
The four-pieced, which is the two-pieced with added joints,
rarely occurs, and need not detain us.
§ xiv. It will be remembered that in first working out the
principle of the arch, we composed the arch of three pieces.
Three is the smallest number which can exhibit the real prin-
ciple of arch masonry, and it may be considered as represen-
tative of all arches built on that principle ; the one and two-
pieced arches being microscopic Mont-Cenisian, mere caves
in blocks of stone, or gaps between two rocks leaning together.
But the three-pieced arch is properly representative of all ;
and the larger and more complicated constructions are merely
produced by keeping the central piece for what is called a
keystone, and putting additional joints at the sides. Now so
long as an arch is pure circular or pointed, it does not mat-
ter how many joints or voussoirs you have, nor where the
joints are ; nay, you may joint your keystone itself, and make
it two-pieced. But if the arch be of any bizarre form, espe-
cially ogee, the joints must be in particular places, and the
masonry simple, or it will not be thoroughly good and secure ;
and the fine schools of the ogee arch have only arisen in
countries where it was the custom to build arches of few pieces.
§ xv. The typical pure pointed arch of Venice is a five-
pieced arch, with its stones in three orders of magnitude, the
longest being the lowest, as at £2? Plate III. If the arch be very
large, a fourth order of magnitude is added, as at a2. The
portals of the palaces of Venice have one or other of these
masonries, almost without exception. Now, as one piece is
added to make a larger door, one piece is taken away to make
138 XI. THE ARCH MASONRY. CONSTRUCTION.
a smaller one, or a window, and the masonry type of the
Venetian Gothic window is consequently three-pieced, c2.
§ xvi. The reader knows already where a cusp is useful.
It is wanted, he will remember, to give weight to those side
stones, and draw them inwards against the thrust of the top
stone.' Take one of the side stones of <% out for a moment, as
at d. Now the proper place of the cusp upon it varies with
the weight which it bears or requires ; but in practice this
nicety is rarely observed ; the place of the cusp is almost always
determined by aesthetic considerations, and it is evident that
the variations in its place may be infinite. Consider the cusp
as a wave passing up the side stone from its bottom to its top ;
then you will have the succession of forms from e to g (Plate
III.), with infinite degrees of transition from each to each ;
but of which you may take 0, /, and <?, as representing three
great families of cusped arches. Use e for your side stones,
and you have an arch as that at h below, which may be called
a down-cusped arch. Use f for the side stone, and you have
i, which may be called a mid-cusped arch. Use g, and you
have &, an up-cusped arch.
§ xvn. The reader will observe that I call the arch mid-
cusped, not when the cusped point is in the middle of the
curve of the arch, but when it is in the middle of the side
piece, and also that where the side pieces join the keystone
there will be a change, perhaps somewhat abrupt, in the cur-
vature.
I have preferred to call the arch mid-cusped with respect
to its side piece than with respect to its own curve, because
the most beautiful Gothic arches in the world, those of the
Lombard Gothic, have, in all the instances I have examined,
a form more or less approximating to this mid-cusped one at
i (Plate III.), but having the curvature of the cusp carried
up into the keystone, as we shall see presently: where, how-
ever, the arch is built of many voussoirs, a mid-cusped arch
will mean one which has the point of the cusp midway between
its own base and apex.
The Gothic arch of Venice is almost invariably up-cusped,
CONSTRUCTION. XI. THE ARCH MASONRY. 139
as at Jc. The reader may note that, in both down-cusped and
up-cusped arches, the piece of stone, added to form the cusp,
is of the shape of a scymitar, held down in the one case and
up in the other.
§ xviii. Now, in the arches A, *', &, a slight modification has
been made in the form of the central piece, in order that it
may continue the curve of the cusp. This modification is not
to be given to it in practice without considerable nicety of
workmanship ; and some curious results took place in Venice
from this difficulty.
At I (Plate III.) is the shape of the Venetian side stone,
with its cusp detached from the arch. Nothing can possibly
be better or more graceful, or have the weight better disposed
in order to cause it to nod forwards against the keystone, as
above explained, Ch. X. § n., where I developed the whole
system of the arch from three pieces, in order that the reader
might now clearly see the use of the weight of the cusp.
Now a Venetian Gothic palace has usually at least three
stories; with perhaps ten or twelve windows in each story,
and this on two or three of its sides, requiring altogether some
hundred to a hundred and fifty side pieces.
I have no doubt, from observation of the way the windows
are set together, that the side pieces were carved in pairs, like
hooks, of which the keystones were to be the eyes ; that these
Bide pieces were ordered by the architect in uhe gross, and
were used by him sometimes for wider, sometimes for narrower
windows ; bevelling the two ends as required, fitting in key-
stones as he best could, and now and then varying the arrange-
ment by turning the side pieces upside doivn.
There were various conveniences in this way of working,
one of the principal being that the side pieces with their cusps
were always cut to their complete form, and that no part of the
cusp was carried out into the keystone, which followed the
curve of the outer arch itself. The ornaments of the cusp
might thus be worked without any troublesome reference to
the rest of the arch.
§ xix. Now let us take a pair of side pieces, made to order,
-MQ XI. THE ARCH MASONRY. CONSTRUCTION.
like that at I, and see what we can make of them. We will
try to fit them first with a keystone which continues the curve
of the outer arch, as at m. This the reader assuredly thinks
an ugly arch. There are a great many of them in Venice, the
ugliest things there, and the Venetian builders quickly began
to feel them so. What could they do to better them ? The
arch at m has a central piece of the form r. Substitute for it
a piece of the form s, and we have the arch at n.
§ xx. This arch at n is not so strong as that at m ; but,
built of good marble, and with its pieces of proper thickness, it
is quite strong enough for all practical purposes on a small scale.
I have examined at least two thousand wdndows of this kind
and of the other Venetian ogees, of which that at y (in which
the plain side-piece d is used instead of the cusped one) is the
simplest; and I never found one, even in the most ruinous
palaces (in which they had had to sustain the distorted weight
of falling walls) in which the central piece was fissured ; and
this is the only danger to which the window is exposed ; in
other respects it is as strong an arch as can be built.
It is not to be supposed that the change from the r keystone
to the s keystone was instantaneous. It was a change wrought
out by many curious experiments, which we shall have to trace
hereafter, and to throw the resultant varieties of form into
their proper groups.
§ xxi. One step more: I take a mid-cusped side piece in
its block form at t, with the bricks which load the back of it.
Now, as these bricks support it behind, and since, as far as the
use of the cusp is concerned, it matters not whether its weight
be in marble or bricks, there is nothing to hinder us from cut-
ting out some of the marble, as at u, and filling up the space
with bricks. ( Why we should take a fancy to do this, I do
not pretend to guess at present ; all I have to assert is, that, if
the fancy should strike us, there would be no harm in it).
Substituting this side piece for the other in the window n, we
have that at w, which may, perhaps, be of some service to us
afterwards ; here we have nothing more to do with it than to
note that, thus built, and properly backed by brickwork, it is
Arrfr
BRQLETTO OF CGMO
CONSTRUCTION XI. THE ARGH MASONRY. 141
just as strong and safe a form as that at n ; but that this, as
well as every variety of ogee arch, depends entirely for its
safety, fitness, and beauty, on the masonry which we have just
analysed; and that, built on a large scale, and with many
voussoirs, all such arches would be unsafe and absurd in
general architecture. Yet they may be used occasionally for
the sake of the exquisite beauty of which their rich and fantas-
tic varieties admit, and sometimes for the sake of another merit,
exactly the opposite of the constructional ones we are at present
examining, that they seem to stand by enchantment.
§ xxn. In the above reasonings, the inclination of the joints
of the voussoirs to the curves of the arch has not been con-
sidered. It is a question of much nicety, and which I have
not been able as yet fully to investigate : but the natural idea
of the arrangement of these lines (which in round arches are
of course perpendicular to the curve) would be that every
voussoir should have the lengths of its outer and inner arched
surface in the same proportion to each other. Either this
actual law, or a close approximation to it, is assuredly enforced
in the best Gothic buildings.
§ xxin. I may sum up all that it is necessary for the reader
to keep in mind of the general laws connected with this sub-
ject, by giving him an example of each of the two forms of
the perfect Gothic arch, uncusped and cusped, treated with
the most simple and magnificent masonry, and partly, in both
cases, Mont-Cenisian.
The first, Plate V., is a window from the Broletto of Como.
It shows, in its filling, first, the single-pieced arch, carried on
groups of four shafts, and a single slab of marble filling the
space above, and pierced with a quatrefoil (Mont-Cenisian,
this), while the mouldings above are each constructed with a
separate system of voussoirs, all of them shaped, I think, on
the principle above stated, § xxn., in alternate serpentine and
marble ; the outer arch being a noble example of the pure
uncusped Gothic construction, 5 of Plate III.
§ xxiv. Fig. XXXIY. is the masonry of the side arch of,
as far as I know or am able to judge, the most perfect Gothic
142
XI. THE ARCH MASONRY.
CONSTRUCTION.
sepulchral monument in the world, the foursquare canopy of
the (nameless ?)* tomb standing over the small cemetery gate
of the Church of St. Anastasia at Verona. I shall have fre-
Fig. XXXIV.
quent occasion to recur to this monument, and, I believe,
shall be able sufficiently to justify the terms in which I speak
of it : meanwhile, I desire only that the reader should observe
* At least I cannot find any account of it in Maffei's "Verona," nor any-
where else, to be depended upon. It is, I doubt not, a work of the begin-
ning of the thirteenth century. Vide Appendix 19, " Tombs at St. Anasta-
CONSTRUCTION XI. THE AKCH MASONRY. 143
the severity and simplicity of the arch lines, the exquisitely
delicate suggestion of the ogee curve in the apex, and chiefly
the use of the cusp in giving inward weight to the great pieces
of stone on the flanks of the arch, and preventing their thrust
outwards from being severely thrown on the lowermost stones.
The effect of this arrangement is, that the whole massy canopy
is sustained safely by four slender pillars (as will be seen here-
after in the careful plate I hope to give of it), these pillars
being rather steadied than materially assisted against the thrust,
by iron bars, about an inch thick, connecting them at the
heads of the abaci ; a feature of peculiar importance in this
monument, inasmuch as we know it to be part of the original
construction, by a beautiful little Gothic wreathed pattern,
like one of the hems of garments of Fra Angelico, running
along the iron bar itself. So carefully, and so far, is the
system of decoration carried out in this pure and lovely monu-
ment, my most beloved throughout all the length and breadth
of Italy ; — chief, as I think, among all the sepulchral marbles
of a land of mourning.
CHAPTEK XII.
THE ARCH LOAD.
Fig. XXXV.
§ i. IN the preceding enquiry we have always supposed
either that the load upon the arch was perfectly loose, as of
gravel or sand, or that it was
Mont-Cenisian, and formed
one mass with the arch
voussoirs, of more or less
a\ I \ / \ / compactness.
In practice, the state is
usually something between
the two. Over bridges and
tunnels it sometimes ap-
proaches to the condition of
mere dust or yielding earth ;
but in architecture it is most-
ly firm masonry, not alto-
gether acting with the vous-
soirs, yet by no means bearing
on them with perfectly dead
weight, but locking itself to-
gether above them, and capa-
ble of being thrown into forms
which relieve them, in some
degree, from its pressure.
§ rr. It is evident that if we are to place a continuous roof
above the line of arches, we must fill up the intervals between
them on the tops of the columns. "We have at present nothing
granted us but the bare masonry, as here at 0, Fig. XXXY.,
CONSTRUCTION.
XII. THE ARCH LOAD.
145
Fig. XXXVL
and we must fill up the intervals between the semicircle so as
to obtain a level line of support. We may first do this simply
as at 5, with plain mass of
wall ; so laying the roof on
the top, which is the
method of the pure By-
zantine and Italian Roman-
esque. But if we find too
much stress is thus laid on
the arches, we may intro-
duce small second shafts
on the top of the great
shaft, a, Fig. XXXYL,
which may assist in carry-
ing the roof, conveying
great part of its weight at
once to the heads of the
main shafts, and relieving
from its pressure the cen-
tres of the arches.
§ in. The new shaft
thus introduced may either
remain lifted on the head
of the great shaft, or may
be carried to the ground in
front of it, or through it, b,
Fig. XXXVI. ; in which
latter case the main shaft
divides into two or more
minor shafts, and forms a
group with the shaft
brought down from above.
§ iv. When this shaft,
brought from roof to
ground, is subordinate to the main pier, and either is carried
down the face of it, or forms no large part of the group, the
principle is Romanesque or Gothic, &, Fig. XXXVL When
j£6 XII. THE ARCH LOAD. CONSTRUCTION.
it becomes a bold central shaft, arid the main pier splits into
two minor shafts on its sides, the principle is Classical or Palla-
dian, c, Fig. XXXYI. Which latter arrangement becomes ab-
surd or unsatisfactory in proportion to the sufficiency of the
main shaft to carry the roof without the help of the minor
shafts or arch, which in many instances of Palladian work look
as if they might be removed without danger to the building.
§ v. The form a is a more pure Northern Gothic type than
even J, which is the connecting link between it and the clas-
sical type. It is found chiefly in English and other northern
Gothic, and in early Lombardic, and is, I doubt not, derived
as above explained, Chap. I. § xxvu. j is a general French
Gothic and French Romanesque form, as in great purity at
Yalence.
The small shafts of the form a and &, as being northern,
are generally connected with steep vaulted roofs, and receive
for that reason the name of vaulting shafts.
§ vi. Of these forms &7 Fig. XXX Y., is the purest and
most sublime, expressing the power of the arch most distinctly.
All the others have some appearance of dovetailing and mor-
ticing of timber rather than stonework ; nor have I ever yet
seen a single instance, quite satisfactory, of the management
of the capital of the main shaft, when it had either to sustain
the base of the vaulting shaft, as in «, or to suffer it to pass
through it, as in &, Fig. XXXYI. Nor is the bracket which
frequently carries the vaulting shaft in English work a fitting
support for a portion of the fabric which is at all events pre-
sumed to carry a considerable part of the weight of the roof.
§ vii. The triangular spaces on the flanks of the arch are
called Spandrils, and if the masonry of these should be found,
in any of its forms, too heavy for the arch, their weight may
be diminished, while their strength remains the same, by pierc-
ing them with circular holes or lights. This is rarely neces-
sary in ordinary architecture, though sometimes of great use in
bridges and iron roofs (a succession of such circles may be
seen, for instance, in the spandrils at the Euston Square
station) ; but, from its constructional value, it becomes the
CONSTRUCTION.
XII. THE ARCH LOAD. 147
best form in which to arrange spandril decorations, as we shall
see hereafter.
§ vin. The height of the load above the arch is determined
by the needs of the building and possible length of the shaft ;
but with this we have at present nothing to do, for we have
performed the task which was set us. We have ascertained,
as it was required that we should in § vi. of Chap. III. (A),
the construction of walls ; (B), that of piers ; (C), that of piers
with lintels or arches prepared for roofing. We have next,
therefore, to examine (D) the structure of the roof.
CHAPTEK XIIL
THE EOOF.
§ i. HITHERTO our enquiry has been unembarrassed by any
considerations relating exclusively either to the exterior or
interior of buildings. But it can remain so no longer. As
far as the architect is concerned, one side of a wall is gener-
ally the same as another ; but in the roof there are usually two
distinct divisions of the structure ; one, a shell, vault, or flat
ceiling, internally visible, the other, an upper structure, built
of timber, to protect the lower ; or of some different form, to
support it. Sometimes, indeed, the internally visible structure
is the real roof, and sometimes there are more than two divi-
sions, as in St. Paul's, where we have a central shell with a mask
below and above. Still it will be convenient to remember the
distinction between the part of the roof which is usually visi-
ble from within, and whose only business is to stand strongly,
and not fall in, which I shall call the Koof Proper; and,
secondly, the upper roof, which, being often partly supported
by the lower, is not so much concerned with its own stability
as with the weather, and is appointed to throw off snow, and
get rid of rain, as fast as possible, which I shall call the Koof
Mask.
§ n. It is, however, needless for me to engage the reader
in the discussion of the various methods of construction of
Roofs Proper, for this simple reason, that no person without
long experience can tell whether a roof be wisely constructed
or not ; nor tell at all, even with help of any amount of experi-
ence, without examination of the several parts and bearings of
it, very different from any observation possible to the general
CONSTRUCTION. XIII. THE KOOF. 149
critic : and more than this, the enquiry would be useless to us
in our Venetian studies, where the roofs are either not contem-
porary with the buildings, or flat, or else vaults of the simplest
possible constructions, which have been admirably explained
by Willis in his " Architecture of the Middle Ages," Chap.
VII., to which I may refer the reader for all that it would be
well for him to know respecting the connexion of the different
parts of the vault with the shafts. He would also do well to
read the passages on Tudor vaulting, pp. 185 — 193, in Mr.
Garbett's rudimentary Treatise on Design, before alluded to.*
I shall content myself therefore with noting one or two points
on which neither writer has had occasion to touch, respecting
the Roof Mask.
§ in. It was said in § v. of Chapter III. that wre should
not have occasion, in speaking of roof construction, to add
materially to the forms then suggested. The forms which we
have to add are only those resulting from the other curves of
the arch developed in the last chapter ; that is to say, the
various eastern domes and cupolas arising out of the revolution
of the horseshoe and ogee curves, together with the well-
known Chinese concave roof. All these forms are of course
purely decorative, the bulging outline, or concave surface,
being of no more use, or rather of less, in throwing off snow
or rain, than the ordinary spire and gable ; and it is rather
curious, therefore, that all of them, on a small scale, should
have obtained so extensive use in Germany and Switzerland,
their native climate being that of the east, where their pur-
pose seems rather to concentrate light upon their orbed sur-
faces. I much doubt their applicability, on a large scale, to
architecture of any admirable dignity ; their chief charm is, to
the European eye, that of strangeness ; and it seems to me pos-
sible that in the east the bulging form may be also delightful,
from the idea of its enclosing a volume of cool air. I enjoy
them in St. Mark's, chiefly because they increase the fantastic
and unreal character of St. Mark's Place ; and because they
* Appendix 17
150
XIII. THE ROOF.
CONSTRUCTION.
Kg. XXXVII.
appear to sympathise with an expression, common, I think, to
all the buildings of that group, of a natural buoyancy, as if
they floated in the air or on the surface of the sea. But, as-
suredly, they are not features to be recommended for imita-
tion.*
§ iv. One form, closely connected with the Chinese con-
cave, is, however, often constructively right, — the gable with
an inward angle, occurring with ex-
quisitely picturesque effect through-
out the domestic architecture of
the north, especially Germany and
Switzerland ; the lower slope being
either an attached external pent-
house roof, for protection of the
wall, as in Fig. XXXYIL, or else a
kind of buttress set on the angle of
the tower ; and in either case the
roof itself being a simple gable,
continuous beneath it.
§ v. The true gable, as it is the
simplest and most natural, so I es-
teem it the grandest of roofs ;
whether rising in ridgy darkness, like a grey slope of slaty
mountains, over the precipitous walls of the northern cathe-
drals, or stretched in burning breadth above the white and
square-set groups of the southern architecture. But this dif-
ference between its slope in the northern and southern struc-
ture is a matter of far greater importance than is commonly
supposed, and it is this to which T would especially direct the
reader's attention.
§ vi. One main cause of it, the necessity of throwing off
* I do not speak of the true dome, because I have not studied its con-
struction enough to know at what largeness of scale it begins to be rather
a tour deforce than a convenient or natural form of roof, and because the
ordinary spectator's choice among its various outlines must always be de-
pendent on aesthetic considerations only, and can in no wise be grounded on
any conception of its infinitely complicated structural principles.
CONSTRUCTION. XIII. THE ROOF. 151
snow in the north, has been a thousand times alluded to :
another I do not remember having seen noticed, namely, that
rooms in a roof are comfortably habitable in the north, which
are painful sotto piombi in Italy ; and that there is in wet
climates a natural tendency in all men to live as high as possi-
ble, out of the damp and mist. These two causes, together
with accessible quantities. of good timber, have induced in the
north a general steep pitch of gable, which, when rounded or
squared above a tower, becomes a spire or turret ; and this
feature, worked out with elaborate decoration, is the key-note
of the whole system of aspiration, so called, which the German
critics have so ingeniously and falsely ascribed to a devotional
sentiment pervading the Northern Gothic: I entirely and
boldly deny the whole theory; our cathedrals were for the
most part built by worldly people, who loved the world, and
would have gladly staid in it for ever ; whose best hope was
the escaping hell, which they thought to do by building cathe-
drals, but who had very vague conceptions of Heaven in gen-
eral, and very feeble desires respecting their entrance therein ;
and the form of the spired cathedral has no more intentional
reference to Heaven, as distinguished from the flattened slope
of the Greek pediment, than the steep gable of a Norman
house has, as distinguished from the flat roof of a Syrian one.
We may now, with ingenious pleasure, trace such symbolic
characters in the form ; we may now use it with such definite
meaning ; but we only prevent ourselves from all right under-
standing of history, by attributing much influence to these
poetical symbolisms in the formation of a national style. The
human race are, for the most part, not to be moved by such
silken cords ; and the chances of damp in the cellar, or of loose
tiles in the roof, have, unhappily, much more to do with the
fashions of a man's house building than his ideas of celestial
happiness or angelic virtue. Associations of affection have far
higher power, and forms which can be no otherwise accounted
for may often be explained by reference to the natural fea-
tures of the country, or to anything which habit must have
rendered familiar, and therefore delightful ; but the direct
152 XIII. THE EOOF. CONSTRUCTION.
symbolisation of a sentiment is a weak motive with, all men,
and far more so in the practical minds of the north than among
the early Christians, who were assuredly quite as heavenly-
minded, when they built basilicas, or cut conchas out of the
catacombs, as were ever the Norman barons or monks.
§ vii. There is, however, in the north an animal activity
which materially aided the system of building begun in mere
utility, — an animal life, naturally expressed in erect work, as
the languor of the south in reclining or level work. Imagine
the difference between the action of a man urging himself to
his work in a snow storm, and the inaction of one laid at his
length on a sunny bank among cicadas and fallen olives, and
you will have the key to a whole group of sympathies which
were forcefully expressed in the architecture of both ; remem-
bering always that sleep would be to the one luxury, to the
other death.
§ Vm. And to the force of this vital instinct we have far-
ther to add the influence of natural scenery ; and chiefly of
the groups and wildernesses of the tree which is to the German
mind what the olive or palm is to the southern, the spruce fir.
The eye which has once been habituated to the continual ser-
ration of the pine forest, and to the multiplication of its infi-
nite pinnacles, is not easily offended by the repetition of simi-
lar forms, nor easily satisfied by the simplicity of flat or
massive outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, that of
the poplar, more especially in the valleys of France ; but think
of the spruce chiefly, and meditate on the difference of feeling
with which the Northman would be inspired by the frost-work
wreathed upon its glittering point, and the Italian by the dark
green depth of sunshine on the broad table of the stone-pine *
* I shall not be thought to have overrated the effect of forest scenery on
the northern mind; but I was glad to hear a Spanish gentleman, the other
day, describing, together with his own, the regret which the peasants in
his neighborhood had testified for the loss of a noble stone-pine, one of the
grandest in Spain, which its proprietor had suffered to be cut down for
small gain. He said that the mere spot where it had grown was still popu-
larly known as " El Pino."
CONSTRUCTION.
XIII. THE ROOF. 153
(and consider by the way whether the spruce fir be a more
heavenly-minded tree than those dark canopies of the Medi-
terranean isles).
§ ix. Circumstance and sentiment, therefore, aiding each
other, the steep roof becomes generally adopted, and delighted
in, throughout the north ; and then, with the gradual exag-
geration with which every pleasant idea is pursued by the
human mind, it is raised into all manner of peaks, and points,
and ridges ; and pinnacle after pinnacle is added on its flanks,
and the walls increased in height, in proportion, until we get
indeed a very sublime mass, but one which has no more prin-
ciple of religious aspiration in it than a child's tower of cards.
"What is more, the desire to build high is complicated with the
peculiar love of the grotesque * which is characteristic of the
north, together with especial delight in multiplication of small
forms, as well as in exaggerated points of shade and energy,
and a certain degree of consequent insensibility to perfect
grace and quiet truthfulness ; so that a northern architect could
not feel the beauty of the Elgin marbles, and there will always
be (in those who have devoted themselves to this particular
school) a certain incapacity to taste the finer characters of
Greek art, or to understand Titian, Tintoret, or Kaphael:
whereas among the Italian Gothic workmen, this capacity was
never lost, and Nino Pisano and Orcagna could have under-
stood the Theseus in an instant, and would have received from
it new life. There can be no question that theirs was the
greatest school, and carried out by the greatest men ; and that
while those who began with this school could perfectly well
feel Rouen Cathedral, those who study the Northern Gothic
remain in a narrowed field — one of small pinnacles, and dots,
and crockets, and twitched faces — and cannot comprehend the
meaning of a broad surface or a grand line. Nevertheless the
northern school is an admirable and delightful thing, but a
lower thing than the southern. The Gothic of the Ducal
Palace of Venice is in harmony with all that is grand in all
* Appendix 8.
•j^4 XIII. THE ROOF. CONSTRUCTION.
the world : that of the north is in harmony with the grotesque
northern spirit only.
§ x. We are, however, beginning to lose sight of our roof
structure in its spirit, and must return to our text. As the
height of the walls increased, in sympathy with the rise of the
roof, while their thickness remained the same, it became more
and more necessary to support them by buttresses ; but — and
this is another point that the reader must specially note — it is
not the steep roof mask which requires the buttress, but the
vaulting beneath it ; the roof mask being a mere wooden frame
tied together by cross timbers, and in small buildings often
put together on the ground, raised afterwards, and set on the
walls like a hat, bearing vertically upon them ; and farther, I
believe in most cases the northern vaulting requires its great
array of external buttress, not so much from any peculiar bold-
ness in its own forms, as from the greater comparative thin-
ness and height of the walls, and more determined throwing
of the whole weight of the roof on particular points. Now
the connexion of the interior frame-work (or true roof) with
the buttress, at such points, is not visible to the spectators
from without ; but the relation of the roof mask to the top of
the wall which it protects, or from which it springs, is per-
fectly visible ; and it is a point of so great importance in the
effect of the building, that it will be well to make it a sub-
ject of distinct consideration in the following Chapter.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ROOF COKNICE.
§ i. IT will be remembered that in the Sixth Chapter we
paused (§ x.) at the point where the addition of brackets to
the ordinary wall cornice would have converted it into a struc-
ture proper for sustaining a roof. Now the wall cornice was
treated throughout our enquiry (compare Chapter VII. § v.) as
the capital of the wall, and as forming, by its concentration,
the capital of the shaft. But we must not reason lack from
the capital to the cornice, and suppose that an extension of the
principles of the capital to the whole length of the wall, will
serve for the roof cornice ; for all our conclusions respecting
the capital were based on the supposition of its being
adapted to carry considerable weight condensed on its abacus :
but the roof cornice is, in most cases, required rather to
project boldly than to carry weight ; and arrangements are
therefore to be adopted for it which will secure the projection
of large surfaces without being calculated to resist extra-
ordinary pressure. This object is obtained by the use of
brackets at intervals, which are the peculiar distinction of the
roof cornice.
§ n. Roof cornices are generally to be divided into two
great families : the first and simplest, those which are com-
posed merely by the projection of the edge of the roof mask
over the wall, sustained by such brackets or spurs as may be
necessary ; the second, those which provide a walk round the
edge of the roof, and which require, therefore, some stronger
support, as well as a considerable mass of building above or
beside the roof mask, and a parapet. These two families we
shall consider in succession.
-•Kg XIy. THE KOOF CORNICE. CONSTRUCTION.
§m. 1. The Eaved Cornice. We may give it this name,
as represented in the simplest form by cottage eaves. It is
used, however, in bold projection, both in north, and south, and
east ; its use being, in the north, to throw the rain well away
from the wall of the building ; in the south to give it shade ;
and it is ordinarily constructed of the ends of the timbers of
the roof mask (with their tiles or shingles continued to the
edge of the cornice), -and sustained by spurs of timber. This
is its most picturesque and natural form ; not inconsistent with
great splendor of architecture in the mediaeval Italian domes-
tic buildings, superb in its mass of cast shadow, and giving
rich effect to the streets of Swiss towns, even when they have
no other claim to interest. A farther value is given to it by
its waterspouts, for in order to avoid loading it with weight of
water in the gutter at the edge, where it would be a strain on
the fastenings of the pipe, it has spouts of discharge at inter-
vals of three or four feet, — rows of magnificent leaden or iron
dragons' heads, full of delightful character, except to any per-
son passing along the middle of the street in a heavy shower.
I have had my share of their kindness in my time, but owe
them no grudge ; on the contrary, much gratitude for the de-
light of their fantastic outline on the calm blue sky, when they
had no work to do but to open their iron mouths and pant in
the sunshine.
§ iv. When, however, light is more valuable than shadow,
or when the architecture of the wall is too fair to be concealed,
it becomes necessary to draw the cornice into narrower limits ;
a change of considerable importance, in that it permits the
gutter, instead of being of lead and hung to the edge of the
cornice, to be of stone, and supported by brackets in the wall,
these brackets becoming proper recipients of after decoration
(and sometimes associated with the stone channels of discharge,
called gargoyles, which belong, however, more properly to the
other family of cornices). The most perfect and beautiful
example of this kind of cornice is the Venetian, in which the
rain from the tiles is received in a stone gutter supported by
email brackets, delicately moulded, and having its outer lower
CONSTRUCTION. XIV. THE HOOF CORNICE. 157
edge decorated with the English dogtooth moulding, whose
sharp zigzag mingles richly with the curved edges of the tiling.
I know no cornice more beautiful in its extreme simplicity and
serviceableness.
§ v. The cornice of the Greek Doric is a condition of the
same kind, in which, however, there are no brackets, but use-
less appendages hung to the bottom of the gutter (giving,
however, some impression of support as seen from a distance),
and decorated with stone symbolisms of raindrops. The brack-
ets are not allowed, because they would interfere with the
sculpture, which in this architecture is put beneath the cor-
nice; and the overhanging form of the gutter is nothing
more than a vast dripstone moulding, to keep the rain from
such sculpture : its decoration of guttse, seen in silver points
against the shadow, is pretty in feeling, with a kind of con-
tinual refreshment and remembrance of rain in it ; but the
whole arrangement is awkward and meagre, and is only en-
durable when the eye is quickly drawn away from it to sculp-
ture.
§ vi. In later cornices, invented for the Greek orders, and
farther developed by the Romans, the bracket appears in true
importance, though of barbarous and effeminate outline : and
gorgeous decorations are applied to it, and to the various hori-
zontal mouldings which it carries, some of them of great
beauty, and of the highest value to the mediaeval architects
who imitated them. But a singularly gross mistake was made
in the distribution of decoration on these rich cornices (I do
not know when first, nor does it matter to me or to the reader),
namely, the charging with ornament the under surface of the
cornice between the brackets, that is to say, the exact piece of
the whole edifice, from top to bottom, where ornament is least
visible. I need hardly say much respecting the wisdom of
this procedure, excusable only if the whole building were
covered with ornament ; but it is curious to see the way in
which modern architects have copied it, even when they had
little enough ornament to spare. For instance, I suppose few
persons look at the Athenaeum Club-house without feeling
•iKO XIV. THE EOOF COKNICE. CONSTRUCTION,
vexed at the meagreness and meanness of the windows of the
ground floor : if, however, they look up under the cornice, and
have good eyes, they will perceive that the architect has re-
served his decorations to put between the brackets ; and by
going up to the first floor, and out on the gallery, they may
succeed in obtaining some glimpses of the designs of the said
decorations.
§ vu. Such as they are, or were, these cornices were soon
considered essential parts of the "order" to which they be-
longed ; and the same wisdom which endeavored to fix the
proportions of the orders, appointed also that no order should
go without its cornice. The reader has probably heard of the
architectural division of superstructure into architrave, frieze,
and cornice ; parts which have been appointed by great archi-
tects to all their work, in the same spirit in which great rheto-
ricians have ordained that every speech shall have an exordium,
and narration, and peroration. The reader will do well to con-
sider that it may be sometimes just as possible to carry a roof,
and get rid of rain, without such an arrangement, as it is to
tell a plain fact without an exordium or peroration ; but he
must very absolutely consider that the architectural peroration
or cornice is strictly and sternly limited to the end of the wall's
speech, — that is, to the edge of the roof ; and that it has noth-
ing whatever to do with shafts nor the orders of them. And
he will then be able fully to enjoy the farther ordinance of the
late Roman and Renaissance architects, who, attaching it to
the shaft as if it were part of its shadow, and having to employ
their shafts often in places where they came not near the roof,
forthwith cut the roof-cornice to pieces and attached a bit of it
to every column ; thenceforward to be carried by the unhappy
shaft wherever it went, in addition to any other work on which
it might happen to be employed. I do not recollect among
any living beings, except Renaissance architects, any instance
of a parallel or comparable stupidity : but one can imagine a
savage getting hold of a piece of one of our iron wire ropes,
with its rings upon it at intervals to bind it together, and pull-
ing the wires asunder to apply them to separate purposes ; but
CONSTRUCTION. XIV. THE KOOF CORNICE. 159
imagining there was magic in the ring that bound them, and so
cutting that to pieces also, and fastening a little bit of it to
every wire.
§ vin. Thus much may serve us to know respecting the
first family of wall cornices. The second is immeasurably more
important, and includes the cornices of all the best buildings
in the world. It has derived its best form from mediaeval
military architecture, which imperatively required two things ;
first, a parapet which should permit sight and offence, and
afford defence at the same time ; and secondly, a projection
bold enough to enable the defenders to rake the bottom of
the wall with falling bodies ; projection which, if the wall
happened to slope inwards, required not to be small. The
thoroughly magnificent forms of cornice thus developed by
necessity in military buildings, were adopted, with more or less
of boldness or distinctness, in domestic architecture, according
to the temper of the times and the circumstances of the indi-
vidual— decisively in the baron's house, imperfectly in the
burgher's : gradually they found their way into ecclesiastical
architecture, under wise modifications in the early cathedrals,
with infinite absurdity in the imitations of them ; diminishing
in size as their original purpose sank into a decorative one, un-
til we find battlements, two-and-a-quarter inches square, decorat-
ing the gates of the Philanthropic Society.
§ ix. There are, therefore, two distinct features in all cor-
nices of this kind ; first, the bracket, now become of enormous
importance and of most serious practical service ; the second,
the parapet : and these two features we shall consider in suc-
cession, and in so doing, shall learn all that is needful for us to
know, not only respecting cornices, but respecting brackets in
general, and balconies.
§ x. 1. The Bracket. In the simplest form of military cor-
nice, the brackets are composed of two or more long stones,
supporting each other in gradually increasing projection, with
roughly rounded ends, Fig. XXXVIIL, and the parapet is
simply a low wall carried on the ends of these, leaving, of
course, behind, or within it, a hole between each bracket for
jgQ XIV. THE ROOF CORNICE. CONSTRUCTION.
the convenient dejection of hot sand and lead. This form
is best seen, I think, in the old Scotch castles ; it is very
xxxvni grand, but has a giddy look, and one is-
afraid of the whole thing toppling off the
wall. The next step was to deepen the
brackets, so as to get them propped against
a great depth of the main rampart, and to
have the inner ends of the stones held by a
greater weight of that main wall above ;
while small arches were thrown from bracket
to bracket to carry the parapet wall more
securely. This is the most perfect form of
cornice, completely satisfying the eye of its
security, giving full protection to the wall, and applicable to all
architecture, the interstices between the brackets being filled
up, when one does not want to throw boiling lead on any body
below, and the projection being always delightful, as giving
greater command and view of the building, from its angles, to
those walking on the rampart. And as, in military buildings,
there were usually towers at the angles (round which the bat-
tlements swept) in order to flank the walls, so often in the
translation into civil or ecclesiastical architecture, a small turret
remained at the angle, or a more bold projection of balcony, to
'give larger prospect to those upon the rampart. This cornice,
perfect in all its parts, as arranged for ecclesiastical architecture,
and exquisitely decorated, is the one employed in the duomo
of Florence and campanile of Giotto, of which I have already
spoken as, I suppose, the most perfect architecture in the world.
§ xi. In less important positions and on smaller edifices, this
cornice diminishes in size, while it retains its arrangement, and
at last we find nothing but the spirit and form of it left ; the
real practical purpose having ceased, and arch, brackets and
all, being cut out of a single stone. Thus we find it used in
early buildings throughout the whole of the north and south
of Europe, in forms sufficiently represented by the two exam-
ples in Plate IY. : 1, from St. Antonio, Padua ; 2, from Sens
in V ranee.
CONSTRUCTION.
XIV. THE KOOF COKNICE.
1G1
Fig. XXXIX.
§ xii. I wish, however, at present to fix the reader's atten-
tion on the form of the bracket itself ; a most important feat-
ure in modern as well as ancient architecture. The first idea of
a bracket is that of a long stone or piece of timbe
projecting from the wall, as «, Fig. XXXIX.,
of which the strength depends on the toughness
of the stone or wood, and the stability on the
weight of wall above it (unless it be the end
of a main beam). But let it be supposed that
the structure at $, being of the required projec-
tion, is found too wreak : then we may strengthen
it in one of three ways ; (1) by putting a second
or third stone beneath it, as at & ,• (2) by giving
it a spur, as at c • (3) by giving it a shaft and
another bracket below, d ; the great use of this
arrangement being that the lowermost bracket
has the help of the weight of the shaft-length
of wall above its insertion, which is, of course,
greater than the weight of the small shaft : and
then the lower bracket may be farther helped by
the structure at b or c.
§ xin. Of these structures, a and c are evident-
ly adapted especially for wooden buildings ;
m
and d for stone
ones ; the last, of course, susceptible of the richest decoration,
Fig. XL. and superbly employed in the cornice of the cathe-
dral of Monza : but all are beautiful in their way,
and are the means of, I think, nearly half the pic-
turesqueness and power of mediaeval building ; the
forms ~b and c being, of course, the most frequent ;
a, when it occurs, being usually rounded off, as at #,
Fig. XL. ; 5, also, as in Fig. XXXVIIL, or else it-
self composed of a single stone cut into the form
of the group 1) here, Fig. XL., or plain, as at c,
which is also the proper form of the brick bracket,
when stone is not to be had. The reader will at
once perceive that the form d is a barbarism (unless
when the scale is small and the weight to be carried exceeding-
-go XIV. THE ROOF CORNICE. CONSTRUCTION.
ly light) : it is of course, therefore, a favorite form with the
Renaissance architects; and its introduction is one of the lirst
corruptions of the Venetian architecture.
§ xiv. There is one point necessary to be noticed, though
bearing on decoration more than construction, before we leave
the subject of the bracket. The whole power of the construc-
tion depends upon the stones being well let into the wall ; and
the first function of the decoration should be to give the
idea of this insertion, if possible ; at all events, not to contra-
dict this idea. If the reader will glance at any of the brackets
used in the ordinary architecture of London, he will find them
of some such character as Fig. XLI. ; not a bad form in itself,
but exquisitely absurd in its curling lines, which give the idea
of some writhing suspended tendril, instead of a stiff support,
Fig. XLI. and by their careful avoidance of the wall make the
bracket look pinned on, and in constant danger of
sliding down. This is, also, a Classical and Renais-
sance decoration.
§ xv. 2. The Parapet. Its forms are fixed in
military architecture by the necessities of the art of
war at the time of building, and are always beauti-
ful wherever they have been really thus fixed ; delightful in
the variety of their setting, and in the quaint darkness of their
shot-holes, and fantastic changes of elevation and outline.
Nothing is more remarkable than the swiftly discerned dif-
ference between the masculine irregularity of such true battle-
ments, and the formal pitifulness of those which are set on
modern buildings to give them a military air, — as on the jail
at Edinburgh.
§ xvi. Respecting the Parapet for mere safeguard upon
buildings not military, there are just two fixed laws. It should
be pierced, otherwise it is not recognised from below for a
parapet at all, and it should not be in the form of a battlement,
especially in church architecture.
The most comfortable heading of a true parapet is a plain
level on which the arm can be rested, and along which it can
glide. Any jags or elevations are disagreeable;; the latter, as
CONSTRUCTION. XIV. THE ROOF CORNICE. 163
interrupting the view and disturbing the eye, if they are
higher than the arm, the former, as opening some aspect of
danger if they are much lower -, and the inconvenience, there-
fore, of the battlemented form, as well as the worse than
absurdity, the bad feeling, of the appliance of a military feature
to a church, ought long ago to have determined its rejection.
Still (for the question of its picturesque value is here so closely
connected with that of its practical use, that it is vain to en-
deavor to discuss it separately) there is a certain agreeableness
in the way in which the jagged outline dovetails the shadow of
the slated or leaded roof into the top of the wall, which may
make the use of the battlement excusable where there is a dif-
ficulty in managing some unvaried line, and where the expense
of a pierced parapet cannot be encountered : but remember
always, that the value of the battlement consists in its letting
shadow into the light of the wall, or vice versa, when it comes
against light sky, letting the light of the sky into the shade of
the wall ; but that the actual outline of the parapet itself, if
the eye be arrested upon this, instead of upon the alternation
of shadow, is as ugly a succession of line as can by any possi-
bility be invented. Therefore, the battlemented parapet may
only be used where this alternation of shade is certain to be
shown, under nearly all conditions of effect ; and where the
lines to be dealt with are on a scale which may admit battle-
ments of bold and manly size. The idea that a battlement is
an ornament anywhere, and that a miserable and diminutive
imitation of castellated outline will always serve to fill up blanks
:md Gothicise unmanageable spaces, is one of the great idiocies
of the present day. A battlement is in its origin a piece of
wall large enough to cover a man's body, and however it may
be decorated, or pierced, or finessed away into traceries, as long
as so much of its outline is retained as to surest its origin, so
long its size must remain undiminished. To crown a turret
six feet high with chopped battlements three inches wide, is
children's Gothic : it is one of the paltry falsehoods for which
there is no excuse, and part of the system of using models of
architecture to decorate architecture, which we shall hereafter
164 XIV. THE EOOF CORNICE. CONSTRUCTION.
note as one of the chief and most destructive follies of the
Renaissance ; * and in the present day the practice may be
classed as one which distinguishes the architects of whom there
is no hope, who have neither eye nor head for their work, and
who must pass their lives in vain struggles against the refrac-
tory lines of their own buildings.
§ xvn. As the only excuse for the battlemented parapet is
its alternation of shadow, so the only fault of the natural or
level parapet is its monotony of line. This is, however, in
practice, almost always broken by the pinnacles of the but-
tresses, and if not, may be varied by the tracery of its pene-
trations. The forms of these evidently admit every kind of
change; for a stone parapet, however pierced, is sure to be
strong enough for its purpose of protection, and, as regards the
strength of the building in general, the lighter it is the better.
More fantastic forms may, therefore, be admitted in a parapet
than in any other architectural feature, and for most services,
the Flamboyant parapets seem to me preferable to all others ;,
especially when the leaden roofs set off by points of darkness
the lace-like intricacy of penetration. These, however, as well
as the forms usually given to Renaissance balustrades (of wliich,
by the bye, the best piece of criticism I know is the sketch in
" David Copperfield " of the personal appearance of the man
who stole Jip), and the other and finer forms invented by Paul
Veronese in his architectural backgrounds, together with the
pure columnar balustrade of Yenice, must be considered as
altogether -decorative features.
§ xvm. So also are, of course, the jagged or crown-like
* Not of Renaissance alone : the practice of modelling buildings on a
minute scale for niches and tabernacle-work has always been more or less
admitted, and I suppose authority for diminutive battlements might be
gathered from the Gothic of almost every period, as well as for many other
faults and mistakes : no Gothic school having ever been thoroughly systema-
tised or perfected, even in its best times. But that a mistaken decoration
sometimes occurs among a crowd of noble ones, is no more an excuse for
the habitual— far less, the exclusive— use of such a decoration, than the
accidental or seeming misconstructions of a Greek chorus are an excuse for
a school boy's ungrammatical exercise.
CONSTRUCTION. XIV. THE KOOF CORNICE. 165
finishings of walls employed where no real parapet of protec-
tion is desired ; originating in the defences of outworks and
single walls : these are used much in the east 011 walls sur-
rounding unroofed courts. The richest examples of such
decoration are Arabian; and from Cairo they seem to have
been brought to Venice. It is probable that few of my readers,
however familiar the general form of the Ducal Palace may
have been rendered to them by innumerable drawings, have any
distinct idea of its roof, owing to the staying of the eye on its
superb parapet, of which we shall give account hereafter. In
most of the Venetian cases the parapets which surround roofing
are very sufficient for protection, except that the stones of
which they are composed appear loose and infirm : but their
purpose is entirely decorative ; every wall, whether detached
or roofed, being indiscriminately fringed with Arabic forms of
parapet, more or less Gothicised, according to the lateness of
their date.
I think there is no other point of importance requiring
illustration respecting the roof itself, or its cornice : but this
Venetian form of ornamental parapet connects itself curiously,
at the angles of nearly all the buildings on which it occurs,
with the pinnacled system of the north, founded on the struc-
ture of the buttress. This, it will be remembered, is to be the
subject of the fifth division of our inquiry.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BUTTRESS.
§ i. WE have hitherto supposed ourselves concerned with
the support of vertical pressure only ; and the arch and roof
have been considered as forms of abstract strength, without
reference to the means by which their lateral pressure was to
be resisted. Few readers will need now to be reminded, that
every arch or gable not tied at its base by beams or bars,
exercises a lateral pressure upon the walls which sustain it, —
pressure which may, indeed, be met and sustained by increas-
ing the thickness of the wall or vertical piers, and which is in
reality thus met in most Italian buildings, but may, with less
expenditure of material, and with (perhaps) more graceful
effect, be met by some particular application of the provisions
against lateral pressure called Buttresses. These, therefore,
we are next to examine.
§ n. Buttresses are of many kinds, according to the char-
acter and direction of the lateral forces they are intended to
resist. But their first broad division is into buttresses which
meet and break the force before it arrives at the wall, and
buttresses which stand on the lee side of the wall, and prop it
against the force.
The lateral forces which walls have to sustain are of three
distinct kinds : dead weight, as of masonry or still, water ;
moving weight, as of wind or running water ; and sudden con-
cussion, as of earthquakes, explosions, &c.
Clearly, dead weight can only be resisted by the buttress
acting as a prop ; for a buttress on the side of, or towards the
weight, would only add to its effect. This, then, forms the
first great class of buttressed architecture ; lateral thrusts, of
CONSTRUCTION. XV. THE BUTTRESS. 167
roofing or arches, being met by props of masonry outside —
the thrust from within, the prop without ; or the crushing
force of water on a ship's side met by its cross timbers — the
thrust here from without the wall, the prop within.
Moving weight may, of course, be resisted by the prop on
the lee side of the wall, but is often more effectually met, on
the side which is attacked, by buttresses of peculiar forms,
cunning buttresses, which do not attempt to sustain the weight,
\miparry it, and throw it off in directions clear of the wall.
Thirdly: concussions and vibratory motion, though in
reality only supported by the prop buttress, must be provided
for by buttresses on both sides of the wall, as their direction
cannot be foreseen, and is continually changing.
We shall briefly glance at these three systems of buttress-
ing ; but the two latter being of small importance to our pres-
ent purpose, may as well be dismissed first.
§ in. 1. Buttresses for guard against moving weight and
set towards the weight they resist.
The most familiar instance of this kind of buttress we have
in the sharp piers of a bridge, in the centre of a powerful
stream, which divide the current on their edges, and throw it
to each side under the arches. A ship's bow is a buttress of
the same kind, and so also the ridge of a breastplate, both
adding to the strength of it in resisting a cross blow, and giving
a better chance of a bullet glancing aside. In Switzerland, pro-
jecting buttresses of this kind are often built round churches,
heading up hill, to divide and throw off the avalanches. The
various forms given to piers and harbor quays, and to the bases
of lighthouses, in order to meet the force of the waves, are all
conditions of this kind of buttress. But in works of orna-
mental architecture such buttresses are of rare occurrence ;
and I merely name them in order to mark their place in our
architectural system, since in the investigation of our present
subject we shall not meet with a single example of them,
unless sometimes the angle of the foundation of a palace set
against the sweep of the tide, or the wooden piers of some
canal bridge quivering in its current.
168 XV. THE BUTTRESS. CONSTRUCTION.
§ iv. 2. Buttresses for guard against vibratory motion.
The whole formation of this kind of buttress resolves itself
into mere expansion of the base of the wall, so as to make it
stand steadier, as a man stands with his feet apart when he is
likely to lose his balance. • This approach to a pyramidal form
is also of great use as a guard against the action of artillery ;
that if a stone or tier of stones be battered out of the lower
portions of the wall,, the whole upper part may not topple over
or crumble down at once. Various forms of this buttress,
sometimes applied to particular points of the wall, sometimes
forming a great sloping rampart along its base, are frequent in
buildings of countries exposed to earthquake. They give a
peculiarly heavy outline to muoh of the architecture of the
kingdom of Naples, and they are of the form in which strength
and solidity are first naturally sought, in the slope of the
Egyptian wall. The base of Guy's Tower at Warwick is a
singularly bold example of their military use ; and so, in gen-
eral, bastion and rampart profiles, where, however, the object
of stability against a shock is complicated with that of sustain-
ing weight of earth in the rampart behind.
§ v. 3. Prop buttresses against dead weight.
This is the group with which we have principally to do ;
and a buttress of this kind acts in two ways, partly by its
weight and partly by its strength. It acts by its weight when
its mass is so great that the weight it sustains cannot stir it,
but is lost upon it, buried in it, and annihilated : neither the
shape of such a buttress nor the cohesion of its materials are
of much consequence ; a heap of stones or sandbags, laid up
against the wall, will answer as well as a built and cemented
mass.
But a buttress acting by its strength is not of mass sufficient
to resist the weight by mere inertia ; but it conveys the weight
through its body to something else which is so capable ; as, for
instance, a man leaning against a door with his hands, and
propping himself against the ground, conveys the force which
would open or close the door against him through his body to
the ground. A buttress acting in this way must be of per-
CONSTRUCTION. XV. THE BUTTRESS. 169
f ectly coherent materials, and so strong that though the weight
to be borne could easily move it, it .cannot break it : this kind
of buttress may be called a conducting buttress. Practically,
however, the two modes of action are always in some sort
united. Again, the weight to be borne may either act gener-
ally on the whole wall surface, or with excessive energy on
particular points : when it acts on the whole wall surface, the
whole wall is generally supported ; and the arrangement be-
comes a continuous rampart, as a dyke, or bank of reservoir.
§ vi. It is, however, very seldom that lateral force in archi-
tecture is equally distributed. In most cases the weight of
the roof, or the force of any lateral thrust, are more or less
confined to certain points and directions. In an early state of
architectural science this deimiteness of direction is not yet
clear, and it is met by uncertain application of mass or
strength in the buttress, sometimes by mere thickening of the
wall into square piers, which are partly piers, partly buttresses,
as in Norman keeps and towers. But as science advances, the
weight to be borne is designedly and decisively thrown upon
certain points; the direction and degree of the forces which
are then received are exactly calculated, and met by conduct-
ing buttresses of the smallest possible dimensions ; themselves,
in their turn, supported by vertical buttresses acting by weight,
and these perhaps, in their turn, by another set of conducting
buttresses : so that, in the best examples of such arrangements,
the weight to be borne may be considered as the shock of an
electric fluid, which, by a hundred different rods and channels,
is divided and carried away into the ground.
§ vn. In order to give greater weight to the vertical but-
tress piers which sustain the conducting buttresses, they are
loaded with pinnacles, which, however, are, I believe, in all
the buildings in which they become very prominent, merely
decorative : they are of some use, indeed, by their weight ;
but if this were all for which they were put there, a few cubic
feet of lead would much more securely answer the purpose,
without any danger from exposure to wind. If the reader
likes to ask any Gothic architect with whom he may happen
-j^Q XV. THE BUTTRESS. CONSTRUCTION.
to be acquainted, to substitute a lump of lead for his pinnacles,
he will see by the expression of his face how far he considers
the pinnacles decorative members. In the work which seems
to me the great type of simple and masculine buttress struc-
ture, the apse of Beauvais, the pinnacles are altogether insig-
nificant, and are evidently added just as exclusively to enter-
tain the eye and lighten the aspect of the buttress, as the
slight shafts which are set on its angles ; while in other very
noble Gothic buildings the pinnacles are introduced as niches
for statues, without any reference to construction at all : and
sometimes even, as in the tomb of Can Signoria at Yerona, on
small piers detached from the main building.
§ vui. I believe, therefore, that the development of the pin-
nacle is merely a part of the general erectness and picturesque-
ness of northern work above alluded to : and that, if there had
been no other place for the pinnacles, the Gothic builders
would have put them on the tops of their arches (they often
did on the tops of gables and pediments), rather than not have
had them ; but the natural position of the pinnacle is, of
course, where it adds to, rather than diminishes, the stability
of the building ; that is to say, on its main wall piers and the
vertical piers at the buttresses. And thus the edifice is sur-
rounded at last by a complete company of detached piers and
pinnacles, each sustaining an inclined prop against the central
wall, and looking something like a band of giants holding it
up with the butts of their lances. This arrangement would
imply the loss of an enormous space of ground, but the inter-
vals of the buttresses are usually walled in below, and form
minor chapels.
§ ix. The science of this arrangement has made it the
subject of much enthusiastic declamation among the Gothic
architects, almost as unreasonable, in some respects, as the
declamation of the Renaissance architects respecting Greek
structure. The fact is, that the whole northern buttress sys-
tem is based on the grand requirement of tall windows and
vast masses of light at the end of the apse. In order to gain
this quantity of light, the piers between the windows are
CONSTRUCTION. XV. THE BUTTRESS. 171
diminished in- thickness until they are far too weak to bear the
roof, and then sustained by external buttresses. In the Italian
method the light is rather dreaded than 'desired, and the wall
is made wide enough between the windows to bear the roof,
and so left. In fact, the simplest expression of the difference
in the systems is, that a northern apse is a southern one with
Fig. XLH.
0
its inter-fenestrial piers set edgeways. Thus, 0, Fig. XLIL, is
the general idea of the southern apse ; take it to pieces, and
set all its piers edgeways, as at £, and you have the northern
one. You gain much light for the interior, but you cut the
exterior to pieces, and instead of a bold rounded or polygonal
surface, ready for any kind of decoration, you have a series
of dark and damp cells, which no device that I have yet
seen has succeeded in decorating in a perfectly satisfactory
manner. If the system be farther carried, and a second or
third order of buttresses be added, the real fact is that we
have a building standing on two or three rows of concentric
piers, with the roof off the whole of it except the central
circle, and only ribs left, to carry the weight of the bit of
remaining roof in the middle ; and after the eye has been
accustomed to the bold and simple rounding of the Italian
apse, the skeleton character of the disposition is painfully felt.
After spending some months in Venice, I thought Bourges
Cathedral looked exactly like a half-built ship on its shores.
It is useless, however, to dispute respecting the merits of the
two systems : both are noble in their place ; the Northern
decidedly the most scientific, or at least involving the greatest
172 xv' THE BUTTRESS. CONSTRUCTION.
display of science, the Italian the calmest and purest, this
having in it the sublimity of a calm heaven or a windless noon,
the other that of a mountain flank tormented by the north
wind, and withering into grisly furrows of alternate chasm
and crag.
§ x. If I have succeeded in making the reader understand
the veritable action of the buttress, he will have no difficulty
in determining its fittest form. He has to deal with two dis-
tinct kinds ; one, a narrow vertical pier, acting principally by
its weight, and crowned by a pinnacle ; the other, commonly
called a Flying buttress, a cross bar set from such a pier (when
detached from the building) against the main wall. This
latter, then, is to be considered as a mere prop or shore, and its
use by the Gothic architects might be illustrated by the suppo-
sition that we were to build all our houses with walls too thin
to stand without wooden props outside, and then to substitute
stone props for wooden ones. I have some doubts of the real
dignity of such a proceeding, but at all events the merit of the
form of the flying buttress depends on its faithfully and visibly
performing this somewhat humble office ; it is, therefore, in its
purity, a mere sloping bar of stone, with an arch beneath it to
carry its weight, that is to say, to prevent the action of gravity
from in any wise deflecting it, or causing it to break down-
wards under the lateral thrust ; it is thus formed quite simple
in Notre Dame of Paris, and in the Cathedral of Beauvais,
while at Cologne the sloping bars are pierced with quatrefoils,
and at Amiens with traceried arches. Both seem to me effem-
inate and false in principle ; not, of course, that there is any
occasion to make the flying buttress heavy, if a light one will
answer the purpose ; but it seems as if some security were
sacrificed to ornament. At Amiens the arrangement is now
seen to great disadvantage, for the early traceries have been
replaced by base flamboyant ones, utterly weak and despicable.
Of the degradations of the original form which took place in
after times, I have spoken at p. 35 of the " Seven Lamps."
§ xi. The form of the common buttress must be familiar to
the eye of every reader, sloping if low, and thrown into
CONSTRUCTION. XV. THE BUTTRESS. 173
successive steps if they are to be carried to any considerable
height. There is much dignity in them when they are of
essential service ; but even in their best examples, their awk-
ward angles are among the least manageable features of the
Northern Gothic, and the whole organisation of its system was
destroyed by their unnecessary and lavish application on a
diminished scale ; until the buttress became actually confused
with the shaft, and we find strangely crystallised masses of
diminutive buttress applied, for merely vertical support, in the
northern tabernacle work ; while in some recent copies of it
the principle has been so far distorted that the tiny buttress-
ing look as if they carried the superstructure on the points
of their pinnacles, as in the Cranmer memorial at Oxford.
Indeed, in most modern Gothic, the architects evidently con-
sider buttresses as convenient breaks of blank surface, and
general apologies for deadness of wall. They stand in the
place of ideas, and I think are supposed also to have something
of the odor of sanctity about them ; otherwise, one hardly sees
why a warehouse seventy feet high should have nothing of the
kind, and a chapel, which one can just get into with one's hat
off, should have a bunch of them at every corner ; and worse
than this, they are even thought ornamental when they can be
of no possible use; and these stupid penthouse outlines are
forced upon the eye in every species of decoration : in St.
Margaret's Chapel, West Street, there are actually a couple of
buttresses at the end of every pew.
§ xii. It is almost impossible, in consequencer of these un-
wise repetitions of it, to contemplate the buttress without some
degree of prejudice ; and I look upon it as one of the most
justifiable causes of the unfortunate aversion with which many
of our best architects regard the whole Gothic school. It
may, however, always be regarded with respect when its form
is simple and its service clear ; but no treason to Gothic can be
greater than the use of it in indolence or vanity, to enhance
the intricacies of structure, or occupy the vacuities of design.
CHAPTEE XVI.
FORM OF APERTURE.
§ i. WE have now, in order, examined the means of raising
walls and sustaining roofs, and we have finally to consider the
structure of the necessary apertures in the wall veil, the door
and window ; respecting which there are three main points to
be considered.
1. The form of the aperture, i.e., its outline, its size, and
the forms of its sides.
2. The filling of the aperture, i.e., valves and glass, and
their holdings.
3. The protection of the aperture, and its appliances, i.e.,
canopies, porches, and balconies. We shall examine
these in succession.
§ n. 1. The form of the aperture : and first of doors. We
will, for the present, leave out of the question doors and gates
in unroofed walls, the forms of these being very arbitrary, and
confine ourselves to the consideration of doors of entrance into
roofed buildings. Such doors will, for the most part, be at, or
near, the base of the building ; except when raised for pur-
poses of defence, as in the old Scotch border towers, and our
own Martello towers, or, as in Switzerland, to permit access in
deep snow, or when stairs are carried up outside the house for
convenience or magnificence. But in most cases, whether high
or low, a door may be assumed to be considerably lowei than
the apartments or buildings into which it gives admission, and
therefore to have some height of wall above it, whose weight
must be carried by the heading of the door. It is clear, there-
CONSTRUCTION. XVI. FORM OF APERTURE. 175
fore, that the best heading must be an arch, because the
strongest, and that a square-headed door must be wrong, unless
under Mont-Cenisian masonry ; or else, unless the top of the
door be the roof of the building, as in low cottages. And a
square-headed door is just so much more wrong and ugly than a
connexion of main shafts by lintels, as the weight of wall above
the door is likely to be greater than that above the main shafts.
'Thus, while I admit the Greek general forms of temple to be
admirable in their kind, I think the Greek door always offen-
sive and unmanageable.
§ in. We have it also determined by necessity, that the
apertures shall be at least above a man's height, with perpen-
dicular sides (for sloping sides are evidently unnecessary, and
even inconvenient, therefore absurd) and level threshold ; and
this aperture we at present suppose simply cut through the
wall without any bevelling of the jambs. Such a door, wide
enough for two persons to pass each other easily, and with such
fillings or valves as we may hereafter find expedient, may be
fit enough for any building into which entrance is required
neither often, nor by many persons at a time. But when
entrance and egress are constant, or Fig> XLnL
required by crowds, certain further
modifications must take place.
§ iv. When entrance and egress
are constant, it may be supposed
that the valves will be absent or un-
fastened,— that people will be pass-
ing more quickly than when the entrance and egress are unfre-
quent, and that the square angles of the wall will be incon-
venient to such quick passers through. It is evident, there-
fore, that what would be done in time, for themselves, by the
passing multitude, should be done for them at once by the
architect ; and that these angles, which would be worn away
by friction, should at once be bevelled off, or, as it is called,
splayed, and the most contracted part of the aperture made as
short as possible, so that the plan of the entrance should be-
come as at a, Fig. XLIII.
jwg XVI. FORM OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTION.
§ v. Farther. As persons on. the outside may often
approach the door or depart from it, beside the building, so as
to turn aside as they enter or leave the door, and therefore
touch its jamb, but, on the inside, will in almost every case
approach the door, or depart from it in the direct line of the
entrance (people generally walking forward when they enter a
hall, court, or chamber of any kind, and being forced to do so
when they enter a passage), it is evident that the bevelling may
be very slight on the inside, but should be large on the outside,
so that the plan of the aperture should become as at I, Fig.
XLIII. Farther, as the bevelled wall cannot conveniently
carry an unbevelled arch, the door arch must be bevelled also,
and the aperture, seen from the outside, will have somewhat
the aspect of a small cavern diminishing towards the interior.
§ vi. If, however, beside frequent entrance, entrance is
required for multitudes at the same time, the size of the aper-
ture either must be increased, or other apertures must be intro-
duced. It may, in some buildings, be optional with the archi-
tect whether he shall give many small doors, or few large
ones ; and in some, as theatres, amphitheatres, and other places
where the crowd are apt to be impatient, many doors are by
far the best arrangement of the two. Often, however, the
purposes of the building, as when it is to be entered by pro-
cessions, or where the crowd most usually enter in one direc-
tion, require the large single entrance ; and (for here again the
aesthetic and structural laws cannot be separated) the expres-
sion and harmony of the building require, in nearly every case,
an entrance of largeness proportioned to the multitude which
is to meet within. Nothing is more unseemly than that a
great multitude should find its way out and in, as ants and
M*asps do, through holes ; and nothing more undignified than
the paltry doors of many of our English cathedrals, which look
as if they were made, not for the open egress, but for the
surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation. Besides,
the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as
possible, to desire at least the western entrance to be single,
partly because no man of right feeling would willingly lose the
CONSTRUCTION. XVI. FORM OF APERTURE. 177
idea of unity and fellowship in going up to worship, which is
suggested by the vast single entrance ; partly because it is at
the entrance that the most serious words of the building are
always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, to the
worshipper ; and it is well, that these words should be spoken
to all at once, as by one great voice, not broken up into weak
repetitions over minor doors.
In practice the matter has been, I suppose, regulated almost
altogether by convenience, the western doors being single in
small churches, while in the larger the entrances become three
or five, the central door remaining always principal, in con-
sequence of the fine sense of composition which the mediaeval
builders never lost. These arrangements have formed the
noblest buildings in the world. Yet it is worth observing*
how perfect in its simplicity the single entrance may become,
when it is treated as in the Duomo and St. Zeno of Verona,
and other such early Lombard churches, having noble porches,
and rich sculptures grouped around the entrance.
§ vn. However, whether the entrances be single, triple, or
manifold, it is a constant law that one shall be principal, and
all shall be of size in some degree proportioned to that of
the building. And this size is, of course, chiefly to be ex-
pressed in width, that being the only useful dimension in a
door (except for pageantry, chairing of bishops and waving of
banners, and other such vanities, not, I hope, after this cen-
tury, much to be regarded in the building of Christian temples) ;
* And worth questioning, also, whether the triple porch has not been
associated with Romanist views of mediatorship ; the Redeemer being
represented as presiding over the central door only, and the lateral entrances
being under the protection of saints, while the Madonna almost always has
one or both of the transepts. But it would be wrong to press this, for, in
nine cases out of ten, the architect has been merely influenced in his placing
of the statues by an artist's desire of variety in their forms and dress; and
very naturally prefers putting a canonisation over one door, a martyrdom
over another, and an assumption over a third, to repeating a crucifixion or
a judgment above all. The architect's doctrine is only, therefore, to be
noted with indisputable reprobation when the Madonna gets possession of
the main door.
J78 XVI. FORM OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTION.
but though the width is the only necessary dimension, it is well
to increase the height also in some proportion to it, in order
that there may be less weight of wall above, resting on the
increased span of the arch. This is, however, so much the
necessary result of the broad curve of the arch itself, that there
is no structural necessity of elevating the jamb ; and I believe
that beautiful entrances might be made of every span of arch,
retaining the jamb at a little more than a man's height, until
the sweep of the curves became so vast that the small vertical
line became a part of them, and one entered into the temple as
under a great rainbow.
§ viu. On the other hand, the jamb ma/y be elevated indef-
initely, so that the increasing entrance retains at least the
proportion of width it had originally ; say 4 ft. by 7 ft. 5 in.
But a less proportion of width than this has always a meagre,
inhospitable, and ungainly look except in military architecture,
where the narrowness of the entrance is necessary, and its
height adds to its grandeur, as between the entrance towers
of our British castles. This law however, observe, applies
only to true doors, not to the arches of porches, which may be
of any proportion, as of any number, being in fact interco-
lumniations, not doors ; as in the noble example of the west
front of Peterborough, which, in spite of the destructive
absurdity of its central arch being the narrowest, would still,
if the paltry porter's lodge, or gatehouse, or turnpike, or what-
ever it is, were knocked out of the middle of it, be the noblest
west front in England.
§ ix. Further, and finally. In proportion to the height and
size of the building, and therefore to the size of its doors, will
be the thickness of its walls, especially at the foundation, that
is to say, beside the doors ; and also in proportion to the
numbers of a crowd will be the unruliness and pressure of it.
Hence, partly in necessity and partly in prudence, the splay-
ing or chamfering of the jamb of the larger door will be
deepened, and, if possible, made at a larger angle for the large
door than for the small one ; so that the large door will always
be encompassed by a visible breadth of jamb proportioned to
CONSTRUCTION. XVI. FORM OF APERTURE. 179
its own magnitude. The decorative value of this feature we
shall see hereafter.
§ x. The second kind of apertures we have to examine
are those of windows.
Window apertures are mainly of two kinds ; those for out-
look, and those for inlet of light, many being for both pur-
poses, and either purpose, or both, combined in military archi-
tecture with those of offence and defence. But all window
apertures, as compared with door apertures, have almost infinite
licence of form and size : they may be of any shape, from the
slit or cross slit to the circle ;* of any size, from the loophole
of the castle to the pillars of light of the cathedral apse. Yet,
according to their place and purpose, one or two laws of fit-
ness hold respecting them, which let us examine in the two
classes of windows successively, but without reference to mili-
tary architecture, which here, as before, we may dismiss as a
subject of separate science, only noticing that windows, like
all other features, are always delightful, if not beautiful, when
their position and shape have indeed been thus necessarily
determined, and that many of their most picturesque forms
have resulted from the requirements of war. We should also
find in military architecture the typical forms of the two
classes of outlet and inlet windows in their utmost develop-
ment ; the greatest sweep of sight and range of shot on the
one hand, and the fullest entry of light and air on the other,
being constantly required at the smallest possible apertures.
Our business, however, is to reason out the laws for ourselves,
not to take the examples as we find them.
§ xi. 1. Outlook apertures. For these no general outline
is determinable by the necessities or inconveniences of outlook-
ing, except only that the bottom or sill of the windows, at
whatever height, should be horizontal, for the convenience of
* The arch heading is indeed the best where there is much incumbent
weight, but a window frequently has very little weight above it, especially
when placed high, and the arched form loses light in a low room : there-
fore the square-headed window is admissible where the square-headed door
is not.
igQ XVI. FORM OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTIONS
leaning on it, or standing on it if the window be to the ground.
The form of the upper part of the window is quite immaterial,
for all windows allow a greater range of sight when they are
approached than that of the eye itself : it is the approachability
of the window, that is to say, the annihilation of the thickness
of the wall, which is the real point to be attended to. If,
therefore, the aperture be inaccessible, or so small that the
thickness of the wall cannot be entered, the wall is to be
bevelled* on the outside, so as to increase the range of sight as
far as possible ; if the aperture can be entered, then bevelled
from the point to which entrance is possible. The bevelling
will, if possible, be in every direction, that is to say, upwards
at the top, outwards at the sides, and downwards at the bottom,
but essentially downwards ; the earth and the doings upon it
being the chief object in outlook windows, except of observa-
tories ; and where the object is a distinct and special view
downwards, it will be of advantage to shelter the eye as far a&
possible from the rays of light coming from above, and the
head of the window may be left horizontal, or even the whole
aperture sloped outwards, as the slit in a letter-box is inwards.
The best windows for outlook are, of course, oriels and bow
windows, but these are not to be considered under the head
of apertures merely ; they are either balconies roofed and
glazed, and to be considered under the head of external appli-
ances, or they are each a story of an external semi-tower,
having true aperture windows on each side of it.
xii. 2. Inlet windows. These windows may, of course, be
of any shape and size whatever, according to the other neces-
sities of the building, and the quantity and direction of light
desired, their purpose being now to throw it in streams on
particular lines or spots ; now to diffuse it everywhere ; some-
times to introduce it in broad masses, tempered in strength, as
in the cathedral colored window; sometimes in starry showers
of scattered brilliancy, like the apertures in the roof of an
*I do not like the sound of the word "splayed;" I always shall use
'bevelled" instead.
CONSTRUCTION. XVI. FORM OF APERTURE. 181
Arabian bath ; perhaps the most beautiful of all forms being
the rose, which has in it the unity of both characters, and
sympathy with that of the source of light itself. It is notice-
able, however, that while both the circle and pointed oval are
beautiful window forms, it would be very pain-
ful to cut either of them in half and connect
them by vertical lines, as in Fig. XLIV. The
reason is, I believe, that so treated, the upper
arch is not considered as connected with the
lower, and forming an entire figure, but as the ordinary arch
roof of the aperture, and the lower arch as an arch floor,
equally unnecessary and unnatural. Also, the elliptical oval is
generally an unsatisfactory form, because it gives the idea of
useless trouble in building it, though it occurs quaintly and
pleasantly in the former windows of France : I believe it is also
objectionable because it has an indeterminate, slippery look,
like that of a bubble rising through a fluid. It, and all elongated
forms, are still more objectionable placed horizontally, because
this is the weakest position they can structurally have ; that is
to say, less light is admitted, with greater loss of strength to
the building, than by any other form. If admissible any-
where, it is for the sake of variety at the top of the building,
as the flat parallelogram sometimes not ungracefully in Italian
Renaissance.
§ xin. The question of bevelling becomes a little more
complicated in the inlet than the outlook window, because
the mass or quantity of light admitted is often of more conse-
quence than its direction, and often vice versa / and the out-
look window is supposed to be approachable, which is far
from being always the case with windows for light, so that
the bevelling which in the outlook window is chiefly to open
range of sight, is in the inlet a means not only of admitting
the light in greater quantity, but of directing it to the spot
on which it is to fall. But, in general, the bevelling of the
one window will reverse that of the other ; for, first, no
natural light will strike on the inlet window from beneath,
unless reflected light, which is (I believe) injurious to the
Jg2 XVI. FORM OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTION.
health and the sight ; and thus, while in the outlook window
the outside bevel downwards is essential, in the inlet it would
be useless : and the sill is to be flat, if the window be on a
level with the spot it is to light; and sloped downwards
within, if above it. Again, as the brightest rays of light are
the steepest, the outside bevel upwards is as essential in the
roof of the inlet as it was of small importance in that of the
outlook window.
§ xiv. On the horizontal section the aperture will expand
internally, a somewhat larger number of rays being thus
reflected from the jambs ; and the aperture being thus the
smallest possible outside, this is the favorite military form of
inlet window, always found in magnificent development in
the thick walls of mediaeval castles and convents. Its effect
is tranquil, but cheerless and dungeon -like in its fullest develop-
ment, owing to the limitation of the range of sight in the
outlook, which, if the window be unapproachable, reduces it
to a mere point of light. A modified condition of it, with
some combination of the outlook form, is probably the best
for domestic buildings in general (which, however, in modern
architecture, are unhappily so thin walled, that the outline of
the jambs becomes a matter almost of indifference), it being
generally noticeable that the depth of recess which I have
observed to be essential to nobility of external effect has also
a certain dignity of expression, as appearing to be intended
rather to admit light to persons quietly occupied in their
homes, than to stimulate or favor the curiosity of idleness.
CHAPTEK XVII.
FILLING OF APERTURE.
§ i. THUS far we have been concerned with the outline only
of the aperture: we were next, it will be remembered, to
consider the necessary modes of filling it with valves in the
case of the door, or with glass or tracery in that of the
window.
1. Fillings of doors. "We concluded, in the previous Chap-
ter, that doors in buildings of any importance or size should
have headings in the form of. an arch. This is, however, the
most inconvenient form we could choose, as respects the fitting
of the valves of the doorway; for the arch-shaped head of the
valves not only requires considerable nicety in fitting to the
arch, but adds largely to the weight of the door, — a double dis-
advantage, straining the hinges and making it cumbersome in
opening. And this inconvenience is so much perceived by the
eye, that a door valve with a pointed head is always a dis-
agreeable object. It becomes, therefore, a matter of true
necessity so to arrange the doorway as to admit of its being
fitted with rectangular valves.
§ n. Now, in determining the form of the aperture, we
supposed the jamb of the door to be of the utmost height re-
quired for entrance. The extra height of the arch is unneces-
sary as an opening, the arch being required for its strength
only, not for its elevation. There is, therefore, no reason why
it should not be barred across by a horizontal lintel, into which
the valves may be fitted, and the triangular or semicircular
arched space above the lintel may then be permanently closed,
as we choose, either with bars, or glass, or stone.
This is the form of all good doors, without exception,
|g^ XVII. FILLING OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTION.
over the whole world and in all ages, and no other can ever
l>e invented.
§ in. In the simplest doors the cross lintel is of wood only,
and glass or bars occupy the space above, a very frequent form
in Venice. In more elaborate doors the cross- lintel is of
stone, and the filling sometimes of brick, sometimes of stone,
very often a grand single stone being used to close the entire
space: the space thus filled is called the Tympanum. In
large doors the cross lintel is too long to bear the great incum-
bent weight of this stone filling without support ; it is, there-
fore, carried by a pier in the centre ; and two valves are used,
fitted to the rectangular spaces on each side of the pier. In
the most elaborate examples of this condition, each of these
secondary doorways has an arch heading, a cross lintel, and a
triangular filling or tympanum of its own, all subordinated to
the main arch above.
§ iv. 2. Fillings of windows.
When windows are large, and to be filled with glass, the
sheet of glass, however constructed, whether of large panes or
small fragments, requires the support of bars of some kind,
either of wood, metal, or stone. Wood is inapplicable on 'a
large scale, owing to its destructibility ; very fit for door-
valves, which can be easily refitted, and in which weight
would be an inconvenience, but very unfit for window-bars,
which, if they decayed, might let the whole window be blown
in before their decay was observed, and in which weight
would be an advantage, as offering more resistance to the
wind.
Iron is, however, fit for window-bars, and there seems no
constructive reason why we should not have iron traceries, as
well as iron pillars, iron churches, and iron steeples. But I
have, in the " Seven Lamps," given reasons for not consider-
ing such structures as architecture at all.
The window-bars must, therefore, be of stone, and of stone
only.
§ v. The purpose of the window being always to let in as
much light, and command as much view, as possible, these
CONSTKUCTION. XVII. FILLING OF APERTUKE. 185
bars of stone are to be made as slender and as few as they can
be, consistently with their due strength.
Let it be required to support the breadth of glass, «, J, Fig.
XLV. The tendency of the Fig XLV
glass sustaining any force, as
of wind from without, is to
bend into an arch inwards, in
the dotted line, and break in
the centre. It is to be sup-
ported, therefore, by the bar
put in its centre, c.
But this central bar, c, may
not be enough, and the spaces
a c, c &, may still need sup-
port. The next step will be
to put two bars instead of
one, and divide the window into three spaces as at d.
But this may still not be enough, and the window may need
three bars. Now the greatest stress is always on the centre
of the window. If the three bars are equal in strength, as at
<?, the central bar is either too slight for its work, or the lateral
bars too thick for theirs. Therefore, we must slightly increase
the thickness of the central bar, and diminish that of the
lateral ones, so as to obtain the arrangement at / h. If the
window enlarge farther, each of the spaces f g, g h, is treated
as the original space a &, and we have the groups of bars k
and I.
So that, whatever the shape of the window, whatever the
direction and number of the bars, there are to be central or
main bars ; second bars subordinated to them ; third bars sub-
ordinated to the second, and so on to the number required.
This is called the subordination of tracery, a system delightful
to the eye and mind, owing to its anatomical framing and
unity, and to its expression of the laws of good government in
all fragile and unstable things. All tracery, therefore, which
is not subordinated, is barbarous, in so far as this part of its
structure is concerned.
jgg XVII. FILLING OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTION.
§ vi. The next question will be the direction of the bars.
The reader will understand at once, without any laborious
proof, that a given area of glass, supported by its edges, is
stronger in its resistance to violence when it is arranged in a
long strip or band than in a square ; and that, therefore, glass
is generally to be arranged, especially in windows on a large
scale, in oblong areas : and if the bars so dividing it be placed
horizontally, they will have less power of supporting them-
selves, and will need to be thicker in consequence, than if
placed vertically. As far, therefore, as the form of the window
permits, they are to be vertical.
§ vn. But even when so placed, they cannot be trusted to
support themselves beyond a certain height, but will need cross
bars to steady them. Cross bars of stone are, therefore, to be
introduced at necessary intervals, not to divide the glass, but
to support the upright stone bars. The glass is always to be
divided longitudinally as far as possible, and the upright bars
which divide it supported at proper intervals. However high
the window, it is almost impossible that it should require more
than two cross bars.
§ vni. It may sometimes happen that when tall windows
are placed very close to each other for the sake of more light,
the masonry between them may stand in need, or at least be the
better of, some additional support. The cross bars of the win-
dows may then be thickened, in order to bond the intermediate
piers more strongly together, and if this thickness appear un-
gainly, it may be modified by decoration.
§ ix. We have thus arrived at the idea of a vertical frame
work of subordinated bars, supported by cross bars at the
necessary intervals, and the only remaining question is the
method of insertion into the aperture. Whatever its form, if
we merely let the ends of the bars into the voussoirs of its
heading, the least settlement of the masonry would distort the
arch, or push up some of its voussoirs, or break the window
l>ars. or push them aside. Evidently our object should be to
connect the window bars among themselves, so framing them
together that they may give the utmost possible degree of sup-
CONSTRUCTION. XVII. FILLING OF APERTURE. 187
port to the whole window head in case of any settlement. But
we know how to do this already : our window bars are nothing
but small shafts. Capital them ; throw small arches across be-
tween the smaller bars, large arches over them between the
larger bars, one comprehensive arch over the whole, or else a
horizontal lintel, if the window have a flat head ; and we have
a complete system of mutual support, independent of the
aperture head, and yet assisting to sustain it, if need be. But
we want the spandrils of this arch system to be themselves as
light, and to let as much light through them, as possible : and
we know already how to pierce them (Chap. XII. § vn.). We
pierce them with circles ; and we have, if the circles are small
and the stonework strong, the traceries of Giotto and the
Pisan school ; if the circles are as large as possible and the bars
slender, those which I have already figured and described as
the only perfect traceries of the Northern Gothic.* The
varieties of their design arise partly from the different size of
window and consequent number of bars ; partly from the
different heights of their pointed arches, as well as the various
positions of the window head in relation to the roof, rendering
one or another arrangement better for dividing the light, and
partly from aesthetic and expressional requirements, which,
within certain limits, may be allowed a very important in-
fluence : for the strength of the bars is ordinarily so much
greater than is absolutely necessary, that some portion of it
may be gracefully sacrificed to the attainment of variety in the
plans of tracery — a variety which, even within its severest
limits, is perfectly endless; more especially in the pointed
arch, the proportion of the tracery being in the round arch
necessarily more fixed.
§ x. The circular window furnishes an exception to the
common law, that the bars shall be vertical through the
greater part of their length : for if they were so, they could
neither have secure perpendicular footing, nor secure heading,
their thrust being perpendicular to the curve of the voussoirs
* " Seven Lamps," p. 53.
l£g XVII. FILLING OF APERTUEE. CONSTRUCTION.
only iii the centre of the window; therefore, a small circle,
like the axle of a wheel, is put into the centre of the window,
large enough to give footing to the necessary number of
radiating bars ; and the bars are arranged as spokes, being all
of course properly capitaled and arch-headed. This is the best
form of tracery for circular windows, naturally enough called
wheel windows when so filled.
§ xi. Now, I wish the reader especially to observe that we
have arrived at these forms of perfect Gothic tracery without
the smallest reference to any practice of any school, or to any
law of authority whatever. They are forms having essentially
nothing whatever to do either with Goths or Greeks. They
are eternal forms, based on laws of gravity and cohesion ; and
no better, nor any others so good, will ever be invented, so
long as the present laws of gravity and cohesion subsist.
§ xn. It does not at all follow that this group of forms
owes its origin to any such course of reasoning as that which
has now led us to it. On the contrary, there is not the
smallest doubt that tracery began, partly, in the grouping of
windows together (subsequently enclosed within a large arch*),
and partly in the fantastic penetrations of a single slab of
stones under the arch, as the circle in Plate Y. above. The
perfect form seems to have been accidentally struck in passing
from experiment on the one side, to affectation on the other ;
and it was so far from ever becoming system atised, that I am
aware of no type of tracery for which a less decided preference
is shown in the buildings in which it exists. The early pierced
traceries are multitudinous and perfect in their kind, — the late
Flamboyant, luxuriant in detail, and lavish in quantity, — but
the perfect forms exist in comparatively few churches, gener-
ally in portions of the church only, and are always connected,
and that closely, either with the massy forms out of which
* On the north side of the nave of the cathedral of Lyons, there is an
early French window, presenting one of the usual groups of foliated arches
and circles, left, as it were, loose, without any enclosing curve. The effect
is very painful. This remarkable window is associated with others of the
common form.
CONSTRUCTION. XVII. FILLING OF A PERU HE. 189
they have emerged, or with the enervated types into which
they are instantly to degenerate.
§ xin. Nor indeed are we to look upon them as in all
points superior to the more ancient examples. We have above
conducted our reasoning entirely on the supposition that a
single aperture is given, which it is the object to fill with
glass, diminishing the power of the light as little as possible.
But there are many cases, as in triforium and cloister lights, in
which glazing is not required ; in which, therefore, the bars,
if there be any, must have some more important function than
that of merely holding glass, and in which their actual use is
to give steadiness and tone, as it were, to the arches and walls
above and beside them ; or to give the idea of protection to
those who pass along the triforium, and of seclusion to those
who walk in the cloister. Much thicker shafts, and more
massy arches, may be properly employed in work of this kind ;
and many groups of such tracery will be found resolvable into
true colonnades, with the arches in pairs, or in triple or quad-
ruple groups, and with small rosettes pierced above them for
light. All this is just as right in its place, as the glass tracery
is in its own function, and often much more grand. But the
same indulgence is not to be shown to the affectations which
succeeded the developed forms. Of these there are three
principal conditions : the Flamboyant of France, the Stump
tracery of Germany, and the Perpendicular of England.
§ xiv. Of these the first arose, by the most delicate and
natural transitions, out of the perfect school. It was an en-
deavor to introduce more grace into its lines, and more change
into its combinations ; and the aesthetic results are so beautiful,
that for some time after the right road had been left, the aber-
ration was more to be admired than regretted. The final con-
ditions became fantastic and effeminate, but, in the country
where they had been invented, never lost their peculiar grace
until they were replaced by the Kenaissance. The copies of
the school in England and Italy have all its faults and none
of its beauties ; in France, whatever it lost in method or
in majesty, it gained in fantasy : literally Flamboyant, it
-J^Q XVII. FILLING OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTION.
breathed away its strength into the air ; but there is not more
difference between the commonest doggrel that ever broke
prose into ^intelligibility, and the burning mystery of Cole-
ridge, or spirituality of Elizabeth Barrett, than there is be-
tween the dissolute dulness of English Flamboyant, and the
flaming undulations of the wreathed lines of delicate stone, that
confuse themselves with the clouds of every morning sky that
brightens above the valley of the Seine.
§ xv. The second group of traceries, the intersectional or
German group, may be considered as including the entire
range of the absurd forms which were invented in order to dis-
play dexterity in stone-cutting and ingenuity in construction.
They express the peculiar character of the German mind,
which cuts the frame of every truth joint from joint, in order
to prove the edge of its instruments ; and, in all cases, prefers
a new or a strange thought to a good one, and a subtle
thought to a useful one. The point and value of the
German tracery consists principally in turning the features
of good traceries upside down, and cutting them in two
where they are properly continuous. To destroy at once foun-
dation and membership, and suspend everything in the air,
keeping out of sight, as far as possible, the evidences of a begin-
ning and the probabilities of an end, are the main objects of
German architecture, as of modern German divinity.
§ xvi. This school has, however, at least the merit of in-
genuity. Not so the English Perpendicular, though a very
curious school also in its way. In the course of the reasoning
which led us to the determination of the perfect Gothic tracery,
we were induced successively to reject certain methods of ar-
rangement as weak, dangerous, or disagreeable. Collect all
these together, and practise them at once, and you have the
English Perpendicular.
As thus. You find, in the first place (§ v.), that your tra-
cery bars are to be subordinated, less to greater ; so you take
a group of, suppose, eight, which you make all 'exactly equal,
giving you nine equal spaces in the window, as at A, Fig.
XL VI. You found, in the second place (§ vn.), that there was
CONSTRUCTION. XVII. FILLING OF APERTURE.
191
no occasion for more than two cross bars ; so you take at least
four or five (also represented at A, Fig. XLVL), also carefully
equalised, and set at equal spaces. You found, in the third
place (§ VIIL), that these bars were to be strengthened, in order
to support the main piers ; you will therefore cut the ends off
the uppermost, and the fourth into three pieces (as also at A).
In the fourth place, you found (§ ix.) that you were never to
run a vertical bar into the arch head ; so you run them all into
it (as at B, Fig. XLVL) : and this last arrangement will be use-
ful in two ways, for it will not only expose both the bars and the
archivolt to an apparent probability of every species of disloca-
tion at any moment, but it will provide you with two pleasing
Fig. XLVI.
a ~
°x
/
^
\
\
K
|
\
\ I
/
\ V
I
~
e
f
|
A
/
^
H
^
IK
K
/c
x
f
W
n
interstices at the flanks, in the shape of carving-knives, a, #,
which, by throwing across the curves c, d, you may easily
multiply into four; and these, as you can put nothing into
their sharp tops, will afford you a more than usually rational
excuse for a little bit of Germanism, in filling them with
arches upside down, e,f. You will now have left at your dis-
posal two and forty similar interstices, which, for the sake of
variety, you will proceed to fill with two and forty similar
192
XVII. FILLING OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTION:.
arches : and, as you were told that the moment a bar received
an arch heading, it was to be treated as a shaft and capitalled,
you will take care to give your bars no capitals nor bases, but
to run bars, foliations and all, well into each other after the
fashion of cast-iron, as at C. You have still two triangular
spaces occurring in an important part of your window, g g,
which, as they are very conspicuous, and you cannot make
them uglier than they are, you will do wisely to let alone ;—
and you will now have the west window of the cathedral of
Winchester, a very perfect example of English Perpendicular.
Nor do I think that you can, on the whole, better the arrange-
ment, unless, perhaps, by adding buttresses to some of the bars,
as is done in the cathedral at Gloucester ; these buttresses hav-
ing the double advantage of darkening the window when seen
from within, and, suggesting, when it is seen from without, the
idea of its being divided by two stout party walls, with a
heavy thrust against the glass.
§ xvn. Thus far we have considered the plan of the tracery
only : we have lastly to note the conditions under which the
glass is to be attached to the bars ; and the sections of the bam
themselves.
These bars we have seen, in the perfect form, are to become
shafts ; but, supposing the object to be the admission of as
much light as possible, it is clear that the thickness of the bar
ought to be chiefly in the depth of the window, and that by
increasing the depth of the bar we may diminish its breadth :
clearly, therefore, we should employ the double group of
shafts, £>, of Fig. XIV., setting it edgeways in the window :
but as the glass would then come between the two shafts, we
must add a member into which it is to be fitted, as at #, Fig.
Fig. xLvn. XL VII., and uniting these three members
ij together in the simplest way, with a curved
Q instead of a sharp recess behind the shafts,
w we have the section Z>, the perfect, but sim-
" plest type of the main tracery bars in good
Gothic. In triforinm and cloister tracery, which has 110 glass
to hold the central member is omitted and we have either the
CONSTRUCTION. XVII. FILLING OF APERTURE. 193
pure double shaft, always the most graceful, or a single and
more massy shaft, which is the simpler and more usual form.
$ xvni. Finally : there is an intermediate arrangement be-
tween the glazed and the open tracery, that of the domestic
traceries of Venice. Peculiar conditions, hereafter to be de-
scribed, require the shafts of these traceries to become the
main vertical supports of the floors and walls. Their thick-
ness is therefore enormous ; and yet free egress is required be-
.tween them (into balconies) which is obtained by doors in their
lattice glazing. To prevent the inconvenience and ugliness
of driving the hinges and fastenings of them into the shafts,
and having the play of the doors in the intervals, the entire
glazing is thrown behind the pillars, and attached to their abaci
and bases with iron. It is thus securely sustained by their
massy bulk, and leaves their symmetry and shade undis-
turbed.
§ xix. The depth at which the glass should be placed, in
windows without traceries, will generally be fixed by the forms
of their bevelling, the glass occupying the narrowest interval ;
but when its position is not thus -fixed, as in many London
houses, it is to be remembered that the deeper the glass is set
(the wall being of given thickness), the more light will enter,
and the clearer the prospect will be to a person sitting quietly
in the centre of the room ; on the contrary, the farther out
the glass is set, the more convenient the window will be for a
person rising and looking out of it. The one, therefore, is an
arrangement for the idle and curious, who care only about
what is going on upon the earth : the other for those who are
willing to remain at rest, so that they have free admission of
the light of Heaven. This might be noted as a curious ex-
pressional reason for the necessity (of which no man of ordi-
nary feeling would doubt for a moment) of a deep recess in
the window, on the outside, to all good or architectural effect :
still, as there is no reason why people should be made idle by
having it in their power to look out of window, and as the
slight increase of light or clearness of view in the centre of a
room is more than balanced by the loss of space, and the
194 XVII. FILLING OF APEETURE. CONSTRUCTION.
greater chill of the nearer glass and outside air, we can, I fear,
allege no other structural reason for the picturesque external
recess, than the expediency of a certain degree of protection,
for the glass, from the brightest glare of sunshine, and heaviest
rush of rain.
CHAPTER XYIII.
PROTECTION OF APERTURE.
§ i. WE have hitherto considered the aperture as merely
pierced in the thickness of the walls ; and when its masonry
is simple and the fillings of the aperture are unimportant, it
may well remain so. But when the fillings are delicate and
of value, as in the case of colored glass, finely wrought
tracery, or sculpture, such as we shall often find occupying
the tympanum of doorways, some protection becomes neces-
sary against the run of the rain down the walls, and back by
the bevel of the aperture to the joints or surface of the fill
ings.
§ n. The first and simplest mode of obtaining this is by
channelling the jambs and arch head ; and this is the chief
practical service of aperture mouldings, which are otherwise
entirely decorative. But as this very decorative character
renders them unfit to be made channels for rain water, it is
well to add some external roofing to the aperture, which may
protect it from the run of all the rain, except that which
necessarily beats into its own area. This protection, in its
most usual form, is a mere dripstone moulding carried over or
round the head of the aperture. But this is, in reality, only a
contracted form of a true roof, projecting from the wall over
the aperture ; and all protections of apertures whatsoever are
to be conceived as portions of small roofs, attached to the wall
behind ; and supported by it, so long as their scale admits of
their being so with safety, and afterwards in such manner
as may be most expedient. The proper forms qf these,
and modes of their support, are to be the subject of our final
enquiry.
196
XVIII. PROTECTION OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTION
Fig. XLVHI.
§ in. Respecting their proper form we need not stay long
in doubt. A deep gable is evidently the best for throwing o&
rain ; even a low gable being better than a high arch. Flat
roofs, therefore, may only be used when the
nature of the building renders the gable
unsightly ; as when there is not room for it
between the stories ; or when the object is
rather shade than protection from rain, as
often in verandahs and balconies. But for
general service the gable is the proper and
natural form, and may be taken as repre-
sentative of the rest. Then this gable may
either project unsupported from the wall, &,
Fig. XLVIIL, or be carried by brackets or
spurs, 5, or by walls or shafts, c, which shafts
or walls may themselves be, in windows,
carried on a sill ; and this, in its turn, sup-
ported by brackets or spurs. We shall glance
at the applications of each of these forms in
order.
§ iv. There is not much variety in the
case of the first, a, Fig. XLVIIL In the
Cumberland and border cottages the door is
generally protected by two pieces of slate
arranged in a gable, giving the purest possible type of the first
form. In elaborate architecture such a projection hardly ever
occurs, and in large architecture cannot with safety occur,
without brackets ; but by cutting away the greater part of the
projection, we shall arrive at the idea of a plain gabled cor-
nice, of which a perfect example will be found in Plate VII.
of the folio series. With this first complete form we may
.-i^soc.iate the rude, single, projecting, pent-house roof ; im-
perfect, because either it must be level and the water
lodge lazily upon it, or throw off the drip upon the persons
entering.
§ v. 2. 5, Fig. XLVIIL This is a most beautiful and
natural type, and is found in all good architecture, from the
CONSTRUCTION. XVIII. PROTECTION OF APERTURE.
197
Fig. XLIX.
highest to the most humble : it is a frequent form of cottage
door, more especially when carried
on spurs, being of peculiarly easy
construction in wood : as applied
to large architecture, it can evi-
dently be built, in its boldest and
simplest form, either of wood only,
or on a scale which will admit of
its sides being each a single slab of
stone. If so large as to require
jointed masonry, the gabled sides
will evidently require support, and
an arch must be thrown across un-
der them, as in Fig. XLIX., from
Fiesole.
If we cut the projection gradually down, we arrive at the
common Gothic gable dripstone carried on small brackets,
carved into bosses, heads, or some other ornamental form ; the
sub-arch in such case being useless, is removed or coincides with
the arch head of the aperture.
§ vi. 3. <?, Fig. XLYIII. Substituting walls or pillars for
the brackets, we may carry the projection as far out as we
choose, and form the perfect porch, either of the cottage or
village church, or of the cathedral. As we enlarge the struc-
ture, however, certain modifications of form become necessary,
owing to the increased boldness of the required supporting
arch. For, as the lower end of the gabled roof and of the
arch cannot coincide, we have necessarily above the shafts one
of the two forms a or £>, in Fig. L., of which the latter is
clearly the best, requiring less masonry and shorter roofing ;
and when the arch becomes so large as to cause a heavy lateral
thrust, it may become necessary to provide for its farther safe-
ty by pinnacles, c.
This last is the perfect type of aperture protection. None
other can ever be invented so good. It is that once employed
by Giotto in the cathedral of Florence, and torn down by the
proveditore, Benedetto TTguccione, to erect a Renaissance front
198
XVIII. PROTECTION" OF APERTURE. CONSTRUCTION.
instead ; and another such has been destroyed, not long since,
in Venice, the porch of the church of St. Apollinare, also to
put up some Renaissance upholstery : for Renaissance, as if it
were not nuisance enough in the mere fact of its own exist-
ence, appears invariably as a beast of prey, and founds itself on
the ruin of all that is best and noblest. Many such porches,
however, happily still exist in Italy, and are among its princi-
pal glories.
Fig. L.
§ vn. When porches of this kind, carried by walls, are
placed close together, as in cases where there are many and
large entrances to a cathedral front, they would, in their gen-
eral form, leave deep and uncomfortable intervals, in which
damp would lodge and grass grow ; and there would be a pain-
ful feeling in approaching the door in the midst of a crowd,
as if some of them might miss the real doors, and be driven
into the intervals, and embayed there. Clearly it will be a
natural and right expedient, in such cases, to open the walls of
the porch wider, so that they may correspond in slope, or near-
ly so, with the bevel of the doorway, and either meet each
other in the intervals, or have the said intervals closed up with
an intermediate wall, so that nobody may get embayed in
them. The porches will thus be united, and form one range
of great open gulphs or caverns, ready to receive all comers,
and direct the current of the crowd into the narrower en-
trances. As the lateral thrust of the arches is now met by
each other, the pinnacles, if there were any, must be removed,
and waterspouts placed between each arch to discharge the
double drainage of the gables. This is the form of all the
CONSTRUCTION. XVIII. PROTECTION OF APERTURE. 199
noble northern porches, without exception, best represented by
that of Rheims.
§ vni. Contracted conditions of the pinnacle porch are
beautifully used in the doors of the cathedral of Florence ;
and the entire arrangement, in its most perfect form, as adapted
to window protection and decoration, is applied by Giotto with
inconceivable exquisiteness in the windows of the campanile ;
those of the cathedral itself being all of the same type.
Various singular and delightful conditions of it are applied in
Italian domestic architecture (in the Broletto of Monza very
quaintly), being associated with balconies for speaking to the
people, and passing into pulpits. In the north we glaze the
sides of such projections, and they become bow-windows, the
shape of roofing being then nearly immaterial and very fan-
tastic, often a conical cap. All these conditions of window
protection, being for real service, are endlessly delightful (and
I believe the beauty of the balcony, protected by an open
canopy supported by light shafts, never yet to have been
properly worked out). But the Renaissance architects de-
stroyed all of them, and introduced the magnificent and witty
Roman invention of a model of a Greek pediment, with its
cornices of monstrous thickness, bracketed up above the win-
dow. The horizontal cornice of the pediment is thus useless,
and of course, therefore, retained ; the protection to the head
of the window being constructed on the principle of a hat with
its crown sewn up. But the deep and dark triangular cavity
thus obtained affords farther opportunity for putting ornament
out of sight, of which the Renaissance architects are not slow
to avail themselves.
A more rational condition is the complete pediment with a
couple of shafts, or pilasters, carried on a bracketed sill ; and
the windows of this kind, which have been well designed, are
perhaps the best things which the Renaissance schools have
produced : those of Whitehall are, in their way, exceedingly
beautiful ; and those of the Palazzo Ricardi at Florence, in
their simplicity and sublimity, are scarcely unworthy of their
reputed designer, Michael Angelo.
CHAPTER XIX.
SUPERIMPOSITION.
§ i. THE reader has now some knowledge of every feature
of all possible architecture. Whatever the nature of the
building which may be submitted to his criticism, if it be an
edifice at all, if it be anything else than a mere heap of stones
like a pyramid or breakwater, or than a large stone hewn into
shape, like an obelisk, it will be instantly and easily resolvable
into some of the parts which we have been hitherto consider-
ing : its pinnacles will separate themselves into their small shafts
and roofs ; its supporting members into shafts and arches, or
walls penetrated by apertures of various shape, and supported
by various kinds of buttresses. Respecting each of these
several features I am certain that the reader feels himself pre-
pared, by understanding their plain function, to form some-
thing like a reasonable and definite judgment, whether they
be good or bad ; and this right judgment of parts will, in most
cases, lead him to just reverence or condemnation of the whole.
§ n. The various modes in which these parts are capable
of combination, and the merits of buildings of different form
and expression, are evidently not reducible into lists, nor to
be estimated by general laws. The nobility of each building
depends on its special fitness for its own purposes ; and these
purposes vary with every climate, every soil, and every national
custom : nay, there were never, probably, two edifices erected
in which some accidental difference of condition did not
require some difference of plan or of structure; so that,
respecting plan and distribution of parts, I do not hope to
collect any universal law of right ; but there are a few points
necessary to be noticed respecting the means by which height
CONSTRUCTION. XIX. SUPERIMPOSITION. 201
is attained in buildings of various plans, and the expediency
and methods of superimposition of one story or tier of archi-
tecture above another.
§ in. For, in the preceding inquiry, I have always supposed
either that a single shaft would reach to the top of the building,
or that the farther height required might he added in plain
wall above the heads of the arches ; whereas it may often be
rather expedient to complete the entire lower series of arches,
or linish the lower wall, with a bold string course or cornice,
and build another series of shafts, or another wall, on the top
of it.
§ iv. This superimposition is seen in its simplest form in the
interior shafts of a Greek temple ; and it has been largely used
in nearly all countries where buildings have been meant for
real service. Outcry has often been raised against it, but the
thing is so sternly necessary that it has always forced itself into
acceptance ; and it would, therefore, be merely losing time to
refute the arguments of those who have attempted its dispar-
agement. Thus far, however, they have reason on their side,
that if a building can be kept in one grand mass, without
.sacrificing either its visible or real adaptation to its objects, it
is not well to divide it into stories until it has reached propor-
tions too large to be justly measured by the eye. It ought
then to be divided in order to mark its bulk ; and decorative
divisions are often possible, which rather increase than destroy
the expression of general unity.
>J v. Superimposition, wisely practised, is of two kinds,
directly contrary to each other, of weight on lightness, and
of lightness on weight ; while the superimposition of weight
on weight, or lightness on lightness, is nearly always wrong.
1. Weight on lightness : I do not say weight on weakness.
The superimposition of the human body on its limbs I call
weight on lightness : the superimposition of the branches on
a tree trunk I call lightness on weight : in both cases the sup-
port is fully adequate to the work, the form of support being
regulated by the differences of requirement. Nothing in
architecture is half so painful as the apparent want of sufficient
202 XIX. SUPERIMPOSITION.
support when the weight above is visibly passive: for all
buildings are not passive; some seem to rise by their own
strength, or float by their own buoyancy ; a dome requires no
visibility of support, one fancies it supported by the air. But
passive architecture without help for its passiveness is unen-
durable. In a lately built house, No. 86, in Oxford Street,
three huge stone pillars in the second story are carried appar-
ently by the edges of three sheets of plate glass in the first. I
hardly know anything to match the painfulness of this and
some other of our shop structures, in which the iron-work is
concealed ; nor, even when it is apparent, can the eye ever feel
satisfied of their security, when built, as at present, with fifty or
sixty feet of wall above a rod of iron not the width of this page.
§ vi. The proper forms of this superimposition of weight
on lightness have arisen, for the most part, from the necessity
or desirableness, in many situations, of elevating the inhabited
portions of buildings considerably above the ground level,
especially those exposed to damp or inundation, and the con-
sequent abandonment of the ground story as unserviceable, or
else the surrender of it to public purposes. Thus, in many
market and town houses, the ground story is left open as a
general place of sheltered resort, and the enclosed apartments
raised on pillars. In almost all warm countries the luxury,
almost the necessity, of arcades to protect the passengers from
the sun, and the desirableness of large space in the rooms
above, lead to the same construction. Throughout the Vene-
tian islet group, the houses seem to have been thus, in the first
instance, universally built, all the older palaces appearing to
have had the rez de chaussee perfectly open, the upper parts
of the palace being sustained on magnificent arches, and the
smaller houses sustained in the same manner on wooden piers,
still retained in many of the cortiles, and exhibited character-
istic ally throughout the main street of Murano. As ground
became more valuable and house-room more scarce, these
ground-floors were enclosed with wall veils between the origi-
nal shafts, and so remain ; but the type of the structure of the
entire city is Driven in the Ducal Palace.
CONSTRUCTION. XIX. SUPER1MPOSITIOJST. 203
§ vii. To this kind of superimposition we owe the most
picturesque street effects throughout the world, and the most
graceful, as well as the most grotesque, buildings, from the
many-shafted fantasy of the Alhambra (a building as beautiful
in disposition as it is base in ornamentation) to the four-legged
stolidity of the Swiss Chalet :* nor these only, but great part
of the effect of our cathedrals, in which, necessarily, the close
triforium and clerestory walls are superimposed on the nave
piers ; perhaps with most majesty where with greatest sim-
plicity, as in the old basilican types, and the noble cathedral
of Pisa.
§ vni. In order to the delightfulness and security of all
such arrangements, this law must be observed : — that in pro-
portion to the height of wall above them, the shafts are to
be short.- You may take your given height of wall, and turn
any quantity of that wall into shaft that you like ; but you
must not turn it all into tall shafts, and then put more wall
above. Thus, having a house five stories high, you may turn
the lower story into shafts, and leave the four stories in wall ;
or the two lower stories into shafts, and leave three in wall ;
but, whatever you add to the shaft, you must take from the
wall. Then also, of course, the shorter the shaft the thicker
will be its proportionate, if not its actual, diameter. In the
Ducal Palace of Venice the shortest shafts are always the
thickest, f
§ ix. The second kind of superimposition, lightness on
weight, is, in its most necessary use, of stories of houses one
upon another, where, of course, wall veil is required in the
lower ones, and has to support wall veil above, aided by as
much of shaft structure as is attainable within the given
* I have spent much of my life among the Alps; but I never pass, without
some feeling of new surprise, the Chalet, standing on its four pegs (each
topped with a flat stone), balanced in the fury of Alpine winds. It is not,
perhaps, generally known that the chief use of the arrangement is not so
much to raise the building above the snow, as to get a draught of wind
beneath it, which may prevent the drift from rising against its sides.
f Appendix 20, " Shafts of the Ducal Palace."
£04 XIX. SUI'EKIMPOSITION. 'CONSTRUCTION.
limits. The greatest, if not the only, merit of the Roman
and Renaissance Venetian architects is their graceful manage-
ment of this kind of superimposition ; sometimes of complete
courses of external arches and shafts one above the other ;
sometimes of apertures with intermediate cornices at the levels
of the floors, and large shafts from top to bottom of the build-
ing ; always observing that the upper stories shall be at once
lighter and richer than the lower ones. The entire value of
such buildings depends upon the perfect and easy expression
of the relative strength of the stories, and the unity obtained
by the varieties of their proportions, while yet the fact of
superimposition and separation by floors is frankly told.
§ x. In churches and other buildings in which there is no
separation by floors, another kind of pure shaft superimposition
is often used, in order to enable the builder to avail himself of
short and slender shafts. It has been noted that these are
often easily attainable, and of precious materials, when shafts
large enough and strong enough to do the work at once, could
not be obtained except at unjustifiable expense, and of coarse
stone. The architect has then no choice but to arrange his
work in successive stories ; either frankly completing the arch
work and cornice of each, and beginning a new story above it,
which is the honester and nobler way, or else tying the stories
together by supplementary shafts from floor to roof, — the
general practice of the Northern Gothic, and one which, unless
most gracefully managed, gives the look of a scaffolding, with
cross-poles tied to its uprights, to the whole clerestory wall.
The best method is that which avoids all chance of the upright
shafts being supposed continuous, by increasing their number
and changing their places in the upper stories, so that the
whole work branches from the ground like a tree. This is the
superimposition, of the Byzantine and the Pisan Romanesque ;
the most beautiful examples of it being, I think, the Southern
portico of St. Mark's, the church of S. Giovanni at Pistoja,
and the apse of the cathedral of Pisa. In Renaissance work
the two principles are equally distinct, though the shafts are
(I think) always one above the other. The reader may see one
CONSTRUCTION. XIX. SUPKKIM POSITION. 205
of the best examples of the separately superimposed story in
Whitehall (and another far inferior in St. Paul's), and by turn-
ing himself round at Whitehall may compare with it the system
of connecting shafts in the Treasury ; though this is a singu-
larly bad example, the window cornices of the first floor being
like shelves in a cupboard, and cutting the mass of the build-
ing in two, in spite of the pillars.
§ xi. But this superimpositioii of lightness on weight is
still more distinctly the system of many buildings of the kind
which I have above called Architecture of Position, that is to
say, architecture of which the greater part is intended merely
to keep something in a peculiar position ; as in light-houses,
and many towers and belfries. The subject of spire and tower
architecture, however, is so interesting and extensive, that I
have thoughts of writing a detached essay upon it, and, at all
events, cannot enter upon it here : but this much is enough for
the reader to note for our present purpose, that, although many
towers do in reality stand on piers or shafts, as the central
towers of cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and the
real structure of the best and strongest, are the elevation of
gradually diminishing weight on massy or even solid founda-
tion. Nevertheless, since the tower is in its origin a building
for strength of defence, and faithfulness of watch, rather than
splendor of aspect, its true expression is of just so much dimi-
nution of weight upwards as may be necessary to its fully bal-
anced strength, not a jot more. There must be no lighj-head-
edness in your noble tower : impregnable foundation, wrathftfl
crest, with the vizor down, and the dark vigilance seen through
the clefts of it ; not the filigree crown or embroidered cap.
No towers are so grand as the square-browed ones, with massy
cornices and rent battlements : next to these come the fantastic
towers, with their various forms of steep roof ; the best, not
the cone, but the plain gable thrown very high ; last of all in
my mind (of good towers), those with spires or crowns,
though these, of course, are fittest for ecclesiastical purposes,
and capable of the richest ornament. The paltry four or eight
pinnacled things we call towers in England (as in York
2Q6 XIX. SUPERIMPOSITION. CONSTRUCTION.
Minster), are mere confectioner's Gothic, and not worth
classing.
§ xii. But, in all of them, this I believe to be a point of
chief necessity,— that they shall seem to stand, and shall verily
stand, in their own strength ; not by help of buttresses nor
artful balancings on this side and on that. Your noble tower
must need no help, must be sustained by no crutches, must
give place to no suspicion of decrepitude. Its office may be
to withstand war, look forth for tidings, or to point to heaven :
but it must have in its own walls the strength to do this ; it is
to be itself a bulwark, not to be sustained by other bulwarks ;
to rise and look forth, " the tower of Lebanon that looketh
toward Damascus," like a stern sentinel, not like a child held
up in its nurse's arms. A tower may, indeed, have a
kind of buttress, a projection, or subordinate tower at each of
its angles ; but these are to its main body like the satellites to
a shaft, joined with its strength, and associated in its upright-
ness, part of the tower itself : exactly in the proportion in
which they lose their massive unity with its body and assume
the form of true buttress walls set on its angles, the tower
loses its dignity.
§ xin. These two characters, then, are common to all noble
towers, however otherwise different in purpose or feature,—
the first, that they rise from massy foundation to lighter sum-
mits, frowning with battlements perhaps, but yet evidently
more pierced and thinner in wall than beneath, and, in most
ecclesiastical examples, divided into rich open work : the
second, that whatever the form of the tower, it shall not ap-
pear to stand by help of buttresses. It follows from the first
condition, as indeed it would have followed from ordinary
aesthetic requirements, that we shall have continual variation
in the arrangements of the stories, and the larger number of
apertures towards the top, — a condition exquisitely carried out
in the old Lombardic towers, in which, however small they
may be, the number of apertures is always regularly increased
towards the summit; generally one window in the lowest
stories, two in the second, then three, five, and six ; often, also,
CONSTRUCTION. XIX. SUPERIMPOSITION. 20?
one, two, four, and six, with beautiful symmetries of placing,
not at present to our purpose. We may sufficiently exemplify
the general laws of tower building by placing side by side,
drawn to the same scale, a mediaeval tower, in which most of
them are simply and unaffectedly observed, and one of our
own modern towers, in which every one of them is violated,
in small space, convenient for comparison. (Plate VI.)
§ xiv. The old tower is that of St. Mark's at Venice, not a
very perfect example, for its top is Renaissance, but as good
Renaissance as there is in Venice ; and it is fit for our present
purpose, because it owes none of its effect to ornament. It is
built as simply as it well can be to answer its purpose : no
buttresses ; no external features whatever, except some huts at
the base, and the loggia, afterwards built, which, on purpose,
I have not drawn ; one bold square mass of brickwork ; dou-
ble walls, with an ascending inclined plane between them, with
apertures as small as possible, and these only in necessary
places, giving just the light required for ascending the stair or
slope, not a ray more ; and the weight of the whole relieved
only by the double pilasters on the sides, sustaining small
arches at the top of the mass, each decorated with the scallop
or cockle shell, presently to be noticed as frequent in Renais-
sance ornament, and here, for once, thoroughly wrell applied.
Then, when the necessary height is reached, the belfry is left
open, as in the ordinary Romanesque campanile, only the shafts
more slender, but severe and simple, and the whole crowned
by as much spire as the tower would carry, to render it more
serviceable as a landmark. The arrangement is repeated in
numberless campaniles throughout Italy.
§ xv. The one beside it is one of those of the lately built
college at Edinburgh. I have not taken it as worse than many
others (just as I have not taken the St. Mark's tower as better
than many others) ; but it happens to compress our British
system of tower building into small space. The Venetian
tower rises 350 feet,* and has no buttresses, though built of
* I have taken Professor Willis's estimate; there being discrepancy
among various statements. I did not take the trouble to measure the
£08 XIX. H17PERIMPOSITION. CONSTRUCTION.
brick ; the British tower rises 121 feet, and is built of stone,
but is supposed to be incapable of standing without two huge
buttresses on each angle. The St. Mark's tower has a high
sloping roof, but carries it simply, requiring no pinnacles at
its angles ; the British tower has no visible roof, but has four
pinnacles for mere ornament. The Venetian tower has its
lightest part at the top, and is massy at the base ; the British
tower has its lightest part at the base, and shuts up its windows
into a mere arrowslit at the top. What the tower wras built
for at all must therefore, it seems to me, remain a mystery to
every beholder ; for surely no studious inhabitant of its upper
chambers will be conceived to be pursuing his employments
by the light of the single chink on each side ; and, had it been
intended for a belfry, the sound of its bells would have been
as effectually prevented from getting out, as the light from
getting in.
§ xvi. In connexion with the subject of towers and of
superimposition, one other feature, not conveniently to be
omitted from our house-building, requires a moment's notice,
— the staircase.
In modern houses it can hardly be considered an architec-
tural feature, and is nearly always an ugly one, from its being
apparently without support. And here I may not unfitly note
the important distinction, which perhaps ought to have been
dwelt upon in some places before now, between the marvellous
and the perilous in apparent construction. There are many
edifices which are awful or admirable in their height, and
lightness, and boldness of form, respecting which, neverthe-
less, we have no fear that they should fall. Many a mighty
dome and aerial aisle and arch may seem to stand, as I said,
by miracle, but by steadfast miracle notwithstanding ; there is
no fear that the miracle should cease. We have a sense of
inherent power in them, or, at all events, of concealed and
mysterious provision for their safety. But in leaning towers,
height myself, the building being one which does not come within the
range of our future inquiries; and its exact dimensions, even here, are of
no importance as respects the question at issue.
CONSTRUCTION. XIX. SUPERIM POSITION. 209
as of Pisa or Bologna, and in much minor architecture, pas-
sive architecture, of modern times, we feel that there is but a
chance between the building and destruction ; that there is no
miraculous life in it, which animates it into security, but an
obstinate j perhaps vain, resistance to immediate danger. The
appearance of this is often as strong in small things as in
large ; in the sounding-boards of pulpits, for instance, when
sustained by a single pillar behind them, so that one is in
dread, during the whole sermon, of the preacher being crushed
if a single nail should give way; and again, the modern geo-
metrical unsupported staircase. There is great disadvantage,
also, in the arrangement of this latter, when room is of value ;
and excessive ungracefulness in its awkward divisions of the
passage walls, or windows. In mediaeval architecture, where
there was need of room, the staircase was spiral, and enclosed
generally in an exterior tower, which added infinitely to the
picturesque effect of the building ; nor was the stair itself
steeper nor less commodious than the ordinary compressed
straight staircase of a modern dwelling-house. Many of the
richest towers of domestic architecture owe their origin to this
arrangement. In Italy the staircase is often in the open air,
surrounding the interior court /of the house, and giving access
to its various galleries or loggias : in this case it is almost al-
ways supported by bold shafts and arches, and forms a most
interesting additional feature of the cortile, but presents no.
peculiarity of construction requiring our present examination.
We may here, therefore, close our inquiries into the sub-
ject of construction ; nor must the reader be dissatisfied with
the simplicity or apparent barrenness of their present results.
He will find, when he begins to apply them, that they are of
more value than they now seem ; but I have studiously avoided
letting myself be drawn into any intricate question, because I
wished to ask from the reader only so much attention as it
seemed that even the most indifferent would not be unwilling
to pay to a subject which is hourly becoming of greater prac-
tical interest. Evidently it would have been altogether beside
the purpose of this essay to have entered deeply into the ab-
21Q XIX. SUPERIMPOSITION. CONSTRUCTION.
stract science, or closely into the mechanical detail, of con,
struction : both have been illustrated by writers far more
capable of doing so than I, and may be studied at the reader's
discretion ; all that has been here endeavored was the leading
him to appeal to something like definite principle, and refer
to the easily intelligible laws of convenience and necessity,
whenever he found his judgment likely to be overborne by
authority on the one hand, or dazzled by novelty on the other.
If he has time to do more, and to follow out in all their bril-
liancy the mechanical inventions of the great engineers and
architects of the day, I, in some sort, envy him, but must part
company with him : for my way lies not along the viaduct,
but down the quiet valley which its arches cross, nor through
the tunnel, but up the hill-side which its cavern darkens, to
see what gifts Nature will give us, and with what imagery she
will fill our thoughts, that the stones we have ranged in rude
order may now be touched with life ; nor lose for ever, in
their hewn nakedness, the voices they had of old, when the
valley streamlet eddied round them in palpitating light, and
the winds of the hill-side shook over them the shadows of the
fern.
CHAPTER XX.
THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT.
§ i. WE enter now on the second division of our subject.
We have no more to do with heavy stones and hard lines ; we
are going to be happy : to look round in the world and dis-
cover (in a serious manner always, however, and under a sense
of responsibility) what we like best in it, and to enjoy the same
at our leisure : to gather it, examine it, fasten all we can of it
into imperishable forms, and put it where we may see it for
ever.
This is to decorate architecture.
§ ii. There are, therefore, three steps in the process : first,
to find out in a grave manner what we like best ; secondly,
to put as much of this as we can (which is little enough) into
form; thirdly, to put this formed abstraction into a proper
place.
And we have now, therefore, to make these three inquiries
in succession : first, what we like, or what is the right material
of ornament ; then how we are to present it, or its right treat-
ment ; then, where we are to put it, or its right place. I think
I can answer that first inquiry in this Chapter, the second in-
quiry in the next Chapter, and the third I shall answer in a
more diffusive manner, by taking up in succession the several
parts of architecture above distinguished, and rapidly noting
the kind of ornament fittest for each.
§ in. I said in chapter II. § xiv., that all noble ornamenta-
tion was the expression of man's delight in God's work. This
implied that there was an ignoble ornamentation, which was
the expression of man's delight in his own. There is such a
school, chiefly degraded classic and Renaissance, in which the
212 XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
ornament is composed of imitations of tilings made by man. I
think, before inquiring what we like best of God's work, we
had better get rid of all this imitation of man's, and be quite
sure we do not like that.
§ rv. "We shall rapidly glance, then, at the material of deco-
ration hence derived. And now I cannot, as I before have
done respecting construction, convince the reader of one thing
being wrong, and another right. I have confessed as much
again and again ; I am now only to make appeal to him, and
cross-question him, whether he really does like things or not.
If he likes the ornament on the base of the column of the Place
Vendome, composed of Wellington boots and laced frock coats,
I cannot help it ; I can only say I differ from him, and don't
like it. And if, therefore, I speak dictatorially, and say this
is base, or degraded, or ugly, I mean only that I believe men
of the longest experience in the matter would either think it
so, or would be prevented from thinking it so only by some
morbid condition of their minds ; and I believe that the reader,
if he examine himself candidly, will usually agree in my
statements.
§ v. The subjects of ornament found in man's work may
properly fall into four heads : 1. Instruments of art, agriculture,
and war ; armor, and dress ; 2. Drapery ; 3. Shipping ; 4.
Architecture itself.
1. Instruments, armor, and dress.
The custom of raising trophies on pillars, and of dedicating
arms in temples, appears to have first suggested the idea of
employing them as the subjects of sculptural ornament :
thenceforward, this abuse has been chiefly characteristic of
classical architecture, whether true or Renaissance. Armor is
a noble thing in its proper service and subordination to the
body ; so is an animal's hide on its back ; but a heap of cast
skins, or of shed armor, is alike unworthy of all regard or imi-
tation. We owe much true sublimity, and more of delightful
picturesqueness, to the introduction of armor both in painting
and sculpture : in poetry it is better still,— Homer's undressed
Achilles is less grand than his crested and shielded Achilles,
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 213
though Phidias would rather have had him naked ; in all medi-
aeval painting, arms, like all other parts of costume, are treated
with exquisite care and delight ; in the designs of Leonardo,
Raffaelle, and Perugino, the armor sometimes becomes almost
too conspicuous from the rich and endless invention bestowed
upon it ; while Titian and Rubens seek in its flash what the
Milanese and Perugian sought in its form, sometimes subordi-
nating heroism to the light of the steel, while the great
designers wearied themselves in its elaborate fancy.
But all this labor was given to the living, not the dead
armor ; to the shell with its animal in it, not the cast shell of
the beach ; and even so, it was introduced more sparingly by
the good sculptors than the good painters ; for the former felt,
and with justice, that the painter had the power of conquering
the over prominence of costume by the expression and color
of the countenance, and that by the darkness of the eye, and
glow of the cheek, he could always conquer the gloom and the
flash of the mail ; but they could hardly, by any boldness or
energy of the marble features, conquer the forwardness and
conspicuousness of the sharp armorial forms. Their armed
figures were therefore almost always subordinate, their principal
figures draped or naked, and their choice of subject was much
influenced by this feeling of necessity. But the Renaissance
sculptors displayed the love of a Camilla for the mere crest and
plume. Paltry and false alike in every feeling of their nar-
rowed minds, they attached themselves, not only to costume
without the person, but to the pettiest details of the costume
itself. They could not describe Achilles, but they could de-
scribe his shield ; a shield like those of dedicated spoil, without
a handle, never to be waved in the face of war. And then we
have helmets and lances, banners and swords, sometimes with
men to hold them, sometimes without ; but always chiselled
with a tailor-like love of the chasing or the embroidery, — show
helmets of the stage, no Yulcan work on them, no heavy ham-
mer strokes, no Etna fire in the metal of them, nothing but
pasteboard crests and high feathers. And these, cast together
in disorderly heaps, or grinning vacantly over key-stones, form
2^4 XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
one of the leading decorations of Renaissance architecture, and
that one of the best ; for helmets and lances, however loosely
laid, are better than violins, and pipes, and books of music,
which were another of the Palladian and Sansovinian sources
of ornament. Supported by ancient authority, the abuse soon
became a matter of pride, and since it was easy to copy a heap
of cast clothes, but difficult to manage an arranged design of
human figures, the indolence of architects came to the aid of
their affectation, until by the moderns we find the practice car-
ried out to its most interesting results, and, as above noted, a
large pair of boots occupying the principal place in the bas-
reliefs on the base of the Colonne Vendome.
§ vi. A less offensive, because singularly grotesque, example
of the abuse at its height, occurs in the Hotel des Invalides,
where the dormer windows are suits of armor down to the
bottom of the corselet, crowned by the helmet, and with the
window in the middle of the breast.
Instruments of agriculture and the arts are of less frequent
occurrence, except in hieroglyphics, and other work, where
they are not employed as ornaments, but represented for the
sake of accurate knowledge, or. as symbols. Wherever they
have purpose of this kind, they are of course perfectly right ;
but they are then part of the building's conversation, not con-
ducive to its beauty. The French have managed, with great
dexterity, the representation of the machinery for the elevation
of their Luxor obelisk, now sculptured on its base.
$ vii. 2. Drapery. I have already spoken of the error of
introducing drapery, as such, for ornament, in the " Seven
Lamps." I may here note a curious instance of the abuse in
the church of the Jesuiti at Venice (Renaissance). On first
entering you suppose that the church, being in a poor quarter
of the city, has been somewhat meanly decorated by heavy
green and white curtains of an ordinary upholsterer's pattern :
on looking closer, they are discovered to be of marble, with the
green pattern inlaid. Another remarkable instance is in a piece
of not altogether unworthy architecture at Paris (Rue Rivoli),
where the columns are supposed to be decorated with images
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 215
of handkerchiefs tied in a stout knot round the middle of them.
This shrewd invention bids fair to become a new order. Mul-
titudes of massy curtains and various upholstery, more or less
in imitation of that of the drawing-room, are carved and gilt,
in wood or stone, about the altars and other theatrical portions
of Romanist churches ; but from these coarse and senseless vul-
garities we may well turn, in all haste, to note, with respect as
well as regret, one of the errors of the great school of Niccolo
Pisano, — an error so full of feeling as to be sometimes all but
redeemed, and altogether forgiven, — the sculpture, namely, of
curtains around the recumbent statues upon tombs, curtains
which angels are represented as withdrawing, to gaze upon the
faces of those who are at rest. For some time the idea was
simply and slightly expressed, and though there was always a
painfulness in finding the shafts of stone, which were felt to be
the real supporters of the canopy, represented as of yielding
drapery, yet the beauty of the angelic figures, and the tender-
ness of the thought, disarmed all animadversion. But the
scholars of the Pisani, as usual, caricatured when they were
unable to .invent ; and the quiet curtained canopy became a
huge marble tent, with a pole in the centre of it. Thus vul-
garised, the idea itself soon disappeared, to make room for urns,
torches, and weepers, and the other modern paraphernalia of
the churchyard.
§ vm. 3. Shipping. I have allowed this kind of subject to
form a separate head, owing to the importance of rostra in
Roman decoration, and to the continual occurrence of naval
subjects in modern monumental bas-relief. Mr. Fergusson
says, somewhat doubtfully, that he perceives a "kind of
beauty" in a ship : T say; without any manner of doubt, that
a ship is one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of
the noblest ; nor do I know any lines, out of divine work, so
lovely as those of the head of a ship, or even as the sweep of
the .timbers of a small boat, not a race boat, a mere floating
chisel, but a broad, strong, sea boat, able to breast a wave and
break it : and yet, with all this beauty, ships cannot be made
subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in particular delight
2^g XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECOBATION.
beneath the pediments of the Admiralty ; nor does scenery of
shipping ever become prominent in bas-relief without destroy-
ing it : witness the base of the Nelson pillar. It may be, and
must be sometimes, introduced in severe subordination to the
figure subject, but just enough to indicate the scene ; sketched
in the lightest lines on the background; never with any
attempt at realisation, never with any equality to the force of
the figures, unless the whole purpose of the subject be pictu-
resque. I shall explain this exception presently, in speaking
of imitative architecture.
§ ix. There is one piece of a ship's fittings, however, which
may be thought to have obtained acceptance as a constant
element of architectural ornament, — the cable : it is not, how-
ever, the cable itself, but its abstract form, a group of twisted
lines (which a cable only exhibits in common with many natu-
ral objects), which is indeed beautiful as an ornament. Make
the resemblance complete, give to the stone the threads and
character of the cable, and you may, perhaps, regard the sculp-
ture with curiosity, but never more with admiration. Consider
the effect of the base of the statue of King William IV. at
the end of London Bridge.
§ x. 4. Architecture itself. The erroneous use of armor, or
dress, or instruments, or shipping, as decorative subject, is
almost exclusively confined to bad architecture — Roman or
Renaissance. But the false use of architecture itself, as an
ornament of architecture, is conspicuous even in the mediaeval
work of the best times, and is a grievous fault in some of its
noblest examples.
It is, therefore, of great importance to note exactly at what
point this abuse begins, and in what it consists.
§ xi. In all bas-relief, architecture may be introduced as an
explanation of the scene in which the figures act ; but with
more or less prominence in the inverse ratio of the importance
of the figures.
The metaphysical reason of this is, that where the figures
are of great value and beauty, the mind is supposed to be en-
gaged wholly with them ; and it is an impertinence to disturb
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 217
its contemplation of them by any minor features whatever.
As the figures become of less value, and are regarded with less
intensity, accessory subjects may be introduced, such as the
thoughts may have leisure for.
Thus, if the figures be as large as life, and complete statues,
it is gross vulgarity to carve a temple above them, or distribute
them over sculptured rocks, or lead them up steps into pyra-
mids : I need hardly instance Canova's works,* and the Dutch
pulpit groups, with fishermen, boats, and nets, in the midst of
church naves.
If the figures be in bas-relief, though as large as life, the
scene may be explained by lightly traced outlines : this is
admirably done in the Nmevite marbles.
If the figures be in bas-relief, or even alto-relievo, but less
than life, and if their purpose is rather to enrich a space and
produce picturesque shadows, than to draw the thoughts
entirely to themselves, the scenery in which they act may be-
come prominent. The most exquisite examples of this treat-
ment are the gates of Ghiberti. What would that Madonna
of the Annunciation be, without the little shrine into which
she shrinks back? But all mediaeval work is full of de-
lightful examples of the same kind of treatment : the gates of
hell and of paradise are important pieces, both of explanation
and effect, in all early representations of the last judgment, or
of the descent into Hades. The keys of St. Peter, and the
crushing flat of the devil under his own door, when it is beaten
in, would hardly be understood without the respective gate-
ways above. The best of all the later capitals of the Ducal
Palace of Venice depends for great part of its value on the
richness of a small campanile, which is pointed to proudly by
a small emperor in a turned-up hat, who, the legend informs
us, is " Numa Pompilio, imperador, edifichador di tempi e
chiese."
§ xii. Shipping may be introduced, or rich fancy of vest-
* The admiration of Canova I hold to be one of the most deadly symp-
toms in the civilisation of the upper classes in the present century.
218 XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
merits, crowns, and ornaments, exactly on the same conditions
as architecture ; and if the reader will look back to my defi-
nition of the picturesque in the " Seven Lamps," he will see
why I said, above, that they might only be prominent when
the purpose of the subject was partly picturesque ; that is to
say, when the mind is intended to derive part of its enjoyment
from the parasitical qualities and accidents of the thing, not
from the heart of the thing itself.
And thus, while we must regret the flapping sails in the
death of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, we may yet most heartily
enjoy the sculpture of a storm in one of the bas-reliefs of the
tomb of St. Pietro Martire in the church of St. Eustorgio at
Milan, where thet grouping of the figures is most fancifully
complicated by the under-cut cordage of the vessel.
§ xm. In all these instances, however, observe that the per-
mission to represent the human work as an ornament, is con-
ditional on its being necessary to the representation of a scene,
or explanation of an action. On no terms whatever could any
such subject be independently admissible.
Observe, therefore, the use of manufacture as ornament is —
1. With heroic figure sculpture, not admissible at all.
2. With picturesque figure sculpture, admissible in the
degree of its picturesqueness.
3. Without figure sculpture, not admissible at all.
So also in painting : Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel,
would not have willingly painted a dress of figured damask
or of watered satin ; his was heroic painting, not admitting
accessories.
Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Vandyck, would
be very sorry to part with their figured stuffs and lustrous
silks ; and sorry, observe, exactly in the degree of their pictu-
resque feeling. Should not we also be sorry to have Bishop
Ambrose without his vest, in that picture of the National
Gallery ?
But I think Vandyck would not have liked, on the other
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 219
hand, the vest without the bishop. I much doubt if Titian or
Veronese would have enjoyed going into Waterloo House,
and making studies of dresses upon the counter.
§ xiv. So, therefore, finally, neither architecture nor any
other human work is admissible as an ornament, except in
subordination to figure subject. And this law is grossly and
painfully violated by those curious examples of Gothic, both
early and late, in th'e north, (but late, I think, exclusively, in
Italy,) in which the minor features of the architecture were
composed of small models of the larger : examples which led
the way to a series of abuses materially affecting the life,
strength, and nobleness of the Northern Gothic, — abuses
which no Ninevite, nor Egyptian, nor Greek, nor Byzantine,
nor Italian of the earlier ages would have endured for an
instant, and which strike me with renewed surprise whenever
I pass beneath a portal of thirteenth century Northern Gothic,
associated as they are with manifestations of exquisite feeling
and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges,
Amiens, Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon,
may be noted as conspicuous in error : small models of feudal
towers with diminutive windows and battlements, of cathe-
dral spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed with temple pediments
and nondescript edifices of every kind, are crowded together
over the recess of the niche into a confused fool's cap for the
saint below. Italian Gothic is almost entirely free from the
taint of this barbarism until the Renaissance period, when it
becomes rampant in the cathedral of Como and Certosa of
Pa via ; and at Venice we find the Renaissance churches deco-
rated with models of fortifications like those in the Repository
at Woolwich, or inlaid with mock arcades in pseudo-perspec-
tive, copied from gardeners' paintings at the ends of conser-
vatories.
§ xv. I conclude, then, with the reader's leave, that all
ornament is base which takes for its subject human work, that
it is utterly base, — painful to every rightly-toned mind, without
perhaps immediate sense of the reason, but for a reason pal-
pable enough when we do think of it. For to carve our own
220 XX. THE MATEEIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
work, and set it up for admiration, is a miserable self-com-
placency, a contentment in our own wretched doings, when we
might have been looking at God's doings. And all noble
ornament is the exact reverse of this. It is the expression of
man's delight in God's work.
§ xvi. For observe, the function of ornament is to make
you happy. Now in what are you rightly happy ? Not in
thinking of what you have done yourself ; not in your own
pride, not your own birth ; not in your own being, or your
own will, but in looking at God ; watching what He does,
what He is ; and obeying His law, and yielding yourself to
His will.
You are to be made happy by ornaments ; therefore they
must be the expression of all this. Not copies of your own
handiwork ; ndt boastings of your own grandeur ; not herald-
ries ; not king's arms, nor any creature's arms, but God's arm,
seen in His work. Not manifestation of your delight in your
own laws, or your own liberties, or your own inventions ; but
in divine laws, constant, daily, common laws ; — not Composite
laws, nor Doric laws, nor laws of the five orders, but of the
Ten Commandments.
§ xvii. Then the proper material of ornament will be what-
ever God has created ; and its proper treatment, that which
seems in accordance with or symbolical of His laws. And,
for material, we shall therefore have, first, the abstract lines
which are most frequent in nature ; and then, from lower to
higher, the whole range of systematised inorganic and organic
forms. We shall rapidly glance in order at their kinds ; and,
however absurd the elemental division of inorganic matter by
the ancients may seem to the modern chemist, it is one so grand
and simple for arrangements of external appearances, that I
shall here follow it ; noticing first, after abstract lines, the
imitable forms of the four elements, of Earth, Water, Fire,
and Air, and then those of animal organisms. It may be con-
venient to the reader to have the order stated in a clear suc-
cession at first, thus : —
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 221
1. Abstract lines.
2. Forms of Earth (Crystals).
3. Forms of Water (Waves).
4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Kays).
5. Forms of Air (Clouds).
6. (Organic forms.) Shells.
7. Fish.
8. Keptiles and insects.
9. Vegetation (A.) Stems and Trunks.
10. Vegetation (B.) Foliage.
11. Birds.
12. Mammalian animals and Man. .
It may be objected that clouds are a form of moisture, not
of air. They are, however, a perfect expression of aerial states
and currents, and may sufficiently well stand for the element
they move in. And I have put vegetation apparently some-
what out of its place, owing to its vast importance as a means
of decoration, and its constant association with birds and men.
§ xvin. 1. Abstract lines. I have not with lines named
also shades and colors, for this evident reason, that there are
no such things as abstract shadows, irrespective of the forms
which exhibit them, and distinguished in their own nature
from each other ; arid that the arrangement of shadows, in
greater or less quantity, or in certain harmonical successions,
is an affair of treatment, not of selection. And when we use
abstract colors, we are in fact using a part of nature herself,
— using a quality of her light, correspondent with that of the
air, to carry sound ; and the arrangement of color in harmo-
nious masses is again a matter of treatment, not selection.
Yet even in this separate art of coloring, as referred to archi-
tecture, it is very notable that the best tints are always those
of natural stones. These can hardly be wrong; I think I
never yet saw an offensive introduction of the natural colors of
marble and precious stones, unless in small mosaics, and in one
or two glaring instances of the resolute determination to pro-
duce something ugly at any cost. On the other hand, I have
222 XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
most assuredly never yet seen a painted building, ancient or
modern, which seemed to me quite right.
§ xix. Our first constituents of ornament will therefore be
abstract lines, that is to say, the most frequent contours of
natural objects, transferred to architectural forms when it is
not right or possible to render such forms distinctly imitative.
For instance, the line or curve of the edge of a leaf may be
accurately given to the edge of a stone, without rendering the
stone in the least like a leaf, or suggestive of a leaf ; and this
the more fully, because the lines of nature are alike in all her
works; simpler or richer in combination, but the same in
character ; and when they are taken out of their combinations
it is impossible to say from which of her works they have been
borrowed, their universal property being that of ever-varying
curvature in the most subtle and subdued transitions, with
peculiar expressions of motion, elasticity, or dependence, which
I have already insisted upon at some length in the chapters on
typical beauty in " Modern Painters." But, that the reader
may here be able to compare them for himself as deduced from
diiferent sources, I have drawn, as accurately as I can, on the
opposite plate, some ten or eleven lines from natural forms of
very diiferent substances and scale : the first, a £>, is in the original,
I think, the most beautiful simple curve I have ever seen in my
life ; it is a curve about three quarters of a mile long, formed
by the surface of a small glacier of the second order, on a spur
of the Aiguille de Blaitiere (Chamouiii). I have merely out-
lined the crags on the right of it, to show their sympathy and
united action with the curve of the glacier, which is of course
entirely dependent on their opposition to its descent ; softened,
however, into unity by the snow, which rarely melts on this
high glacier surface.
The line d c is some mile and a half or two miles long ; it is
part of the flank of the chain of the Dent d'Oche above the
lake of Geneva, one or two of the lines of the higher and more
distant ranges being given in combination with it.
A is a line about four feet long, a branch of spruce fir. I
have taken this tree because it is commonly supposed to be
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 223
stiff and ungraceful ; its outer sprays are, however, more noble
in their sweep than almost any that I know : but this fragment
is seen at great disadvantage, because placed upside down, in
order that the reader may compare its curvatures with c d, e g,
and i k, which are all mountain lines ; e g, about fi ve hundred
feet of the southern edge of the Matterhorn ; i yfc, the entire
slope of the Aiguille Bouchard, from its summit into the valley
of Chamouni, a line some three miles long ; I in is the line of
the side of a willow leaf traced by laying the leaf on the paper ;
n o, one of the innumerable groups of curves at the lip of a
paper Nautilus ; p, a spiral, traced on the paper round a Ser-
pula ; </. /•, the leaf of the Alisma Plantago with its interior
ribs, real size ; s t, the side of a bay-leaf ; u w, of a salvia leaf :
and it is to be carefully noted that these last curves, being
never intended by nature to be seen singly, are more heavy and
less agreeable than any of the others which would be seen as
independent lines. But all agree in their character of change-
ful curvature, the mountain and glacier lines only excelling the
rest in delicacy and richness of transition.
§ xx. Why lines of this kind are beautiful, I endeavored to
show in the " Modern Painters ;" but one point, there omitted,
may be mentioned here, — that almost all these lines are expres-
sive of action of force of some kind, while the circle is a line
of limitation or support. In leafage they mark the forces of
its growth and expansion, but some among the most beautiful
of them are described by bodies variously in motion, or sub-
jected to force ; as by projectiles in the air, by the particles of
water in a gentle current, by planets in motion in an orbit, by
their satellites, if the actual path of the satellite in space be
considered instead of its relation to the planet ; by boats, or
birds, turning in the water or air, by clouds in various action
upon the wind, by sails in the curvatures they assume under its
force, and by thousands of other objects moving or bearing
force. In the Alisma leaf, q r, the lines through its body,
which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different expansions of
its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those which
would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of
224 XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
the shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing-
out at its point. Circular curves, on the contrary, are always,
I think, curves of limitation or support ; that is to say, curves
of perfect rest. The cylindrical curve round the stem of a
plant binds its fibres together ; while the ascent of the stem is
in lines of various curvature : so the curve of the horizon and
of the apparent heaven, of the rainbow, etc. : and though the
reader might imagine that the circular orbit of any moving
body, or the curve described by a sling, was a curve of motion,
he should observe that the circular character is given to the
curve not by the motion, but by the confinement : the circle is
the consequence not of the energy of the body, but of its being
forbidden to leave the centre ; and whenever the whirling or
circular motion can be fully impressed on it we obtain instant
balance and rest with respect to the centre of the circle.
Hence the peculiar fitness of the circular curve as a sign of
rest, and security of support, in arches ; while the other curves,
belonging especially to action, are to be used in the more active
architectural features — the hand and foot (the capital and base),
and in all minor ornaments ; more freely in proportion to their
independence of structural conditions.
§ xxi. We need not, however, hope to be able to imitate,
in general work, any of the subtly combined curvatures of
nature's highest designing: on the contrary, their extreme
refinement renders them unfit for coarse service or material.
Lines which are lovely in the pearly film of the Nautilus shell,
are lost in the grey roughness of stone ; and those which are
sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the substance
of incumbent marble. Of all the graceful lines assembled on
Plate VII., we shall do well to be content with two of the sim-
plest. We shall take one mountain line (e g) and one leaf line
(u w), or rather fragments of them, for we shall perhaps not
want them all. I will mark oft from u w the little bit % y, and
from e g the piece ef- both which appear to me likely to be
serviceable : and if hereafter we need the help of any abstract
lines, we will .~ee what we can do with these only.
§ xxn. 2. Forms of Earth (Crystals). It may be asked why
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 225
I do not say rocks or mountains ? Simply, because the nobility
of these depends, first, on their scale, and, secondly, on acci-
dent. Their scale cannot be represented, nor their accident
systematised. No sculptor can in the least imitate the peculiar
character of accidental fracture : he can obey or exhibit the
laws of nature, but he cannot copy the felicity of her fancies,
nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a moun-
tain is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the
forces which are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold
and careful imitation of catastrophe ; no calculated mockery of
convulsion ; no delicate recommendation of ruin. We are to
follow the labor of Nature, but not her disturbance ; to imitate
what she has deliberately ordained,* not what she has violently
suffered, or strangely permitted. The only uses, therefore, of
rock form which are wise in the architect, are its actual intro-
duction (by leaving untouched such blocks as are meant for
rough service), and that noble use of the general examples of
mountain structure of which I have often heretofore spoken.
Imitations of rock form have, for the most part, been confined
to periods of degraded feeling and to architectural toys or
pieces of dramatic effect, — the Calvaries and holy sepulchres of
Romanism, or the grottoes and fountains of English gardens.
They were, however, not unfrequent in mediaeval bas-reliefs ;
very curiously and elaborately treated by Ghiberti on the doors
of Florence, and in religious sculpture necessarily introduced
wherever the life of the anchorite was to be expressed. They
were rarely introduced as of ornamental character, but for
particular service and expression ; we shall see an interesting
example in the Ducal Palace at Yenice.
§ xxiii. But against crystalline form, which is the com-
pletely systematised natural structure of the earth, none of
these objections hold good, and, accordingly, it is an endless
element of decoration, where higher conditions of structure
cannot be represented. The four-sided pyramid, perhaps the
* Thus above, I adduced for the architect's imitation the appointed stories
and beds of the Matterhorn, not its irregular forms of crag or lissure.
22(j XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
most frequent of all natural crystals, is called in architecture
a dogtooth ; its use is quite limitless, and always beautiful : the
cube and rhomb are almost equally frequent in chequers and
dentils : and all mouldings of the middle Gothic are little more
than representations of the canaliculated crystals of the beryl,
and such other minerals :
§ xxiv. Not knowingly. I do not suppose a single hint
was" ever actually taken from mineral form; not even by the
Arabs in their stalactite pendants and vaults : all that I mean
to allege is, that beautiful ornament, wherever found, or how-
ever invented, is always either an intentional or unintentional
copy of some constant natural form ; and that in this particu-
lar instance, the pleasure we have in these geometrical figures
of our own invention, is dependent for all its acuteness on the
natural tendency impressed on us by our Creator to love the
forms into which the earth He gave us to tread, and out of
which He formed our bodies, knit itself as it was separated
from the deep.
§ xxv. 3. Forms of Water (Waves).
The reasons which prevent rocks from being used for orna-
ment repress still more forcibly the portraiture of the sea.
Yet the constant necessity of introducing some representation
of water in order to explain the scene of events, or as a sacred
symbol, has forced the sculptors of all ages to the invention of
some type or letter for it, if not an actual imitation. We
find every degree of conventionalism or of naturalism in these
types, the earlier being, for the most part, thoughtful symbols ;
the latter, awkward attempts at portraiture.* The most con-
ventional of all types is the Egyptian zigzag, preserved in the
astronomical sign of Aquarius ; but every nation, with any
capacities of thought, has given, in some of its work, the same,
great definition of open water, as " an undulatory thing with
fish in it." I say open water, because inland nations have a
totally different conception of the element. Imagine for an in-
stant the different feelings of an husbandman whose hut is built
* Appendix 21, "Ancient Representations of Water."
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 227
by the Rhine or the Po, and who sees, day by day, the same
giddy succession of silent power, the same opaque, thick, whirl-
ing, irresistible labyrinth of rushing lines and twisted eddies,
soiling themselves into serpentine race by the reedy banks, in
omne volubilis sevum, — and the image of the sea in the mind
of the fisher upon the rocks of Ithaca, or by the Straits of
Sicily, who sees how, day by day, the morning winds come
coursing to the shore, every breath of them with a green wave
rearing before it ; clear, crisp, ringing, merry-minded waves,
that fall over and over each other, laughing like children as
they near the beach, and at last clash themselves all into dust
of crystal over the dazzling sweeps of sand. Fancy the differ-
ence of the image of water in those two minds, and then com-
pare the sculpture of the coiling eddies of the Tigris and its
reedy branches in those slabs of Nineveh, with the crested
€urls of the Greek sea on the coins of Camerina or Tarentum.
But both agree in the undulatory lines, either of the currents
or the surface, and in the introduction of fish as explanatory of
the meaning of those lines (so also the Egyptians in their
frescoes, with most elaborate realisation of the fish). There is
a very curious instance on a Greek mirror in the British
Museum, representing Orion on the Sea; and multitudes of
examples with dolphins on the Greek vases : the type is pre-
served without alteration in mediaeval painting and sculpture.
The sea in that Greek mirror (at least 400 B.C.), in the mosaics
of Torcello and St. Mark's, on the font of St. Frediano at
Lucca, on the gate of the fortress of St. Michael's Mount in
Normandy, on the Bayeux tapestry, and on the capitals of the
Ducal Palace at Venice (under Arion on his Dolphin), is rep-
resented in a manner absolutely identical. Giotto, in the
frescoes of Avignon, has, with his usual strong feeling for
naturalism, given the best example I remember, in painting, of
the unity of the conventional system with direct imitation, and
that both in sea and river; giving in pure blue color the
coiling whirlpool of the stream, and the curled crest of the
breaker. But in all early sculptural examples, both imitation
and decorative effect are subordinate to easily understood sym-
228 XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION-.
bolical language ; the undulatory lines are often valuable as an
enrichment of surface, but are rarely of any studied graceful-
ness. One of the best examples I know of their expressive
arrangement is around some figures in a spandril at Bourges,
representing figures sinking in deep sea (the deluge) : the waved
lines yield beneath the bodies and wildly lave the edge of the
moulding, two birds, as if to mark the reverse of all order of
nature, lowest of all sunk in the depth of them. In later times
of debasement, water began to be represented with its waves,
foam, etc., as on the Yendramin tomb at Venice, above cited ;
but even there, without any definite ornamental purpose, the
sculptor meant partly to explain a story, partly to display dex-
terity of chiselling, but not to produce beautiful forms pleasant
to the eye. The imitation is vapid and joyless, and it has often
been matter of surprise to me that sculptors, so fond of exhibit-
ing their skill, should have suffered this imitation to fall so
short, and remain so 'cold, — should not have taken more pains
to curl the waves clearly, to edge them sharply, and to ex-
press, by drillholes or other artifices, the character of foam.
I think in one of the Antwerp churches something of this kind
is done in wood, but in general it is rare.
§ xxvi. 4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Kays). If neither
the sea nor the rock can be imagined, still less the devouring
fire. It has been symbolised by radiation both in painting and
sculpture, for the most part in the latter very unsuccessfully.
It was suggested to me, not long ago,* that zigzag decorations
of Norman architects were typical of light springing from the
half -set orb of the sun ; the resemblance to the ordinary sun
type is indeed remarkable, but I believe accidental. I shall
give you, in my large plates, two curious instances of radiation
in brick ornament above arches, but I think these also without
any very luminous intention. The imitations of fire in the
torches of Cupids and genii, and burning in tops of urns, which
attest and represent the mephitic inspirations of the seventeenth
century in most London churches, and in monuments all over
* By the friend to whom I owe Appendix 21.
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 229
civilised Europe, together with the gilded rays of Romanist
altars, may be left to such mercy as the reader is inclined to
show them.
§ xxvu. 5. Forms of Air (Clouds). Hardly more manage-
able than flames, and of no ornamental use, their majesty being
in scale and color, and inimitable in marble. They are lightly
traced in much of the cinque cento sculpture ; very boldly and
grandly in the strange Last Judgment in the porch of St.
Maclou at Rouen, described in the " Seven Lamps." But the
most elaborate imitations are altogether of recent date, arranged
in concretions like flattened sacks, forty or fifty feet above the
altars of continental churches, mixed with the gilded truncheons
intended for sunbeams above alluded to.
§ xxvni. 6. Shells. I place these lowest in the scale (after
inorganic forms) as being moulds or coats of organism; not
themselves organic. The sense of this, and of their being mere
emptiness and deserted houses, must always prevent them, how-
ever beautiful in their lines, from being largely used in orna-
mentation. It is better to take the line and leave the shell.
One form, indeed, that of the cockle, has been in all ages used
as the decoration of half domes, which were named conchas
from their shell form : and I believe the wrinkled lip of the
cockle, so used, to have been the origin, in some parts of
Europe at least, of the exuberant foliation of the round arch.
The scallop also is a pretty radiant form, and mingles well with
other symbols when it is needed. The crab is always as delight-
ful as a grotesque, for here we suppose the beast inside the
shell ; and he sustains his part in a lively manner among the
other signs of the zodiac, with the scorpion ; or scattered upon
sculptured shores, as beside the Bronze Boar of Florence. We
shall find him in a basket at Venice, at the base of one of the
Piazzetta shafts.
§ xxix. 7. Fish. These, as beautiful in their forms as they
are familiar to our sight, while their interest is increased by
their symbolic meaning, are of great value as material of orna-
ment. Love of the picturesque has generally induced a choice
of some supple form with scaly body and lashing tail, but the
230 XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAM KNT. DECORATION.
simplest fish form is largely employed in mediaeval work. We
shall find the plain oval body and sharp head of the Thnnny
constantly at Venice ; and the fish used in the expression of
sea-water, or water generally, are always plain bodied crea-
tures in the best mediaeval sculpture. The Greek type of the
dolphin, however, sometimes but slightly exaggerated from the
real outline of the Delphirms Delphis,* is one of the most pic-
turesque of animal forms ; and the action of its slow revolving
plunge is admirably caught upon the surface sea represented
in Greek vases.
§ xxx. 8. Keptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent
and lizard exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror
in strange combination ; the horror, which in an imitation is
felt only as a pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favor-
ite subjects in all periods of art ; and the unity of both lizard
and serpent in the ideal dragon, the most picturesque and
powerful of all animal forms, and of peculiar symbolical inter-
est to the Christian mind, is perhaps the principal of all the
materials of mediaeval picturesque sculpture. By the best
sculptors it is always used with this symbolic meaning, by the
cinque cento sculptors as an ornament merely. The best and
most natural representations of mere viper or snake are to be
found interlaced among their confused groups of meaningless
objects. The real power and horror of the snake-head has,
however, been rarely reached. I shall give one example from
Verona of the twelfth century.
Other less powerful reptile forms are not unfrequent.
Small frogs, lizards, and snails almost always enliven the fore-
grounds and leafage of good sculpture. The tortoise is less
usually employed in groups. Beetles are chiefly mystic and
colossal. Various insects, like everything else in the world,
occur in cinque cento work ; grasshoppers most frequently.
* One is glad to hear from Cuvier, that though dolphins in general are
"les plus carnassiers, et proportion gardee avec leur taille, les plus cruels
de 1'ordre;" yet that in the Delphinus Delphis, 'tout 1'organisation de son
cerveau annonce tfu'ti ne doit pas etre depourvu de la docilite qu'ils (les
unciens) lui attribuaient "
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 231
We shall see on the Ducal Palace at Venice an interesting use
of the bee.
§ xxxi. 9. Branches and stems of Trees. I arrange these
under a separate head ; because, while the forms of leafage
belong to all architecture, and ought to be employed in it
always, those of the branch and stem belong to a peculiar
imitative and luxuriant architecture, and are only applicable
at times. Pagan sculptors seem to have perceived little beauty
in the stems of trees ; they were little else than timber to
them ; and they preferred the rigid and monstrous triglyph, or
the fluted column, to a broken bough or gnarled trunk. But
with Christian knowledge came a peculiar regard for the forms
of vegetation, from the root upwards. The actual representa-
tion of the entire trees required in many scripture subjects, —
as in the most frequent of Old Testament subjects, the Fall ;
and again in the Drunkenness of Noah, the Garden Agony,
and many others, familiarised the sculptors of bas-relief to the
beauty of forms before unknown ; while the symbolical name
given to Christ by the Prophets, " the Branch," and the fre-
quent expressions referring to this image throughout every
scriptural description of conversion, gave an especial interest
to the Christian mind to this portion of vegetative structure.
For some time, nevertheless, the sculpture of trees was con-
fined to bas-relief ; but it at last affected even the treatment of
the main shafts in Lombard Gothic buildings, — as in the
western fa§ade of Genoa, where two of the shafts are repre-
sented as gnarled trunks : and as bas-relief itself became more
boldly introduced, so did tree sculpture, until we find the
writhed and knotted stems of the vine and fig used for angle
shafts on the Doge's Palace, and entire oaks and appletrees
forming, roots and all, the principal decorative sculptures of
the Scala tombs at Verona. It was then discovered to be more
easy to carve branches than leaves and, much helped by the
frequent employment in later Gothic of the " Tree of Jesse,"
for traceries and other purposes, the system reached full de-
velopement in a perfect thicket of twigs, which form the rich-
est portion of the decoration of the porches of Beauvais. It
232 XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
had now been carried to its richest extreme : men wearied of
it and abandoned it, and like all other natural and beautiful
things, it was ostracised by the mob of Renaissance architects.
But it is interesting to observe how the human mind, in its
acceptance of this feature of ornament, proceeded from the
ground, and followed, as it were, the natural growth of the
tree. It began with the rude and solid trunk, as at Genoa ;
then the branches shot out, and became loaded leaves ; autumn
came, the leaves were shed, and the eye was directed to the
extremities of the delicate branches ; — the Renaissance frosts
came, and all perished.
§ xxxii. 10. Foliage, Flowers, and Fruit. It is necessary
to consider these as separated from the stems ; not only, as
above noted, because their separate use marks another school
of architecture, but because they are the only organic struc-
tures which are capable of being so treated, and intended to be
so, without strong effort of imagination. To pull animals to
pieces, and use their paws for feet of furniture, or their heads
for terminations of rods and shafts, is usually the characteris-
tic of feelingless schools ; the greatest men like their animals
whole. The head may, indeed, be so managed as to look
emergent from the stone, rather than fastened to it ; and
wherever there is throughout the architecture any expression
of sternness or severity (severity in its literal sense, as in
Romans, xi. 22), such divisions of the living form may be
permitted ; still, you cannot cut an animal to pieces as you can
gather a flower or a leaf. These were intended for our gather-
ing, and for our constant delight : wherever men exist in a
perfectly civilised and healthy state, they have vegetation
around them ; wherever their state approaches that of inno-
cence or perfectness, it approaches that of Paradise, — it is a
dressing of garden. And, therefore, where nothing else can
be used for ornament, vegetation may ; vegetation in any
form, however fragmentary, however abstracted. A single
leaf .laid upon the angle of a stone, or the mere form or frame-
work of the leaf drawn upon it, or the mere shadow and ghost
of the leaf, — the hollow " foil " cut out of it, — possesses a
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 233
diarm which nothing else can replace ; a charm not exciting,
nor demanding laborious thought or sympathy, but perfectly
simple, peaceful, and satisfying.
§ xxxni. The full recognition of leaf forms, as the general
source of subordinate decoration, is one of the chief charac-
teristics of Christian architecture ; but the two roots of leaf
ornament are the Greek acanthus, and the Egyptian lotus.*
The dry land and the river thus each contributed their part ;
and all the florid capitals of the richest Northern Gothic on
the one hand, and the arrowy lines of the severe Lombardie
•capitals on the other, are founded on these two gifts of the
dust of Greece and the waves of the Nile. The leaf which is,
I believe, called the Persepolitan water-leaf, is to be associated
with the lotus flower and stem, as the origin of our noblest
types of simple capital ; and it is to be noted that the florid
leaves of the dry land are used most by the Northern archi-
tects, while the water leaves are gathered for their ornaments
by the parched builders of the Desert.
§ xxxiv. Fruit is, for the most part, more valuable in color
than form ; nothing is more beautiful as a subject of sculpture
on a tree ; but, gathered and put in baskets, it is quite possible
to have too much of it. We shall find it so used very dex-
trously on the Ducal Palace of Venice, there wTith a meaning
which rendered it right necessary ; but the Renaissance archi-
tects address themselves to spectators who care for nothing
but feasting, and suppose that clusters of pears and pineapples
are visions of which their imagination can never weary, and
above which it will never care to rise. I am no advocate for
imageworship, as I believe the reader wrill elsewhere suffi-
ciently find ; but I am very sure that the Protestantism of
London would have found itself quite as secure in a cathedral
* Vide Wilkinson, vol. v., woodcut No. 478, fig. 8. The tamarisk ap-
pears afterwards to have given the idea of a subdivision of leaf more pure
and quaint than that of the acanthus. Of late our botanists have discov-
ered, in the "Victoria regia" (supposing its blossom reversed), another
strangely beautiful type of what we may perhaps hereafter find it conve
nient to call Lily capitals.
234 XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
decorated with statues of good men, as in one hung round
with bunches of ribston pippins.
§ xxxv. 11. Birds. The perfect and simple grace of bird
form, in general, has rendered it a favorite subject with early
sculptors, and with those schools which loved form more than
action ; but the difficulty of expressing action, where the mus-
cular markings are concealed, has limited the use of it in later
art. Half the ornament, at least, in Byzantine architecture,
and a third of that of Lombardic, is composed of birds, either
pecking at fruit or flowers, or standing on either side of a
flower or vase, or alone, as generally the symbolical peacock.
But how much of our general sense of grace or power of
motion, of serenity, peacefulness, and spirituality, we owe to
these creatures, it is impossible to conceive ; their winga sup-
plying us with almost the only means of representation of spir-
itual motion which we possess, and with an ornamental form of
which the eye is never weary, however meaninglessly or end-
lessly repeated ; whether in utter isolation, or associated with
the bodies of the lizard, the horse, the lion, or the man. The
heads of the birds of prey are always beautiful, and used as the
richest ornaments in all ages.
§ xxxvi. 12. Quadrupeds and Men. Of quadrupeds the
horse has received an elevation into the primal rank of sculp-
tural subject, owing to his association with men. The full
value of other quadruped forms has hardly been perceived, or
worked for, in late sculpture ; and the want of science is more
felt in these subjects than in any other branches of early work.
The greatest richness of quadruped ornament is found in the
hunting sculpture of the Lombards ; but rudely treated (the
most noble examples of treatment being the lions of Egypt,
the Ninevite bulls, and the mediaeval griffins). Quadrupeds
of course form the noblest subjects of ornament next to the
human form ; this latter, the chief subject of sculpture, being
sometimes the end of architecture rather than its decoration.
We have thus completed the list of the materials of archi-
tectural decoration, and the reader may be assured that no
effort has ever been successful to draw elements of beauty from
DECORATION. XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. 235
any other sources than these. Such an effort was once reso-
lutely made. It was contrary to the religion of the Arab to
introduce any animal form into his ornament ; but although
all the radiance of color, all the refinements of proportion, and
all the intricacies of geometrical design were open to him, he
could not produce any noble work without an abstraction of
the forms of leafage, to be used in his capitals, and made the
ground plan of his chased ornament. But I have above noted
that coloring is an entirely distinct and independent art ; and
in the " Seven Lamps" we saw that this art had most power
when practised in arrangements of simple geometrical form :
the Arab, therefore, lay under no disadvantage in coloring,
and he had all the noble elements of constructive and propor-
tional beauty at his command : he might not imitate the sea-
shell, but he could build the dome. The imitation of radiance
by the variegated voussoir, the expression of the sweep of the
desert by the barred red lines upon the wall, the starred in-
shedding of light through his vaulted roof, and all the endless
fantasy of abstract line,* were still in the power of his ardent
and fantastic spirit. Much he achieved ; and yet in the effort
of his overtaxed invention, restrained from its proper food, he
made his architecture a glittering vacillation of undisciplined
enchantment, and left the lustre of its edifices to wither like a
startling dream, whose beauty we may indeed feel, and whose
instruction we may receive, but must smile at its inconsistency,
and mourn over its evanescence.
* Appendix 22, " Arabian Ornamentation."
CHAPTER XXI.
TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT.
§ i. WE now know where we are to look for subjects of
decoration. The next question is, as the reader must remem-
ber, how to treat or express these subjects.
There are evidently two branches of treatment : the first
being the expression, or rendering to the eye and mind, of the
thing itself ; and the second, the arrangement of the thing so
expressed : both of these being quite distinct from the placing
of the ornament in proper parts of the building. For instance,
suppose we take a vine-leaf for our subject. The first ques-
tion is, how to cut the vine-leaf ? Shall we cut its ribs and
notches on the edge, or only its general outline ? and so on.
Then, how to arrange the vine-leaves when we have them ;
whether symmetrically, or at random ; or unsymmetrically,
yet within certain limits ? All these I call questions of treat-
ment. Then, whether the vine-leaves so arranged are to be
set on the capital of a pillar or on its shaft, I call a question of
place.
§ n. So, then, the questions of mere treatment are twofold,
how to express, and how to arrange. And expression is to
the mind or the sight. Therefore, the inquiry becomes really
threefold : —
1. How ornament is to be expressed with reference to the
mind.
2. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to the
sight.
3. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to both.
DECORATION. XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 237
§ m. (1.) How is ornament to be treated with rererence to
the mind ?
If, to produce a good or beautiful ornament, it were only
necessary to produce a perfect piece of sculpture, and if a well
cut group of flowers or animals were indeed an ornament
wherever it might be placed, the work of the architect would
be comparatively easy. Sculpture and architecture would
become separate arts ; and the architect would order so many
pieces of such subject and size as he needed, without troubling
himself with any questions but those of disposition and propor-
tion. But this is not so. No perfect piece either of painting
or sculpture is an architectural ornament at all, except in that
vague sense in which any beautiful thing is said to ornament
the place it is in. Thus we say that pictures ornament a room ;
but we should not thank an architect who told us that his
design, to be complete, required a Titian to be put in one cor-
ner of it, and a Yelasquez in the other; and it is just as
unreasonable to call perfect sculpture, niched in, or encrusted
on a building, a portion of the ornament of that building, as it
would be to hang pictures by the way of ornament on the
outside of it. It is very possible that the sculptured work
maybe harmoniously associated with the building, or the build-
ing executed with reference to it ; but in this latter case the
architecture is subordinate to the sculpture, as in the Medicean
chapel, and I believe also in the Parthenon. And so far from
the perfection of the work conducing to its ornamental purpose,
we may say, with entire security, that its perfection, in some
degree, unfits it for its purpose, and that no absolutely com-
plete sculpture can be decoratively right. We have a familiar
instance in the flower-work of St. Paul's, which is probably, in
the abstract, as perfect flower sculpture as could be produced
at the time ; and which is just as rational an ornament of the
building as so many valuable Van Huysums, framed and glazed
and hung up over each window.
§ iv. The especial condition of true ornament is, that it be
beautiful in its place, and nowhere else, and that it aid the effect
of every portion of the building over which it has influence ;
\M- TIM', VI'M KN'!' 01'' OKNAMKNT. DK.roil \T1ON.
that it does not, by its richness, make other parts bald, or, by
its delicacy, make other parts coarse. Every one of its quali-
ties has reference to its place and use: and it in fitted for /Av
.sr/'/vVv />// what 'Would be faults and deficiencies if it had no
especial dn-t i/. Ornament, the servant, is often formal, where
sculpture, the master, would have been free; tin; servant is
often silent win-re the master would have been eloquent; or
hurried, where the master would have been serene.
^ v. How far this subordination is in different situations to
he expressed, or how far it may be surrendered, and ornament.,
the servant, be permitted to have independent will ; and by
what means the subordination is best; to be expressed when it
is required, are by far the most ditlicnlt questions 1 have, ever
tried to work out respecting any branch of art ; for, in many
of the examples to which I look as authoritative in their majesty
of effect, it is almost impossible to say whether the abstraction
or imperfection of the sculpture was owing to the choice, or the
incapacity of the workman; and if to the latter, how far the
result of fortunate incapacity can be imitated by prudent self-
restraint. The reader, I think, will understand this at once by
Considering the effect of the illuminations of an old missal. In
their bold rejection of all principles of perspective, light and
shade, and drawing, they are infinitely more ornamental to the
page, owing to the vivid opposition of their bright colors and
quaint lines, than if they had been drawn by Da Vinci himself:
and so the Arena chapel is far more brightly decorated by the
archaic frescoes of Giotti, than the Stan/e of the Vatican are
by those of Raffaelle. Rut how far it is possible to recur to
such archaicism, or to make up for it by any voluntary aban
donment of power, I cannot as yet venture in any wise to
determine.
>$ vi. So, on the other hand, in many instanc.es of finished
work in which I find most to regret or to reprobate, I can hardly
distinguish what is erroneous in principle from what is vulgar
in execution. For instance, in most Romanesque churches of
Italy, the porches are guarded by gigantic, animals, lions or
griHius, of admirable severity of design ; yet, in manv cases,
DECORATION. XXI. TRKATMKNT OF ORNAMKNT. 239
of so rude workmanship, that it can hardly be determined how
much of this severity was intentional, — how much involuntary :
in the cathedral of donna two modern lions have, in imitation
of this ancient custom, been placed on the steps of its west
front; and the Italian sculptor, thinking himself a marvellous
great man because he knew what lions were really like, has
copied them, in the menagerie, with great success, and pro-
duced two hairy and well-whiskered boasts, as like to real lions
as he could possibly cut them. One wishes them back in the
menagerie for his pains; but lit is impossible to say how far
the offence of their presence is owing to the mere stupidity
and vulgarity of the sculpture, and how far we might have
been delighted with, a realisation, carried to nearly the same
length by Ghiberti or Michael Angelo. (I say nearly, because
neither Ghiberti nor Michael Angelo would ever have
attempted, or permitted, entire realisation, even in indepen-
dent sculpture.)
§ vn. In spite of these embarrassments, however, some few
certainties may be marked in the treatment of past architec-
ture, and secure conclusions deduced for future practice.
There is first, for instance, the assuredly intended and resolute
abstraction of the Ninevite and Egyptian sculptors. The men
who cut those granite lions in the Egyptian room of the Brit-
ish Museum, and who carved the calm faces of those Ninevite
kings, knew much more, both of lions and kings, than they
chose to express. Then there is the Greek system, in which
the human sculpture is perfect, the architecture and animal
sculpture is subordinate to it, and the architectural ornament
severely subordinated to this again , so as to be composed of
little more than abstract lines : and, finally, there is the pecul-
iarly mediaeval system, in which the inferior details are carried
to as great or greater imitative perfection as the higher sculp-
ture ; and the subordination is chiefly effected by symmetries of
arrangement, and quaintnesses of treatment, respecting which
it is difficult to say how far they resulted from intention, and
how far from incapacity.
§ vm. Now of these systems, the Ninevite and Egyptian
240 XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECOBATION.
are altogether opposed to modern habits of thought and action ;.
they are sculptures evidently executed under absolute authori-
ties, physical and mental, such as cannot at present exist. The
Greek system presupposes the possession of a Phidias ; it is
ridiculous to talk of building in the Greek manner ; you may
build a Greek shell or box, such as the Greek intended to con-
tain sculpture, but you have not the sculpture to put in it.
Find your Phidias first, and your new Phidias will very
soon settle all your architectural difficulties in very unexpected
ways indeed ; but until you find him, do not think yourselves
architects while you go on copying those poor subordinations,
and secondary and tertiary orders of ornament, which the Greek
put on the shell of his sculpture. Some of them, beads, and
dentils, and such like, are as good as they can be for their
work, and you may use them for subordinate work still ; but
they are nothing to be proud of, especially when you did not
invent them : and others of them are mistakes and imperti-
nences in the Greek himself, such as his so-called honeysuckle
ornaments and others, in which there is a starched and dull
suggestion of vegetable form, and yet no real resemblance nor
life, for the conditions of them result from his own conceit of
himself, and ignorance of the physical sciences, and want of
relish for common nature, and vain fancy that he could im-
prove everything he touched, and that he honored it by taking
it into his service : by freedom from which conceits the true
Christian architecture is distinguished — not by points to its-
arches.
§ ix. There remains, therefore, only the mediaeval system,
in which I think, generally, more completion is permitted
(though this often because more was possible) in the inferior
than in the higher portions of ornamental subject. Leaves,
and birds, and lizards are realised, or nearly so ; men and
cmadrupeds formalised. For observe, the smaller and inferior
subject remains subordinate, however richly finished ; but the
human sculpture can only be subordinate by being imperfect.
The realisation is, however, in all cases, dangerous except
Ylll
LRuskin .
T.SBoys.
Drranrftun
PALAZZO DEI BADOARI T^RTECIPAZZI.
DECORATION. XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 241
under most skilful management, and the abstraction, if true
and noble, is almost always more delightful.*
§ x. "What, then, is noble abstraction ? It is taking first
the essential elements of the thing to be represented, then the
rest in the order of importance (so that wherever we pause we
shall always have obtained more than we leave behind), and
using any expedient to impress what we want upon the mind,
without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such expe-
dient. Suppose, for instance, we have to represent a peacock :
now a peacock has a graceful neck, so has a swan ; it has a
high crest, so has a cockatoo ; it has a long tail, so has a bird
of Paradise. But the whole spirit and power of peacock is in
those eyes of the tail. It is true, the argus pheasant, and one
or two more birds, have something like them, but nothing for
a moment comparable to them in brilliancy : express the
gleaming of the blue eyes through the plumage, and you have
nearly all you want of peacock, but without this, nothing ; and
yet those eyes are not in relief ; a rigidly true sculpture of a
peacock's form could have no eyes, — nothing but feathers.
Here, then, enters the stratagem of sculpture ; you must cut
the eyes in relief, somehow or another ; see how it is done in
the peacock on the opposite page ; it is so done by nearly all
the Byzantine sculptors : this particular peacock is meant to be
seen at some distance (how far off I know not, for it is an
interpolation in the building where it occurs, of which more
hereafter), but at all events at a distance of thirty or forty
feet ; I have put it close to you that you may see plainly the-
rude rings and rods which stand for the eyes and quills, but at
the just distance their effect is perfect.
§ XT. And the simplicity of the means here employed may
help us, both to some clear understanding of the spirit of
ISTinevite and Egyptian work, and to some perception of the
kind of enfantillage or archaicism to which it may be possible,
even in days of advanced science, legitimately to return. The
* Vide " Seven Lamps," Chap. IV. § 34.
242 XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
architect has no right, as we said before, to require of us a pic-
ture of Titian's in order to complete his design ; neither has
he the right to calculate on the co-operation of perfect sculp-
tors, in subordinate capacities. 'Far from this ; his business is
to dispense with such aid altogether, and to devise such a
system of ornament as shall be capable of execution by unin-
ventive and even unintelligent workmen ; for supposing that
he required noble sculpture for his ornament, how far would
this at once limit the number and the scale of possible build-
ings ? Architecture is the work of nations ; but we cannot
have nations of great sculptors. Every house in every street
of every city ought to be good architecture, but we cannot
have Flaxman or Thorwaldsen at work upon it : nor, even if
we chose only to devote ourselves to our public buildings,
could the mass and majesty of them be great, if we required
all to be executed by great men ; greatness is not to be had in
the required quantity. Giotto may design a campanile, but he
cannot carve it ; he can only carve one or two of the bas-reliefs
at the base of it. And with every increase of your fastidious-
ness in the execution of your ornament, you diminish the pos-
sible number and grandeur of your buildings. Do not think
you can educate your workmen, or that the demand for perfec-
tion will increase the supply : educated imbecility and finessed
foolishness are the worst of all imbecilities and foolishnesses ;
and there is no free-trade measure, which will ever lower the
price of brains, — there is no California of common sense.
Exactly in the degree in which you require your decoration to
be wrought by thoughtful men, you diminish the extent and
number of architectural works. Your business as an architect,
is to calculate only on the co-operation of inferior men, to think
for them, and to indicate for them such expressions ot your
thoughts as the weakest capacity can comprehend and the
feeblest hand can execute. This is the definition of the purest
architectural abstractions. They are the deep and laborious
thoughts of the greatest men, put into such easy letters that
they can be written by the simplest. They are expressions of
the mind of manhood ly the 'hands of childhood.
DECORATION. XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 243
§ xii. And now suppose one of those old Ninevite or
Egyptian builders, with a couple of thousand men — mud-bred,
onion-eating creatures — under him, to be set to work, like so
many ants, on his temple sculptures. What is he to do with
them ? lie can put them through a granitic exercise of cur-
rent hand ; he can teach them all how to curl hair thoroughly
into croche-coeurs, as you teach a bench of school-boys how
to shape pothooks ; he can teach them all how to draw long
eyes and straight noses, and how to copy accurately certain
well-defined lines. Then he fits his own great design to their
capacities ; he takes out of king, or lion, or god, as much as
was expressible by croche-coeurs and granitic pothooks ; he
throws this into noble forms of his own imagining, and having
mapped out their lines so that there can be no possibility of
error, sets his two thousand men to work upon them, with a
will, and so many onions a day.
§ xni. I said those times cannot now return. We have,
with Christianity, recognised the individual value of every
soul ; and there is no intelligence so feeble but that its single
ray may in some sort contribute to the general light. This is
the glory of Gothic architecture, that every jot and tittle,
every point and niche of it, affords room, fuel, and focus for
individual fire. But you cease to acknowledge this, and you
refuse to accept the help of the lesser mind, if you require the
work to be all executed in a great manner. Your business is
to think out all of it nobly, to dictate the expression of it as
far as your dictation can assist the less elevated intelligence :
then to leave this, aided and taught as far as may be, to its
own simple act and eif ort ; and to rejoice in its simplicity if
not in its power, and in its vitality if not in its science.
§ xiv. We have, then, three orders of ornament, classed
according to the degrees of correspondence of the executive
and conceptive minds. We have the servile ornament, in
which the executive is absolutely subjected to the inventive, —
the ornament of the great Eastern nations, more especially
Hamite, and all pre-Christian, yet thoroughly noble in its sub-
missiveness. Then we have the mediaeval system, in which
244 XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION..
the mind of the inferior workman is recognised, and has full
room for action, but is guided and ennobled by the ruling
mind. This is the truly Christian and only perfect system.
Finally, we have ornaments expressing the endeavor to equal-
ise the executive and inventive, — endeavor which is Kenais-
sance and revolutionary, and destructive of all noble architec-
ture.
§ xv. Thus far, then, of the incompleteness or simplicity
of execution necessary in architectural ornament, as referred
to the mind. Next we have to consider that which is required
when it is referred to the sight, and the various modifications
of treatment which are rendered necessary by the variation of
its distance from the eye. I say necessary : not merely expe-
dient or economical. It is foolish to carve what is to be seen
forty feet oif with the delicacy which the eye demands within
two yards ; not merely because such delicacy is lost in the
distance, but because it is a great deal worse than lost : — the
delicate work has actually worse effect in the distance than
rough work. This is a fact well known to painters, and, for
the most part, acknowledged by the critics of painters, namely,
that there is a certain distance for which a picture is painted ;
and that the finish, which is delightful if that distance be
small, is actually injurious if the distance be great : and, more-
over, that there is a particular method of handling which none
but consummate artists reach, which has its effects at the in-
tended distance, and is altogether hieroglyphical and unintelli-
gible at any other. This, I say, is acknowledged in painting,
but it is not practically acknowledged in architecture ; nor un-
til my attention was especially directed to it, had I myself any
idea of the care with which this great question was studied by
the mediaeval architects. On my first careful examination of
the capitals of the upper arcade of the Ducal Palace at Venice,
I was induced, by their singular inferiority of workmanship,
to suppose them posterior to those of the lower arcade. It
was not till I discovered that some of those which I thought
the worst above, were the best when seen from below, that I
obtained the key to this marvellous system of adaptation ; a
DECORATION. XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 245
system which I afterwards found carried out in every building
of the great times which I had opportunity of examining.
§ xvi. There are two distinct modes in which this adapta-
tion is effected. In the first, the same designs which are deli-
cately worked when near the eye, are rudely- cut, and have far
fewer details when they are removed from it. In this method
it is not always easy to distinguish economy from skill, or
slovenliness from science. But, in the second method, a dif-
ferent design is adopted, composed of fewer parts and of sim-
pler lines, and this is cut with exquisite precision. This is of
course the higher method, and the more satisfactory proof of
purpose ; but an equal degree of imperfection is found in both
kinds when they are seen close ; in the first, a bald execution
•of a perfect design ; the second, a baldness of design with
perfect execution. And in these very imperfections lies the
admirableness of the ornament.
§ xvn. It may be asked whether, in advocating this adap-
tation to the distance of the eye, I obey my adopted rule of
observance of natural law. Are not all natural things, it may
be asked, as lovely near as far away ? Nay, not so. Look at
the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster
sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent rolling.
They are meant to be beheld far away ; they were shaped for
their place, high above your head ; approach them, and they
fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of
thunderous vapor. Look at the crest of the Alp, from the
far-away plains over which its light is cast, whence human
souls have communion with it by their myriads. The child
looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden
and heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the
sun, and it is to them all as the celestial city on the world's
horizon ; dyed with the depth of heaven, and clothed with the
calm of eternity. There was it set, for holy dominion, by
Him who marked for the sun his journey, and bade the moon
know her going down. It was built for its place in the far-off
sky ; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies
away about its foundations, and the tide of human life, slial-
246 XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
lowed upon the vast aerial shore, is at last met by the Eternal
"Here shall thy waves be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades
into blanched tearfulness ; its purple walls are rent into grisly
rocks, its silver fretwork saddened into wasting snow, the
storm-brands of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own
ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment.
Nor in such instances as these alone, though strangely
enough, the discrepancy between apparent and actual beauty is
greater in proportion to the unapproachableness of the object,
is the law observed. For every distance from the eye there is
a peculiar kind of beauty, or a different system of lines of
form ; the sight of that beauty is reserved for that distance,
and for that alone. If you approach nearer, that kind of
beauty is lost, and another succeeds, to be disorganised and
reduced to strange and incomprehensible means and appliances
in its turn. If you desire to perceive the great harmonies of
the form of a rocky mountain, you must not ascend upon its
sides. All is there disorder and accident, or seems so ; sudden
starts of its shattered beds hither and thither ; ugly struggles
of unexpected strength from under the ground ; fallen frag-
ments, toppling one over another into more helpless fall. Re-
tire from it, and, as your eye commands it more and more, as
you see the ruined mountain world with a wider glance, be-
hold! dim sympathies begin to busy themselves in the dis-
jointed mass ; line binds itself into stealthy fellowship with
line ; group by group, the helpless fragments gather themselves
into ordered companies ; new captains of hosts and masses of
battalions become visible, one by one, and far away answers
of foot to foot, and of bone to bone, until the powerless chaos
is seen risen up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the
unregarded heap could now be spared from the mystic whole.
§ xvni. Now it is indeed true that where nature loses one
kind of beauty, as you approach it, she substitutes another ;
this is worthy of her infinite power : and, as we shall see, art
can sometimes follow her even in doing tins ; but all I insist
upon at present is, that the several effects of nature are each
worked with means referred to a particular distance, and pro-
DKCOKATION. XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 247
ducing their effect at that distance only. Take a singular and
marked instance : When the sun rises behind a ridge of pines,
and those pines are seen from a distance of a mile or two,
against his light, the whole form of the tree, trunk, branches,
and all, becomes one frostwork of intensely brilliant silver,
which is relieved against the clear sky like a burning fringe,
for some distance on either side of the sun.* ISTow suppose
that a person who had never seen pines were, for the first time
in his life, to see them under this strange aspect, and, reason-
ing as to the means by which such effect could be produced,
laboriously to approach the eastern ridge, how would he be
amazed to find that the fiery spectres had been produced by
trees with swarthy and grey trunks, and dark green leaves !
We, in our simplicity, if we had been required to produce such
an appearance, should have built up trees of chased silver, with
trunks of glass, and then been grievously amazed to find that,
at two miles off, neither silver nor glass were any more visible ;
but nature knew better, and prepared for her fairy work with
the strong branches and dark leaves, in her own mysterious
way.
§ xiv. Now this is exactly what you have to do with your
good ornament. It may be that it is capable of being ap-
proached, as well as likely to be seen far away, and then it
ought to have microscopic qualities, as the pine leaves have,
which will bear approach. But your calculation of its pur-
pose is for a glory to be produced at a given distance ; it may
be here, or may be there, but it is a given distance ; and the
excellence of the ornament depends upon its fitting that dis-
* Shakspeare and Wordsworth (I think they only) have noticed this,
Shakspeare, in Richard II. : —
" But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines. "
And Wordsworth, in one of his minor poems, on leaving Italy :
" My thoughts become bright like yon edging of pines
On the steep's lofty verge— how it blackened the air!
But, touched from behind by the sun, it now shines
With threads that seem part of his own silver hair."
248 XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
tance, and being seen better there than anywhere else, and
having a particular function and form which it can only dis-
charge and assume there. You are never to say that ornament
has great merit because "you cannot see the beauty of it
here ;" but, it has great merit because " you can see its beauty
here only" And to give it this merit is just about as difficult
a task as I could well set you. I have above noted the two
ways in which it is done : the one, being merely rough cutting,
may be passed over ; the other, which is scientific alteration of
design, falls, itself, into two great branches, Simplification and
Emphasis.
A word or two is necessary on each of these heads.
§ xx. When an ornamental work is intended to be seen
near, if its composition be indeed fine, the subdued and deli-
cate portions of the design lead to, and unite, the energetic
parts, and those energetic parts form with the rest a whole, in
which their own immediate relations to each other are not per-
ceived. Remove this design to a distance, and the connecting
delicacies vanish, the energies alone remain, now either discon-
nected altogether, or assuming with each other new relations,
which, not having been intended by the designer, will probably
be painful. There is a like, and a more palpable, effect, in the
retirement of a band of music in which the instruments are of
very unequal powers ; the fluting and fif eing expire, the drum-
ming remains, and that in a painful arrangement, as demand-
ing something which is unheard. In like manner, as the
designer at arm's length removes or elevates his work, fine
gradations, and roundings, and incidents, vanish, and a totally
unexpected arrangement is established between the remainder
of the markings, certainly confused, and in all probability
painful.
§ xxi. The art of architectural design is therefore, first, the
preparation for this beforehand, the rejection of all the delicate
passages as worse than useless, and the fixing the thought upon
the arrangement of the features which will remain visible far
away. Nor does this always imply a diminution of resource ;
for, while it may be assumed as a law that fine modulation of
DECORATION. XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 249
surface in light becomes quickly invisible as the object retires,
there are a softness and mystery given to the harder markings,
which enable them to be safely used as media of expression.
There is an exquisite example of this use, in the head of the
Adam of the Ducal Palace. It is only at the height of 17 or
18 feet above the eye ; nevertheless, the sculptor felt it was no
use to trouble himself about drawing the corners of the mouth,
or the lines of the lips, delicately, at that distance ; his object
has been to mark them clearly, and to prevent accidental
shadows from concealing them, or altering their expression.
The lips are cut thin and sharp, so that their line cannot be
mistaken, and a good deep drill-hole struck into the angle of
the mouth ; the eye is anxious and questioning, and one is sur-
prised, from below, to perceive a kind of darkness in the iris
of it, neither like color, nor like a circular furrow. The ex-
pedient can only be discovered by ascending to the level of the
head; it is one which would have been quite inadmissible
except in distant work, six drill-holes cut into the iris, round a
central one for the pupil.
§ xxn. By just calculation, like this, of the means at our
disposal, by beautiful arrangement of the prominent features,
and by choice of different subjects for different places, choos-
ing the broadest forms for the farthest distance, it is possible
to give the impression, not only of perfection, but of an
exquisite delicacy, to the most distant ornament. And this is
the true sign of the right having been done, and the utmost
possible power attained : — The spectator should be satisfied to
stay in his place, feeling the decoration, wherever it may be,
equally rich, full, and" lovely : not desiring to climb the steeples
in order to examine it, but sure that he has it all, where he is.
Perhaps the capitals of the cathedral of Genoa are the best
instances of absolute perfection in this kind : seen from below,
they appear as rich as the frosted silver of the Strada degli
Orefici ; and the nearer you approach them, the less delicate
they seem.
§ xxm. This is, however, not the only mode, though the
best, in which ornament is adapted for distance. The other
250 xXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
is emphasis,— the unnatural insisting upon explanatory lines,
where the subject would otherwise become unintelligible. It
is to be remembered that, by a deep and narrow incision, an
architect has the power, at least in sunshine, of drawing a
black line on stone, just as vigorously as it can be drawn with
chalk on grey paper ; and that he may thus, wherever and in
the degree that he chooses, substitute chalk sketching for
sculpture. They are curiously mingled by the Romans. The
bas-reliefs of the Arc d' Orange are small, and would be con-
fused, though in bold relief, if they depended for intelligibility
on the relief only; but each figure is outlined by a strong
incision at its edge into the background, and all the ornaments
on the armor are simply drawn with incised lines, and not cut
out at all. A similar use of lines is made by the Gothic nations
in all their early sculpture, and with delicious effect. Now, to
draw a mere pattern — as, for instance, the bearings of a shield
— with these simple incisions, would, I suppose, occupy an able
sculptor twenty minutes or half an hour ; and the pattern is
then clearly seen, under all circumstances of light and shade ;
there can be no mistake about it, and no missing it. To carve
out the bearings in due and finished relief would occupy a long
summer's day, and the results would be feeble and indecipher-
able in the best lights, and in some lights totally and hopelessly
invisible, ignored, non-existant. Now the Renaissance archi-
tects, and our modern ones, despise the simple expedient of
the rough Roman or barbarian. They do not care to be under-
stood. They care only to speak finely, and be thought great
orators, if one could only hear them. So I leave you to choose
between the old men, who took minutes to tell things plainly,
and the modern men, who take days to tell them unintelli-
gibly.
§ xxiv. All expedients of this kind, both of simplification
and energy, for the expression of details at a distance where
their actual forms would have been invisible, but more espe-
cially this linear method, I shall call Prontism ; for the greatest
master of the art in modern times has been Samuel Prout.
He actually takes up buildings of the later times in which the
DECORATION. XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 251
ornament has been too refined for its place, and translates it
into the energised linear ornament of earlier art : and to this
power of taking the life and essence of decoration, and putting
it into a perfectly intelligible form, when its own fulness would
have been confused, is owing the especial power of his draw-
ings. Nothing can be more closely analogous than the method
with which an old Lombard uses his chisel, and that with
which Prout uses the reed-pen ; and we shall see presently
farther correspondence in their feeling about the enrichment
of luminous surfaces.
§ xxv. Now, all that has been hitherto said refers to orna-
ment whose distance is fixed, or nearly so ; as when it is at
any considerable height from the ground, supposing the spec-
tator to desire to see it, and to get as near it as he can. But
the distance of ornament is never fixed to the general specta-
tor. The tower of a cathedral is bound to look well, ten miles
off, or five miles, or half a mile, or within fifty yards. The
ornaments of its top have fixed distances, compared with those
of its base ; but quite unfixed distances in their relation to the
great world : and the ornaments of the base have no fixed dis-
tance at all. They are bound to look well from the other side
of the cathedral close, and to look equally well, or better, as we
enter the cathedral door. How are we to manage this ?
§ xxvi. As nature manages it. I said above, § xvn., that
for every distance from the eye there was a different system
of form in all natural objects : this is to be so then in architec-
ture. The lesser ornament is to be grafted on the greater,
and third or fourth orders of ornaments upon this again, as
need may be, until we reach the limits of possible sight ; each
order of ornament being adapted for a different distance : first,
for example, the great masses, — the buttresses and stories and
black windows and broad cornices of the tower, which give it
make, and organism, as it rises over the horizon, half a score of
miles away : then the traceries and shafts and pinnacles, which
give it richness as we approach : then the niches and statues
and knobs and flowers, which we can only see when we stand
beneath it. At this third order of ornament, we may pause,
252 XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
in the upper portions ; but on the roofs of the niches, and the
robes of the statues, and the rolls of the mouldings, comes a
fourth order of ornament, as delicate as the eye can follow,
when any of these features may be approached.
§ xxvu. All good ornamentation is thus arborescent, as it
were, one class of it branching out of another and sustained by
it ; and its nobility consists in this, that whatever order or class
of it we may be contemplating, we shall find it subordinated to
a greater, simpler, and more powerful ; and if we then contem-
plate the greater order, we shall find it again subordinated to a
greater still ; until the greatest can only be quite grasped by
retiring to the limits of distance commanding it.
And if this subordination be not complete, the ornament is
bad : if the figurings and chasings and borderings of a dress
be not subordinated to the folds of it, — if the folds are not sub-
ordinate to the action and mass of the figure, — if this action
and mass not to the divisions of the recesses and shafts among
which it stands, — if these not to the shadows of the great arches
and buttresses of the whole building, in each case there is error ;
much more if all be contending with each other and striving
for attention at the same time.
§ xxvin. It is nevertheless evident, that, however perfect
this distribution, there cannot be orders adapted to every dis-
tance of the spectator. Between the ranks of ornament there
must always be a bold separation ; and there must be many
intermediate distances, where we are too far off to see the
lesser rank clearly, and yet too near to grasp the next higher
rank wholly : and at all these distances the spectator will feel
himself ill-placed, and will desire to go nearer or farther away.
This must be the case in all noble work, natural or artificial. It
is exactly the same with respect toEouen cathedral or the Mont
Blanc. We like to see them from the other side of the Seine,
or of the lake of Geneva ; from the Marche aux Fleurs, or the
Valley of Chamouni ; from the parapets of the apse, or the
crags of the Montagne de la Cote : but there are intermediate
distances which dissatisfy us in either case, and from which one
is in haste either to advance or to retire.
DKCORATION. XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 253
§ xxix. Directly opposed to this ordered, disciplined, well
officered and variously ranked ornament, this type of divine,
and therefore of all good human government, is the democratic
ornament, in which all is equally influential, and has equal
office and authority ; that is to say, none of it any office nor
authority, but a life of continual struggle for independence and
notoriety, or of gambling for chance regards. The English
perpendicular work is by far the worst of this kind that I know ;
its main idea, or decimal fraction of an idea, being to cover
its walls with dull, successive, eternity of reticulation, to fill
with equal foils the equal interstices between the equal bars,
and charge the interminable blanks with statues and rosettes,
invisible at a distance, and uninteresting near.
The early Lombardic, Veronese, and Norman work is the
exact reverse of this ; being divided first into large masses, and
these masses covered with minute chasing and surface work,
which fill them with interest, and yet do not disturb nor divide
their greatness. The lights are kept broad and bright, and yet
are found on near approach to be charged with intricate design.
This, again, is a part of the great system of treatment which I
shall hereafter call " Proutism ;" much of what is thought man-
nerism and imperfection in Prout's work, being the result of
his determined resolution that minor details shall never break
up his large masses of light.
§ xxx. Such are the main principles to be observed in the
adaptation of ornament to the sight. "We have lastly to inquire
by what method, and in what quantities, the ornament, thus
adapted to mental contemplation, and prepared for its physical
position, may most wisely be arranged. I think the method
ought first to be considered, and the quantity last ; for the ad-
visable quantity depends upon the method.
§ xxxi. It was said above, that the proper treatment or
arrangement of ornament was that which expressed the laws
and ways of Deity. Now, the subordination of visible orders
to each other, just noted, is one expression of these. But there
may also — must also — be a subordination and obedience of the
parts of each order to some visible law, out of itself, but having;
254 XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
reference to itself only (not to any upper order): some law
which shall not oppress, but guide, limit, and sustain.
In the tenth chapter of the second volume of " Modern
Painters," the reader will find that I traced one part of the
beauty of God's creation to the expression of a seZf-restrained
liberty : that is to say, 'the image of that perfection of divine
action, which, though free to work in arbitrary methods, works
always in consistent methods, called by us Laws.
Now, correspondingly, we find that when these natural
objects are to become subjects of the art of man, their perfect
treatment is an image of the perfection of human action : a
voluntary submission to divine law.
It was suggested to me but lately by the friend to whose
originality of thought I have before expressed my obligations,
Mr. Newton, that the Greek pediment, with its enclosed sculp-
tures, represented to the Greek mind the law of Fate, confin-
ing human action within limits not to be overpassed. I do not
believe the Greeks ever distinctly thought of this ; but the
instinct of all the human race, since the world began, agrees in
some expression of such limitation as one of the first necessi-
ties of good ornament.* And this expression is heightened,
rather than diminished, when some portion of the design
slightly breaks the law to which the rest is subjected ; it is
like expressing the use of miracles in the divine government ;
or, perhaps, in slighter degrees, the relaxing of a law, generally
imperative, in compliance with some more imperative need —
the hungering of David. How eagerly this special infringe-
ment of a general law was sometimes sought by the mediaeval
workmen, I shall be frequently able to point out to the reader ;
but I remember just now a most curious instance, in an archi-
volt of a house in the Corte del Remer close to the Eialto at
Venice. It is composed of a wreath of flower-work — a con-
stant Byzantine design — with an animal in each coil ; the
* Some valuable remarks on this subject will be found in a notice of the
" Seven Lamps" in the British Quarterly for August, 1849. I think, how-
ever, the writer attaches too great importance to one out of many orna-
mental necessities.
DECORATION. XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 255
whole enclosed between two fillets. Each animal, leaping or
eating, scratching or biting, is kept nevertheless strictly within
its coil, and between the fillets. Not the shake of an ear, not
the tip of a tail, overpasses this appointed line, through a series
of some five-and-twenty or thirty animals ; until, on a sudden,
and by mutual consent, two little beasts (not looking, for the
rest, more rampant than the others), one on each side, lay their
small paws across the enclosing fillet at exactly the same point
of its course, and thus break the continuity of its line. Two
ears of corn, or leaves, do the same thing in the mouldings
round the northern door of the Baptistery at Florence.
§ xxxn. Observe, however, and this is of the utmost possible
importance, that the value of this type does not consist in the
mere shutting of the ornament into a certain space, but in the
acknowledgment ~by the ornament of the fitness of the limita-
tion— of its own perfect willingness to submit to it ; nay, of a
predisposition in itself to fall into the ordained form, without
any direct expression of the command to do so ; an anticipa-
tion of the authority, and an instant and willing submission to
it, in every fibre and spray : not merely willing, but happy
submission, as being pleased rather than vexed to have so
beautiful a law suggested to it, and one which to follow is so
justly in accordance with its own nature. You must not cut
out a branch of hawthorn as it grows, and rule a triangle round
it, and suppose that it is then submitted to law. ISTot a bit of
it. It is only put in a cage, and will look as if it must get out,
for its life, or wither in the confinement. But the spirit of
triangle must be put into the hawthorn. It must suck in
isoscelesism with its sap. Thorn and blossom, leaf and spray,
must grow with an awful sense of triangular necessity upon
them, for the guidance of which they are to be thankful, and
to grow all the stronger and more gloriously. And though
there may be a transgression here and there, and an adapta-
tion to some other need, or a reaching forth to some other end
greater even than the triangle, yet this liberty is to be always
accepted under a solemn sense of special permission ; and
when the full form is reached and the entire submission
«J56 XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
expressed, and every blossom has a thrilling sense of its re-
sponsibility down into its tiniest stamen, you may take your
terminal line away if you will. No need for it any more.
The commandment is written on the heart of the thing.
§ xxxm. Then, besides this obedience to external law, there
is the obedience to internal headship, which constitutes the
unity of ornament, of which I think enough has been said for
my present purpose in the chapter on Unity in the second
vol. of " Modern Painters." But I hardly know whether to
arrange as an expression of a divine law, or a representation
of a physical fact, the alternation of shade with light which,
in equal succession, forms one of the chief elements of contin-
uous ornament, and in some peculiar ones, such as dentils and
billet mouldings, is the source of their only charm. The oppo-
sition of good and evil, the antagonism of the entire human
system (so ably worked out by Lord Lindsay), the alternation
of labor with rest, the, mingling of life with death, or the
actual physical fact of the division of light from darkness, and
of the falling and rising of night and day, are all typified or
represented by these chains of shade and light of which the~
eye never wearies, though their true meaning may never occur
to the thoughts.
§ xxxiv. The next question respecting the arrangement of
ornament is one closely connected also with its quantity. The
system of creation is one in which " God's creatures leap not,
but express a feast, where all the guests sit close, and nothing
wants." It is also a feast, where there is nothing redundant.
So, then, in distributing our ornament, there must never be
any sense of gap or blank, neither any sense of there being a
single member, or fragment of a member, which could be
spared. Whatever has nothing to do, whatever could go with-
out being missed, is not ornament ; it is deformity and en-
cumbrance. Away with it. And, on the other hand, care
must be taken either to diffuse the ornament which we permit,
in due relation over the whole building, or so to concentrate it,
as never to leave a sense of its having got into knots, and
curdled upon some points, and left the rest of the building
DECORATION. XXI. TllEATMENT OF ORNAMENT. 257
whey. It is very difficult to give the rules, or analyse the
feelings, which should direct us in this matter : for some
shafts may be carved and others left unfinished, and that with
advantage ; some windows may be jewelled like Aladdin's,
and one left plain, and still with advantage ; the door or doors,
or a single turret, or the whole western facade of a church,
or the apse or transept, may be made special subjects of decora-
tion, and the rest left plain, and still sometimes with advan-
tage. But in all such cases there is either sign of that feeling
which I advocated in the First Chapter of the " Seven Lamps,"
the desire of rather doing some portion of the building as we
would have it, and leaving the rest plain, than doing the
whole imperfectly ; or else there is choice made of some im-
portant feature, to which, as more honorable than the rest,
the decoration is confined. The evil is when, without system,
and without preference of the nobler members, the ornament
alternates between sickly luxuriance and sudden blankness.
In many of our Scotch and English abbeys, especially Melrose,
this is painfully felt ; but the worst instance I have ever seen
is the window in the side of the arch under the Wellington
statue, next St. George's Hospital. In the first place, a win-
dow has no business there at all ; in the second, the bars of the
window are not the proper place for decoration, especially
wavy decoration, which one instantly fancies of cast iron ; in
the third, the richness of the ornament is a mere patch and
eruption upon the wall, and one hardly knows whether to be
most irritated at the affectation of severity in the rest, or at the
vain luxuriance of the dissolute parallelogram.
§ xxxv. Finally, as regards quantity of ornament I have
already said, again and again, you cannot have too much if it
be good ; that is, if it be thoroughly united and harmonised by
the laws hitherto insisted upon. But you may easily have too
much if you have more than you have sense to manage. For
with every added order of ornament increases the difficulty of
discipline. It is exactly the same as in war : you cannot, as an
abstract law, have too many soldiers, but you may easily have
more than the country is able to sustain, or than your general-
258 XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. DECORATION.
ship is competent to command. And every regiment which,
you cannot manage will, on the day of battle, be in your way,
and encumber the movements it is not in disposition to sus-
tain.
§ xxxvi. As an architect, therefore, you are modestly to
measure your capacity of governing ornament. Remember,
its essence, — its being ornament at all, consists in its being
governed. Lose your authority over it, let it command you,
or lead you, or dictate to you in any wise, and it is an offence,
an incumbrance, and a dishonor. And it is always ready to do
this ; wild to get the bit in its teeth, and rush forth on its own
devices. Measure, therefore, your strength ; and as long as
there is no chance of mutiny, add soldier to soldier, battalion
to battalion ; but be assured that all are heartily in the cause,
and that there is not one of whose position you are ignorant,
or whose service you could spare.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ANGLE.
§ i. WE have now examined the treatment and specific
kinds of ornament at our command. We have lastly to note
the fittest places for their disposal. Not but that all kinds of
ornament are used in all places ; but there are some parts of
the building, which, without ornament, are more painful than
others, and some which wear ornament more gracefully than
others ; so that, although an able architect will always be find-
ing out some new and unexpected modes of decoration, and
fitting his ornament into wonderful places where it is least ex-
pected, there are, nevertheless, one or two general laws which
may be noted respecting every one of the parts of a building,
laws not (except a few) imperative like those of construction,
but yet generally expedient, and good to be understood, if it
were only that we might enjoy the brilliant methods in which
they are sometimes broken. I shall note, however, only a few
of the simplest ; to trace them into their ramifications, and
class in due order the known or possible methods of decoration
for each part of a building, would alone require a large volume,
and be, I think, a somewhat useless work ; for there is often a
high pleasure in the very unexpectedness of the ornament,
which would be destroyed by too elaborate an arrangement of
its kinds.
§ ii. I think that the reader must, by this time, so thor-
oughly understand the connection of the parts of a building,
that I may class together, in treating of decoration, several
parts which I kept separate in speaking of construction. Thus
I shall put under one head (A) the base of the wall and of the
shaft; then (B) the wall veil and shaft itself; then (c) the
2GO XXII. THE ANGLE.
DECORATION.
cornice and capital ; then (D) the jamb and archivolt, including
the arches both over shafts and apertures, and the jambs of
apertures, which are closely connected with their archivolts ;
finally (E) the roof, including the real roof, and the minor roofs
or gables of pinnacles and arches. I think, under these divis-
ions, all may be arranged which is necessary to be generally
stated; for tracery decorations or aperture fillings are but
smaller forms of application of the arch, and the cusps are
merely smaller spandrils, while buttresses have, as far as I
know, no specific ornament. The best are those which have
least ; and the little they have resolves itself into pinnacles,
which are common to other portions of the building, or into
small shafts, arches, and niches, of still more general applica-
bility. We shall therefore have only five divisions to examine
in succession, from foundation to roof.
§ in. But in the decoration of these several parts, certain
Fig. LI.
minor conditions of ornament occur which are of perfectly
general application. For instance, whether, in archivolts,
jambs, or buttresses, or in square piers, 'or at the extremity of
the entire building, we necessarily have the awkward (moral
or architectural) feature, the corner. How to turn a corner
gracefully becomes, therefore, a perfectly general question ; to
be examined without reference to any particular part of the
edifice.
§ iv. Again, the furrows and ridges by which bars of paral-
lel light and shade are obtained, whether these are employed
in arches, or jambs, or bases, or cornices, must of necessity
present one or more of six forms : square projection, a (Fig.
LI.), or square recess, J, sharp projection, c, or sharp recess, dy
curved projection, e, or curved recess, f. What odd curves
the projection or recess may assume, or how these different
DECORATIQN. XXII. THE ANGLE. 261
conditions may be mixed and run into one another, is not our
present business. We note only the six distinct kinds or types.
Now, when these ridges or furrows are on a small scale
they often themselves constitute all the ornament required for
larger features, and are left smooth cut ; but on a very large
scale they are apt to become insipid, and they require a sub-
ornament of their own, the consideration of which is, of course,
in great part, general, and irrespective of the place held by the
mouldings in the building itself : which consideration I think
we had better undertake first of all.
§ v. But before we come to particular examination of these
minor forms, let us see how far we can simplify it. Look back
to Fig. LI., above. There are distinguished in it six forms of
moulding. Of these, c is nothing but a small corner ; but, for
convenience sake, it is better to call it an edge, and to consider
its decoration together with that of the member a, which is
called a fillet ; while e, which I shall call a roll (because I do
not choose to assume that it shall be only of the semicircular
section here given), is also best considered together with its
relative recess, f; and because the shape of a recess is of no
great consequence, I shall class all the three recesses together,
and we shall thus have only three subjects for separate con-
sideration : —
1. The Angle.
2. The Edge and Fillet.
3. The Roll and Recess.
§ vi. There are two other general forms which may proba-
bly occur to the reader's mind, namely, the ridge (as of a roof),
which is a corner laid on its back, or sloping, — a supine corner,
decorated in a very different manner from a stiff upright
corner : and the point, which is a concentrated corner, and has
wonderfully elaborate decorations all to its insignificant self,
finials, and spikes, and I know not what more. But both these
conditions are so closely connected with roofs (even the cusp
finial being a kind of pendant to a small roof), that I think it
262 XXII. THE ANGLE. DECORATION.
better to class them and their ornament under the head of roof
decoration, together with the whole tribe of crockets and
bosses ; so that we shall be here concerned only with the three
subjects above distinguished : and, first, the corner or Angle.
§ vii. The mathematician knows there are many kinds of
angles ; but the one we have principally to deal with now, is
that which the reader may very easily conceive as the corner
of a square house, or square anything. It is of course the one
of most frequent occurrence ; and its treatment, once understood^
may, with slight modification, be referred to other corners,
sharper or blunter, or with curved sides.
§ vni. Evidently the first and roughest idea which would
occur to any one who found a corner troublesome, would be
to cut it off. This is a very summary and tyrannical proceeding,
somewhat barbarous, yet advisable if nothing else can be done :
an amputated corner is said to be chamfered. It can, however,
Fig m evidently be cut off in three ways :
1. with a concave cut, a • 2. with
a straight cut, b; 3. with a convex
cut, c, Fig. LII.
The first two. methods, the
" c most violent and summary, have
the apparent disadvantage that we get by them, — two corners
instead of one ; much milder corners, however, and with a dif-
ferent light and shade between them ; so that both methods
are often very expedient. You may see the straight chamfer
(b) on most lamp posts, and pillars at railway stations, it being
the easiest to cut : the concave chamfer requires more care, and
occurs generally in well-finished but simple architecture — very
beautifully in the small arches of the Broletto of Como, Plate
V. ; and the straight chamfer in architecture of every kind,
very constantly in Norman cornices and arches, as in Fig. 2,
Plate IV., at Sens.
§ ix. The third, or convex chamfer, as it is the gentlest
mode of treatment, so (as in medicine and morals) it is very
generally the best. For while the two other methods produce
two corners instead of one, this gentle chamfer does verily get
DECORATION.
XXII. THE ANGLE.
263
rid of the corner altogether, and substitutes a soft curve in its
place.
But it has, in the form above given, this grave disadvantage,
that it looks as if the corner had been rubbed or worn off,
blunted by time and weather, and in want of sharpening again.
A great deal often depends, and in. such a case as this, every-
thing depends, on the Voluntariness of the ornament. The
work of time is beautiful on surfaces, but not on edges intended
to be sharp. Even if we needed them blunt, we should not
like them blunt on compulsion ; so, to show that the bluritness
Fig. LIH.
is our own ordaining, we will put a slight incised line to mark
off the rounding, and show that it goes no farther than we
choose. We shall thus have the section a, Fig. LIIL ; and
this mode of turning an angle is one of the very best ever in-
vented. By enlarging and deepening the incision, we £c* in
succession the forms &, c, d; and by describing a small equal
arc on each of the sloping lines of these figures, we get <?, /,
§ x. I do not know whether these mouldings are called by
architects chamfers or beads ; but I think lead a bad word for
a continuous moulding, and the proper sense of the word
264
XXII. THE ANGLE.
DKCORATION.
chamfer is fixed by Spenser as descriptive not merely of trun-
cation, but of trench or furrow :— -
" Tho gin you, fond flies, the cold to scorn,
And, crowing in pipes made of green corn,
You thinken to be lords of the year;
But eft when ye count you freed from fear,
Comes the breme winter with chamfred brows,
Full of wrinkles and frosty furrows. "
So I shall call the above mouldings beaded chamfers, when
there is any chance of confusion with the plain chamfer, a, or
#, of Fig. LII. : and when there is no such chance, I shall use
the word chamfer only.
§ xi. Of those above given, I is the constant chamfer of
Venice, and a of Verona : a being the grandest and best, and
having a peculiar precision and quaintness of effect about it.
I found it twice in Venice, used on the sharp angle, as at a and
J, Fig. LIV., a being from the angle of a house on the Kio San
Zulian, and b from the windows of the church of San Stefano.
§ xii. There is, however, evidently another variety of the
chamfers, f and <?, Fig.
LIIL, formed by an un-
broken curve instead of
two curves, as c, Fig. LIV. ;
and when this, or the cham-
fer d, Fig. LIIL, is large,
it is impossible to say
whether they have been
devised from the incised
angle, or from small shafts
set in a nook, as at 0, Fig.
LIV., or in the hollow of
the curved chamfer, as df,
Fig. LIV. In general,
however, the shallow cham-
fers, a, &, e, and /, Fig.
LIIL, are peculiar to south-
ern work ; and may be assumed to have been derived from the
Fig. LIV.
DECORATION. XXII. THE AKTGLE. 265
incised angle, while the deep chamfers, c, d, g, A, are charac-
teristic of northern work, and may be partly derived or imitated
from the angle shaft ; while, with the usual extravagance of
the northern architects, they are cut deeper and deeper until
we arrive at the condition y, Fig. LIY., which is the favorite
chamfer at Bourges and Bayeux, and in other good French
work.
I have placed in the Appendix * a figure belonging to this
subject, but which cannot interest the general reader, showing
the number of possible chamfers with a roll moulding of given
size.
§ xin. If we take the plain chamfer, b, of Fig. LIL, on a
large scale, as at #, Fig. LY., and bead both its edges, cutting
away the parts there shaded, we shall have a form much used
in richly decorated Gothic, both in England and Italy. It
might be more simply described as the chamfer a of Fig. LIL,
with an incision on each
edge ; but the part here
shaded is often worked
into ornamental forms, not
being entirely cut away.
§ xiv. Many other
mouldings, which at first M
sight appear very elab-
orate, are nothing more than a chamfer, with a series of small
echoes of it on each side, dying away with a ripple on the
surface of the wall, as in b, Fig. LY., from Coutances (ob-
serve, here the white part is the solid stone, the shade is cut
away).
Chamfers of this kind are used on a small scale and in deli-
cate work : the coarse chamfers are found on all scales : f and
<?, Fig. LIIL, in Yenice, form the great angles of almost every
Gothic palace ; the roll being a foot or a foot and a half round,
and treated as a shaft, with a capital and fresh base at every
story, while the stones of which it is composed form alternate
* Appendix 23: "Varieties of Chamfer."
266 XXII. THE AtfGLE. DECORATION.
quoins in the brick-work beyond the chamfer curve. I need
hardly say how much nobler this arrangement is than a com-
mon quoined angle ; it gives a finish to the aspect of the whole
pile attainable in no other way. And thus much may serve
concerning angle decoration by chamfer.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE EDGE AND FILLET.
§ i. THE decoration of the angle by various forms of cham-
fer and bead, as above described, is the quietest method we can
employ ; too quiet, when great energy is to be given to the
moulding, and impossible, when, instead of a bold angle, we
have to deal with a small projecting edge, like G in Fig. LI.
In such cases we may employ a decoration, far ruder and easier
in. its simplest conditions than the bead, far more effective
when not used in too great profusion ; and of which the com-
plete developments are the source of mouldings at once the
most picturesque and most serviceable which the Gothic
builders invented.
§ n. The gunwales of the Venetian heavy barges being
liable to somewhat rough collision with each other, and with
the walls of the streets, are generally protected by a piece of
timber, which projects in the form of the fillet, #, Fig. LI. ;
but which, like all other fillets, may, if we so choose, be con-
sidered as composed of two angles or edges, which the natural
and most wholesome love of the Venetian boatmen for orna-
ment, otherwise strikingly evidenced by their painted sails
and glittering flag-vanes, will not suffer to remain wholly
undecorated. The rough service of these timbers, however,
will not admit of rich ornament, and the boatbuilder usually
contents himself with cutting a series of notches in each edge,
one series alternating with the other, as represented at 1,
Plate IX.
§ in. In that simple ornament, not as confined to Venetian
boats, but as representative of a general human instinct to
268 XXIII. THE EDGE A^D FILLET. DECORATION.
hack at an edge, demonstrated by all school-boys and all idle
possessors of penknives or other cutting instruments on both
sides of the Atlantic ; — in that rude Venetian gunwale, I say, is
the germ of all the ornament which has touched, with its rich
successions of angular shadow, the portals and archi volts of nearly
every early building of importance, from the North Cape to
the Straits of Messina. Nor are the modifications of the first
suggestion intricate. All that is generic in their character may
be seen on Plate IX. at a glance.
§ iv. Taking a piece of stone instead of timber, and enlarg-
ing the notches, until they meet each other, we have the
condition 2, which is a moulding from the tomb of the Doge
Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark's. Now, considering this mould-
ing as composed of two decorated edges, each edge will be
reduced, by the meeting of the notches, to a series of four-sided
pyramids (as marked oif by the dotted lines), which, the notches
here being shallow, will be shallow pyramids ; but by deepen-
ing the notches, we get them as at 3, with a profile a, more or
less steep. This moulding I shall always call " the plain dog-
tooth ;" it is used in profusion in the Venetian and Veronese
Gothic, generally set with its front to the spectator, as here at
3 ; but its effect may be much varied by placing it obliquely
(4, and profile as at j) ;' or with one side horizontal (5, and pro-
file c). Of these three conditions, 3 and 5 are exactly the same
in reality, only differently placed ; but in 4 the pyramid is
obtuse, and the inclination of its base variable, the upper side
of it being always kept vertical. It is comparatively rare. Of
the three, the last, 5, is far the most brilliant in effect, giving
in the distance a zigzag form to the high light on it, and a full
sharp shadow below. The use of this shadow is sufficiently
seen by fig. 7 in this plate (the arch on the left, the number
beneath it), in which these levelled dogteeth, with a small in-
terval between each, are employed to set off by their vigor the
delicacy of floral ornament above. This arch is the side of a
niche from the tomb of Can Signorio della Scala, at Verona ;
and the value, as well as the distant expression of its dogtooth,
may be seen by referring to Front's beautiful drawing of this
IX.
t ; i
^ ^ - - - '-
f
ARTOTYPE
HARROUN & BIERSTADT.
letoralinn
DECORATION. XXIII. THE EDGE AND FILLET. 269
tomb in his " Sketches in France and Italy." I have before
observed that this artist never fails of seizing the true and lead-
ing expression of whatever he touches : he has made this orna-
ment the leading feature of the niche, expressing it, as in
distance it is only expressible, by a. zigzag.
§ v. The reader may perhaps be surprised at my speaking
so highly of this drawing, if he take the pains to compare
Front's symbolism of the work on the niche with the facts as
they stand here in Plate IX. But the truth is that Prout has
rendered the effect of the monument on the mind of the passer-
by ; — the effect it was intended to have on every man who
turned the corner of the street beneath it : and in this sense
there is actually more truth and likeness * in Prout's translation
than in my fac-simile, made diligently by peering into the
details from a ladder. I do not say that all the symbolism in
Prout's Sketch is the best possible ; but it is the best which any
architectural draughtsman has yet invented ; and in its applica-
tion to special subjects it always shows curious internal evidence
that the sketch has been made on the spot, and that the artist
tried to draw what he saw, not to invent an attractive subject.
I shall notice other instances of this hereafter.
§ vi. The dogtooth, employed in this simple form, is, how-
ever, rather a foil for other ornament, than itself a satisfactory
or generally available decoration. It is, however, easy to enrich
it as we choose : taking up its simple form at 3, and describing
the arcs marked by the dotted lines upon its sides, and cutting
a small triangular cavity between them, we shall leave its ridges
somewhat rudely representative of four leaves, as at 8, which is.
the section and front view of one of the Venetian stone cornices
described above, Chap. XIV., § iv.,the figure 8 being here put
in the hollow of the gutter. The dogtooth is put on the outer
lower truncation, and is actually in position as fig. 5 ; but
being always looked up to, is to the spectator as 3, and always
* I do not here speak of artistical merits, but the play of the light among
the lower shafts is also singularly beautiful in this sketch of Prout's, and
the character of the wild and broken leaves, half dead, on the stone of the
foreground.
270 XXIII. THE EDGE AKD FILLET. DECORATION.
rich and effective. The dogteeth are perhaps most frequently
expanded to the width of lig. 9.
§ vn. As in nearly all other ornaments previously described,
so in this, — we have only to deepen the Italian cutting, and we
shall get the Northern type. If we make the original pyramid
somewhat steeper, and instead of lightly incising, cut it through,
so as to have the leaves held only by their points to the base,
we shall have the English dogtooth ; somewhat vulgar in its
piquancy, when compared with French mouldings of a similar
kind.* It occurs, I think, on one house in Venice, in the
Campo St. Polo ; but the ordinary moulding, with light inci-
sions, is frequent in archivolts and architraves, as well as in the
roof cornices.
§ vin. This being the simplest treatment of the pyramid,
fig. 10, from the refectory of Wenlock Abbey, is an example
of the simplest decoration of the recesses or inward angles
between the pyramids ; that is to say, of a simple hacked edge
like one of those in fig. 2, the cuts being taken up and decorated
instead of the points. Each is worked into a small trefoiled
arch, with an incision round it to mark its outline, and another
slight incision above, expressing the angle of the first cutting.
I said that the teeth in fig. 7 had in distance the effect of a zig-
zag : in fig. 10 this zigzag effect is seized upon and developed,
but with the easiest and roughest work ; the angular incision
being a mere limiting line, like that described in § ix. of the
last chapter. But hence the farther steps to every condition of
Norman ornament are self evident. I do not say that all of
them arose from development of the dogtooth in this manner,
many being quite independent inventions and uses of zigzag
lines ; still, they may all be referred to this simple type as their
root and representative, that is to say, the mere hack of the
Venetian gunwale, with a limiting line following the resultant
zigzag.
§ ix. Fig. 11 is a singular and much more artificial condi-
. tion, cast in brick, from the church of the Frari, and given
* Vide the " Seven Lamps," p. 122.
DECORATION. XXIII. THE EDGE AND FILLET. 271
here only for future reference. Fig. 12, resulting from a fillet
with the cuts on each of its edges interrupted by a bar, is a
frequent Venetian moulding, and of great value ; but the plain
or leaved dogteeth have been the favorites, and that to such a
degree, that even the Renaissance architects took them up ;
and the best bit of Renaissance design in Yenice, the side of
the Ducal Palace next the Bridge of Sighs, owes great part of
its splendor to its foundation, faced with large flat dogteeth,
each about a foot wide in the base, with their points truncated,
and alternating with cavities which are their own negatives or
casts.
§ x. One other form of the dogtooth is of great import-
ance in northern architecture, that produced by oblique cuts
slightly curved, as in the margin, Fig. LYI. It is susceptible
of the most fantastic and endless decoration ; each of the re-
sulting leaves being, in the early porches of Rouen and Lisieux,
hollowed out and worked into branching tracery: and at
Bourges, for distant effect, worked into plain leaves, or bold
bony processes with knobs at the points, and near the specta-
tor, into crouching demons and broad winged owls, and other
fancies and intricacies, innumerable and inexpressible.
§ xi. Thus much is enough to be noted respecting edge
decoration. We were next to consider the fillet. Fig. LVI.
Professor Willis has noticed an ornament, which
he has called the Yenetian dentil, " as the most
universal ornament in its own district that ever I
met with ;" but has not noticed the reason for its
frequency. It is nevertheless highly interesting.
The whole early architecture of Yenice is
architecture of incrustation : this has not been
enough noticed in its peculiar relation to that of
the rest of Italy. There is, indeed, much in-
crusted architecture throughout Italy, in elaborate
ecclesiastical work, but there is more which is
frankly of brick, or thoroughly of stone. But the Yenetian
habitually incrusted his work with macre ; he built his houses,
even the meanest, as if he had been a shell-fish,— roughly in-
272 XXIII. THE EDGE A^D FILLET. DECORATION.
side, mother-of-pearl on the surface : he was content, perforce,,
to gather the clay of the Brenta banks, and bake it into brick
for his substance of wall ; but he overlaid it with the wealth
of ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You might
fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which a petrifying
sea had beaten upon till it coated it with marble : at first a
dark city — washed white by the sea foam. And I told you
before that it was also a city of shafts and arches/and that its
dwellings were raised upon continuous arcades, among which
the sea waves wandered. Hence the thoughts of its builders
were early and constantly directed to the incrustation of
arches.
§ xn. In Fig. LVIL I have given two of these Byzantine
stilted arches : the one on the right, a, as they now too often
appear, in its bare brickwork ; that on the left, with its ala-
baster covering, literally marble defensive armor, riveted
together in pieces, which follow the contours of the building.
Now. on the wall, these pieces are mere flat slabs cut to the
arch outline ; but under the
soffit of the arch the marble-
mail is curved, often cut
singularly thin, like bent
tiles, and fitted together so
that the pieces would sus-
tain each other even without
rivets. It is of course de-
sirable that this thin sub-
arch of marble should project enough to sustain the facing of
the wall ; and the reader will see, in Fig. LVIL, that its edge
forms a kind of narrow band round the arch (&), a band which
the least enrichment would render a valuable decorative fea-
ture. ISTow this band is, of course, if the soffit-pieces project
a little beyond the face of the wall-pieces, a mere fillet, like the
wooden gunwale in Plate IX. ; and the question is, how to
enrich it most wisely. It might easily have been dog-toothed,
but the Byzantine architects had not invented the dogtooth,
and would not have used it here, if they had ; for the dogtooth
DECORATION. XXIII. THE EDGE AND FILLET. 273
cannot be employed alone, especially on so principal an angle
as this of the main arches, without giving to the whole build-
ing a peculiar look, which I can no otherwise describe than as
being to the eye, exactly what unternpered acid is to the
tongue. The mere dogtooth is an acid moulding, and can
only be used in certain mingling with others, to give them
piquancy ; never alone. What, then, will be the next easiest
method of giving interest to the fillet ?
§ XIIL Simply to make the incisions square instead of sharp,
and to leave equal intervals of the square edge between them.
Fig. LYIII. is one of the curved pieces of arch armor, with its
edge thus treated ; one side only being done at the bottom, to
show the simplicity and ease of the work. This ornament
gives force and interest to the edge of the arch, without in the
least diminishing its quietness. Nothing Fig. LVIIL
was ever, nor could be ever invented, fitter
for its purpose, or more easily cut. From
the arch it therefore found its way into
every position where the edge of a piece of
stone projected, and became, from its con-
stancy of occurrence in the latest Gothic
as well as the earliest Byzantine, most truly
deserving of the name of the " Venetian
Dentil." Its complete intention is now,
however, only to be seen in the pictures of
Gentile Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio ; for,
like most of the rest of the mouldings of
Venetian buildings, it was always either
gilded or painted — often both, gold being
laid on the faces of the dentils, and their
recesses colored alternately red and blue.
§ xiv. Observe, however, that the rea-
son above given for the universality of
this ornament was by no means the reason of its invention.
t/
The Venetian dentil is a particular application (consequent on
the incrusted character of Venetian architecture) of the gene-
ral idea of dentil, which had been originally given by the
274 XXIII. THE EDGE AND FILLET. DECORATION.
Greeks, and realised both by them and by the Byzantines in
many laborious forms, long before there was need of them for
arch armor ; and the lower half of Plate IX. will give some
idea of the conditions which occur in the Romanesque of
Yenice, distinctly derived from the classical dentil ; and of the
gradual transition to the more convenient and simple type, the
running-hand dentil, which afterwards became the character-
istic of Venetian Gothic. No. 13 * is the common dentiled
cornice, which occurs repeatedly in St. Mark's ; and, as late as
the thirteenth century, a reduplication of it, forming the abaci
of the capitals of the Piazzetta shafts. Fig. 15 is perhaps an
earlier type ; perhaps only one of more careless workmanship,
from a Byzantine ruin in the Rio di Ca' Foscari : and it is
interesting to compare it with fig. 14 from the Cathedral of
Yienne, in South France. Fig. 17, from St. Mark's, and 18,
from the apse of Murano, are two very early examples in which
the future true Venetian dentil is already developed in method
of execution, though the object is still only to imitate the
classical one ; and a rude imitation of the bead is joined with
it in fig. IT. ISTo. 16 indicates two examples of experimental
forms : the uppermost from the tomb of Mastino della Scala,
at Verona ; the lower from a door in Venice, I believe, of the
thirteenth century : 19 is a more frequent arrangement, chiefly
found in cast brick, and connecting the dentils with the dog-
teeth : 20 is a form introduced richly in the later Gothic, but
of rare occurrence until the latter half of the thirteenth cen-
tury. I shall call it the gabled dentil. It is found in the
greatest profusion in sepulchral Gothic, associated with several
slight variations from the usual dentil type, of which No. 21,
from the tomb of Pietro Cornaro, may serve as an example.
§ xv. All the forms given in Plate IX. are of not unfre-
quent occurrence : varying much in size and depth, according
to the expression of the work in which they occur ; generally
increasing in size in late work (the earliest dentils are seldom
* The sections of all the mouldings are given on the right of each ; the
part which is constantly solid being shaded, and that which is cut into
dentils left.
DECORATION. XXIII. THE EDGE AND FILLET. 275
more than an inch or an inch and a half long: the fully
developed dentil of the later Gothic is often as much as four
or live in length, by one and a half in breadth) ; but they are
all somewhat rare, compared to the true or armor dentil,
above described. On the other hand, there are one or two
unique conditions, which will be noted in the buildings where
they occur.* The Ducal Palace furnishes three anomalies in
the arch, dogtooth, and dentil : it has a hyperbolic arch, as
noted above, Chap. X., § xv. ; it has a double-fanged dog-
tooth in the rings of the spiral shafts on its angles ; and,
finally, it has a dentil with concave sides, of which the section
and two of the blocks, real size, are given in Plate XIV. The
labor of obtaining this difficult profile has, however, been
thrown away ; for the effect of the dentil at ten feet distance
is exactly the same as that of the usual form : and the reader
may consider the dogtooth and dentil in that plate as fairly
representing the common use of them in the Venetian Gothic.
§ xvi. I am aware of no other form of fillet decoration
requiring notice : in the Northern Gothic, the fillet is em-
ployed chiefly to give severity or flatness to mouldings sup-
posed to be too much rounded, and is therefore generally
plain. It is itself an ugly moulding, and, when thus em-
ployed, is merely a foil for others, of which, however, it at last
usurped the place, and became one of the most painful fea-
tures in the debased Gothic both of Italy and the JSTorth.
* As, however, we shall not probably be led either to Bergamo or
Bologna, I may mention here a curiously rich use of the dentil, entirely-
covering the foliation and tracery of a niche on the outside of the duomo
of Bergamo ; and a roll, entirely incrusted, as the handle of a mace often
is with nails, with massy dogteeth or nail-heads, on the door of the Pepoli
palace of Bologna.
CHAPTER XXIY.
THE ROLL AND RECESS.
§ i. I HAVE classed these two means of architectural effect
together, because the one is in most cases the negative of the
other, arid is used to relieve it exactly as shadow relieves light ;
recess alternating with roll, not only in lateral, but in succes-
sive order ; not merely side by side with each other, but inter-
rupted the one by the other in their own lines. A recess itself
has properly no decoration ; but its depth gives value to the
decoration which flanks, encloses, or interrupts it, and the
form which interrupts it best is the roll.
§ n. I use the word roll generally for any mouldings
which present to the eye somewhat the appearance of being
cylindrical, and look like round rods. When upright, they are
in appearance, if not in fact, small shafts ; and are a kind of
bent shaft, even when used in archivolts and traceries ; — when
horizontal, they confuse themselves with cornices, and are, in
fact, generally to be considered as the best means of drawing
an architectural line in any direction, the soft curve of their
side obtaining some shadow at nearly all times of the day, and
that more tender and grateful to the eye than can be obtained
either by an incision or by any other form of projection.
§ m. Their decorative power is, however, too slight for
rich work, and they frequently require, like the angle and the
fillet, to be rendered interesting by subdivision or minor orna-
ment of their own. When the roll is small, this is effected,
exactly as in the case of the fillet, by cutting pieces out of it ;
giving in the simplest results what is called the Norman billet
moulding : and when the cuts are given in couples, and the
pieces rounded into spheres and almonds, we have the ordinary
DECORATION. XXIV. THE ROLL AND RECESS. 277
Greek bead, both of them too well known to require illustra-
tion. The Norman billet we shall not meet with in Yenice ;
the bead constantly occurs in Byzantine, and of course in
Kenaissance work. In Plate IX., Fig. 17, there is a remarka-
ble example of its early treatment, where the cuts in it are left
sharp.
§ iv. But the roll, if it be of any size, deserves better treat-
ment. Its rounded surface is too beautiful to be cut away in
notches ; and it is rather to be covered with flat chasing or in-
laid patterns. Thus ornamented, it gradually blends itself with
the true shaft, both in the Romanesque work of the North, and
in the Italian connected schools ; and the patterns used for it
are those used for shaft decoration in general.
§ v. But, as alternating with the recess, it has a decoration
peculiar to itself. We have often, in the preceding chapters,
noted the fondness of the Northern builders for deep shade
and hollowness in their mouldings ; and in the second chapter
of the " Seven Lamps," the changes are described which re-
duced the massive roll mouldings of the early Gothic to a
series of recesses, separated by bars of light. The shape of
these recesses is at present a matter of no importance to us : it
was. indeed, endlessly varied ; but needlessly, for the value of
a recess is in its darkness, and its darkness disguises its form.
But it was not in mere wanton indulgence of their love of
shade that the Flamboyant builders deepened the furrows of
their mouldings : they had found a means of decorating those
furrows as rich as it was expressive, and the entire framework
of their architecture was designed with a view to the effect of
this decoration ; where the ornament ceases, the framework is
meagre and mean : but the ornament is, in the best examples of
the style, unceasing.
§ vi. It is, in fact, an ornament formed by the ghosts or
anatomies of the old shafts, left in the furrows which had
taken their place. Every here and there, a fragment of a roll
or shaft is left in the recess or furrow : a billet-moulding on a
huge scale, but a billet-moulding reduced to a skeleton ; for
the fragments of roll are cut hollow, and worked into mere
£78 XXIV. THE ROLL AND RECESS. DECORATION.
entanglement of stony fibres, with the gloom of the recess
shown through them. These ghost rolls, forming sometimes
pedestals, sometimes canopies, sometimes covering the whole
recess with an arch of tracery, beneath which it runs like a
tunnel, are the peculiar decorations of the Flamboyant Gothic.
§ vii. Now observe, in all kinds of decoration, we must
keep carefully under separate heads, the consideration of the
changes wrought in the mere physical form, and in the intel-
lectual purpose of ornament. The relations of the canopy to
the statue it shelters, are to be considered altogether distinctly
from those of the canopy to the building which it decorates.
In its earliest conditions the canopy is partly confused with
representations of miniature architecture : it is sometimes a
small temple or gateway, sometimes a honorary addition to
the pomp of a saint, a covering to his throne, or to his shrine ;
and this canopy is often expressed in bas-relief (as in painting),
without much reference to the great requirements of the build-
ing. At other times it is a real protection to the statue, and is
enlarged into a complete pinnacle, carried on proper shafts, and
boldly roofed. But in the late northern system the canopies
are neither expressive nor protective. They are a kind of
stone lace-work, required for the ornamentation of the build-
ing, for which the statues are often little more than an excuse,
and of which the physical character is, as above described, that
of ghosts of departed shafts.
§ vni. There is, of course, much rich tabernacle work
which will not come literally under this head, much which is
straggling or flat in its plan, connecting itself gradually with
the ordinary forms of independent shrines and tombs ; but the
general idea of all tabernacle work is marked in the common
phrase of a " niche," that is to say a hollow intended for a
statue, and crowned by a canopy ; and this niche decoration
only reaches its full development when the Flamboyant hol-
lows are cut deepest, and when the manner and spirit of sculp-
ture had so much lost their purity and intensity that it became
desirable to draw the eye away from the statue to its cover-
ing, so that at last the canopy became the more important of
DECORATION. XXIV. THE ROLL AND RECESS. 279
the two, and is itself so beautiful that we are often contented
with architecture from which profanity has struck the statues,
if only the canopies are left ; and consequently, in our modern
ingenuity, even set up canopies where we have no intention of
setting statues.
§. ix. It is a pity that thus we have no really noble example
of the effect of the statue in the recesses of architecture : for
the Flamboyant recess was not so much a preparation for it
as a gulf which swallowed it up. When statues were most
earnestly designed, they were thrust forward in all kinds of
places, often In front of the pillars, as at Amiens, awkwai dly
enough, but with manly respect to the purpose of the figures.
The Flamboyant hollows yawned at their sides, the statues
fell back into them, and nearly disappeared, and a flash of
flame in the shape of a canopy rose as they expired.
§ x. I do not feel myself capable at present of speaking
with perfect justice of this niche ornament of the north, my
late studies in Italy having somewhat destroyed my sympathies
with it. Bat I once loved it intensely, and will not say any-
thing to depreciate it now, save only this, that while I have
studied long at Abbeville, without in the least finding that it
made me care less for Verona, I never remained long in
Verona without feeling some doubt of the nobility of Abbe-
ville.
§ YI. Recess decoration by leaf mouldings is constantly and
beautifully associated in the north with niche decoration, but
requires no special notice, the recess in such cases being used
merely to give value to the leafage by its gloom, and the dif-
ference between such conditions and those of the south being
merely that in the one the leaves are laid across a hollow, and
in the other over a solid surface ; but in neither of the schools
exclusively so, each in some degree intermingling the method
of the other.
§ xn. Finally the -recess decoration by the ball flower is
very definite and characteristic, found, I believe, chiefly in
English work. It consists merely in leaving a small boss or
sphere, fixed, as it were, at intervals in the hollows ; such
280 XXIV. THE KOLL AND RECESS. DECORATION.
bosses being afterwards carved into roses, or other ornamental
forms, and sometimes lifted quite up out of the hollow, on
projecting processes, like vertebrae, so as to make them more
conspicuous, as throughout the decoration of the cathedral of
Bourges.
The value of this ornament is chiefly in the spotted char-
acter which it gives to the lines of mouldings seen from a dis-
tance. It is very rich and delightful when not used in excess ;
but it would satiate and weary the eye if it were ever used in
general architecture. The spire of Salisbury, and of St.
Mary's at Oxford, are agreeable as isolated masses ; but if an
entire street were built with this spotty decoration at every
casement, we could not traverse it to the end without disgust.
It is only another example of the constant aim at piquancy of
effect which characterised the northern builders ; an ingenious
but somewhat vulgar effort to give interest to their grey masses
of coarse stone, without overtaking their powers either of in-
vention or execution. We will thank them for it without
blame or praise, and pass on.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE BASE.
§ i. WE know now as much as is needful respecting the
methods of minor and universal decorations, which were dis-
tinguished in Chapter XXII., § m., from the ornament which
has special relation to particular parts. This local ornament,
which, it will be remembered, we arranged in § n. of the same
chapter under five heads, we have next, under those heads, to
consider. And, first, the ornament of the bases, both of walls
and shafts.
It was noticed in our account of the divisions of a wall, that
there are something in those divisions like the beginning, the
several courses, and the close of a human life. And as, in all
well-conducted lives, the hard work, and roughing, and gaining
of strength come first, the honor or decoration in certain
intervals during their course, but most of all in their close, so,
in general, the base of the wall, which is its beginning of labor,
will bear least decoration, its body more, especially those
epochs of rest called its string courses ; but its crown or cornice
most of all. Still, in some buildings, all these are decorated
richly, though the last most ; and in others, when the base is
well protected and yet conspicuous, it may probably receive
even more decoration than other parts.
§ n. Now, the main things to be expressed in a base are its
levelness and evenness. We cannot do better than construct
the several members of the base, as developed in Fig. II., p.
55, each of a different colored marble, so as to produce
marked level bars of color all along the foundation. This is
exquisitely done in all the Italian elaborate wall bases ; that of
St. Anastasia at Yerona is one of the most perfect existing, for
282 XXV. THE BASE. DECORATION.
play of color ; that of Giotto's campanile is on the whole the
most beautifully finished. Then, on the vertical portions, a, b,
c, we may put what patterns in mosaic we please, so that they
be not too rich ; but if we choose rather to have sculpture (or
must have it for want of stones to inlay), then observe that all
sculpture on bases must be in panels, or it will soon be worn
a \\-ay, and that a plain panelling is often good without any
other ornament. The member £, which in St. Mark's is subor-
dinate, and <?, which is expanded into a seat, are both of them
decorated with simple but exquisitely-finished panelling, in red
and white or green and white marble ; and the member e is in
bases of this kind very valuable, as an expression of a firm
beginning of the substance of the wall itself. This member
has been of no service to us hitherto, and was unnoticed in the
chapters on construction ; but it was expressed in the figure
of the wall base, on account of its great value when the foun-
dation is of stone and the wall of brick (coated or not). In
such cases it is always better to add the course £, above the
slope of the base, than abruptly to begin the common masonry
of the wall.
§ in. It is, however, with the member d, or Xb, that we
are most seriously concerned ; for this being the essential fea-
ture of all bases, and the true preparation for the wall or shaft,
it is most necessary that here, if anywhere, we should have
full expression of levelness and precision ; and farther, that, if
possible, the eye should not be suffered to rest on the points
of junction of the stones, which would give an effect of
instability. Both these objects are accomplished by attracting
the eye to two rolls, separated by* a deep hollow, in the mem-
ber d itself. The bold projections of their mouldings entirely
prevent the attention from being drawn to the joints of the
masonry, and besides form a simple but beautifully connected
group of bars of shadow, which express, in their perfect
parallelism, the absolute levelness of the foundation.
§ iv. I need hardly give any perspective drawing of an
arrangement which must be perfectly familiar to the reader,
as occurring under nearly every column of the too numerous
X.
1O 11 12 13 14 15
JLP.&rff.
xrf
DECORATION.
XXV. THE BASE.
283
classical buildings all over Europe. But I may name the base
of the Bank of England as furnishing a very simple instance
of the group, with a square instead of a rounded hollow, both
forming the base of the wall, and gathering into that of the
shafts as they occur ; while the bases of the pillars of the
fagade of the British Museum are as good examples as the
reader can study on a larger scale.
§ v. I believe this group of mouldings was first invented
by the Greeks, and it has never been materially improved, as
far as its peculiar purpose is concerned ;* the classical attempts
at its variation being the ugliest : one, the using a single roll
of larger size,' as may be seen in the Duke of York's column,
which therefore looks as if it stood on a large sausage (the
Monument has the same base, but more concealed by pedestal
decoration) : another, the using two rolls without the inter-
mediate cavetto, — a condition hardly less awkward, and which
may be studied to advantage in the wall and shaftbases of the
Athenaeum Club-house : and another, the introduction of what
are called fillets between the rolls, as may be seen in the pillars
of Hanover Chapel, Kegent Street, which look, in conse-
quence, as if they were standing upon a pile of pewter col-
lection plates. But the only successful changes have been
mediaeval ; and their nature will be at once understood by a
glance at the varieties given on the opposite page. It will be
well first to give the buildings in which they occur, in order.
7. Another of the same group.
8. Cortile of St. Ambrogio, Milan.
9. Nave shafts, St. Michele, Pavia.
10. Outside wall base, St. Mark's,
Venice.
11. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice.
12. Nave, Vienne, France.
13. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice.
\. Santa Fosca, Torcello.
2. North transept, St. Mark's, Ven-
ice.
3. Nave, Torcello.
4. Nave, Torcello.
5. South transept, St. Mark's.
6. Northern portico, upper shafts,
St. Mark's.
* Another most important reason for the peculiar sufficiency and value
of this base, especially as opposed to the bulging forms of the single or
double roll, without the cavetto, has been suggested by the writer of the
Essay on the ^Esthetics of Gothic Architecture in the British Quarterly for
August, 1849 :— "The Attic base recedes at the point where, if it suffered
from superincumbent weight, it would bulge out."
284
XXV. THE BASE.
DECORATION.
14. Ca' Giustiniani, Venice.
15. Byzantine fragment, Venice.
16. St. Mark's, upper Colonnade.
17. Ducal Palace, Venice (win-
dows.)
18. Ca' Falier, Venice.
19. St. Zeno, Verona.
20. San Stefano, Venice.
21. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
22. Nave, Salisbury.
23. Santa Fosca, Torcello.
24. Nave, Lyons Cathedral.
25. Notre Dame, Dijon.
26. Nave, Bourges Cathedral.
27. Nave, Mortain (Normandy).
28. Nave, Rouen Cathedral.
§ vi. Eighteen out of the twenty-eight varieties are Vene-
tian, being bases to which I shall have need of future refer-
ence ; but the interspersed examples, 8, 9, 12, and 19, from
Milan, Pavia, Yienne (France), and Verona, show the exactly
correspondent conditions of the Romanesque base at the period,
throughout the centre of Europe. The last five examples
show the changes effected by the French Gothic architects : the
Salisbury base (22) I have only introduced to show its dulness
and vulgarity beside them ; and 23, from Torcello, for a special
reason, in that place.
§ vn. The reader will observe that the two bases, 8 and 9,
from the two most important Lornbardic churches of Italy,
St. Ambrogio of Milan and St. Michele of Pavia, mark the
character of the barbaric base founded on pure Roman models,
sometimes approximating to such models very closely ; and
the varieties 10, 11, 13, 16 are Byzantine types, also founded
on Roman models. But in the bases 1 to 7 inclusive, and,
still more characteristically, in 23 below, there is evidently
an original element, a tendency to use the fillet and hollow
instead of the roll, which is eminently Gothic ; which in the
base 3 reminds one even of Flamboyant conditions, and is
excessively remarkable as occurring in Italian work certainly
not later than the tenth century, taking even the date of the
last rebuilding of the Duomo of Torcello, though I am strongly
inclined to consider these bases portions of the original church.
And I have therefore put the base 23 among the Gothic group
to which it has so strong relationship, though, on the last sup-
position, five centuries older than the earliest of the .five
terminal examples ; and it is still more remarkable because it
reverses the usual treatment of the lower roll, which is in
DKCORATION. XXV. THE BASE. 2$5
general a tolerably accurate test of the age of a base, in the
degree of its projection. Thus, in the examples 2, 3, 4, 5, 9,
10, 12, the lower roll is hardly rounded at all, and diametri-
cally opposed to the late Gothic conditions, 24 to 28, in which
it advances gradually, like a wave preparing to break, and at
last is actually seen curling over with the long-backed rush of
surf upon the shore. Yet the Torcello base resembles these
Gothic ones both in expansion beneath and in depth of cavetto
above.
§ viir. There can be no question of the ineffable superiority
of these Gothic bases, in grace of profile, to any ever invented
by the ancients. But they have all two great faults : They
seem, in the first place, to have been designed without suffi-
cient reference to the necessity of their being usually seen
from above ; their grace of profile cannot be estimated when
so seen, and their excessive expansion gives them an appear-
ance of flatness and separation from the shaft, as if they had
splashed out under its pressure : in the second place their
cavetto is so deeply cut that it has the appearance of a black
fissure between the members of the base ; and in the Lyons
and Bourges shafts, 24 and 26, it is impossible to conquer the
idea suggested by it, that the two stones above and below have
been intended to join close, but that some pebbles have got in
and kept them from fitting ; one is always expecting the
pebbles to be crushed, and the shaft to settle into its place with
a thunder-clap.
§ ix. For these reasons, I said that the profile of the pure
classic base had hardly been materially improved; but the
various conditions of it are beautiful or commonplace, in pro-
portion to the variety of proportion among their lines and the
delicacy of their curvatures ; that is to say, the expression of
characters like those of the abstract lines in Plate YII.
The five best profiles in Plate X. are 10, 17, 19, 20, 21 ; 10
is peculiarly beautiful in the opposition between the bold pro-
jection of its upper roll, and the delicate leafy curvature of its
lower ; and this and 21 may be taken as nearly perfect types,
the one of the steep, the other of the expansive basic profiles.
286
XXV. THE BASE.
DECORATION.
The characters of all, however, are so dependent upon their
place and expression, that it is unfair to judge them thus sepa-
rately ; and the precision of curvature is a matter of so small
consequence in general effect, that we need not here pursue the
subject farther.
§ x. We have thus far, however, considered only the lines
of moulding in the member X b, whether of wall or shaft base.
But the reader will remember that in our best shaft base, in
Fig. XII. (p. 78), certain props or spurs were applied to the
slope of X b ; but now that
X b is divided into these
delicate mouldings, we can-
not conveniently apply the
spur to its irregular profile ;
we must be content to set it
against the lower roll. Let
Fig. LIX
the upper edge of this low-
er roll be the curved line
here, 0, d, e, 5, Fig. LIX.,
and c the angle of the square
plinth projecting beneath
it. Then the spur, applied
as we saw in Chap. VII.,
will be of some such form as the triangle c e d. Fig. LIX.
§ XL Now it has just been stated that it is of small impor-
tance whether the abstract lines of the profile of a base mould-
ing be fine or not, because we rarely stoop down to look at
them. But this triangular spur is nearly always seen from
above, and the eye is drawn to it as one of the most important
features of the whole base ; therefore it is a point of immediate
necessity to substitute for its harsh right lines (c d, c e) some
curve of noble abstract character.
§ xii. I mentioned, in speaking of the line of the salvia leaf
at p. 224, that I had marked off the portion of it, x y, because
I thought it likely to be generally useful to us afterwards ; and
I promised the reader that as he had built, so he should deco-
rate his edifice at his own free will. If, therefore, he likes the
DECORATION. XXV. THE BASE. 237
above triangular spur, c d e, by ail means let him keep it ; but
if he be on the whole dissatisfied with it, I may be permitted,
perhaps, to advise him to set to work like a tapestry bee, to cut
off the little bit of line of salvia leaf x y, and try how he can
best substitute it for the awkward lines c d c e. He may try it
any way that he likes; but if he puts the salvia curvature
inside the present lines, he will find the spur looks weak, and I
think he will determine at last on placing it as I have done at
c d, c e, Fig. LX. (If the reader will be at the pains to trans-
fer the salvia leaf line with tracing paper, he will find it accu-
rately used in this figure.) Then I merely add an outer circular
line to represent the outer swell of the roll against which the
spur is set, and I put another such spur to the opposite corner
Fig. LX.
of the square, and we have the half base. Fig. LX., which is a
general type of the best Gothic bases in existence, being very
nearly that of the upper shafts of the Ducal Palace of Venice.
In those shafts the quadrant a b, or the upper edge of the lower
roll, is 2 feet If inches round, and the base of the spur d e, is
10 inches ; the line d e being therefore to a ~b as 10 to 25f . In
Fig. LX. it is as 10 to 24, the measurement being easier and the
type somewhat more generally representative of the best, i. e.
broadest, spurs of Italian Gothic.
§ xin. Now, the reader is to remember, there is nothing
288 XXV. THE BASE. DECORATION.
magical in salvia leaves : the line I take from them happened
merely to fall conveniently on the page, and might as well
have been taken from anything else ; it is simply its character
of gradated curvature which fits it for our use. On Plate XL,
opposite, I have given plans of the spurs and quadrants of
twelve Italian and three Northern bases ; these latter (13), from
Bourges, (14) from Lyons, (15) from Rouen, are given merely
to show the Northern disposition to break up bounding lines,
and lose breadth in picturesqueness. These Northern bases
look the prettiest in this plate, because this variation of the
outline is nearly all the ornament they have, being cut very
rudely ; but the Italian bases above them are merely prepared
by their simple outlines for far richer decoration at the next
step, as we shall see presently. The Northern bases are to be
noted also for another grand error : the projection of the roll
beyond the square plinth, of which the corner is seen, in vari-
ous degrees of advancement, in the three examples. 13 is the
base whose profile is No. 26 in Plate X. ; 14 is 24 in the same
plate ; and 15 is 28.
§ xiv. The Italian bases are the following ; all, except 7
and 10, being Venetian: 1 and 2, upper colonnade, St. Mark's;
3, Ca' Falier ; 4, lower colonnade, and 5, transept, St. Mark's ;
6, from the Church of St. John and Paul ; 7, from the tomb
near St. Anastasia, Verona, described above (p. 142) ; 8 and 9,
Ton daco de' Turchi, Venice ; 10, tomb of Can Mastino della
Scala, Verona ; 11, San Stefano, Venice ; 12, Ducal Palace,
Venice, upper colonnade. The Nos. 3, 8, 9, 11 are the bases
whose profiles are respectively Nos. 18, 11, 13, and 20 in Plate
X. The flat surfaces of the basic plinths are here shaded ; and
in the lower corner of the square occupied by each quadrant is
put, also shaded, the central profile of each spur, from its root
at the roll of the base to its point ; those of Nos. 1 and 2 being
conjectural, for their spurs were so rude and ugly, that I took
no note of their profiles ; but they would probably be as here
given. As these bases, though here, for the sake of compari-
son, reduced within squares of equal size, in reality belong to
shafts of very different size, 9 being some six or seven inches.
nf
ru
I
DECORATION. XXV. THE BASE. 289
in diameter, and 6, three or four feet, the proportionate size of
the roll varies accordingly, being largest, as in 9, where the
base is smallest, and in 6 and 12 the leaf profile is given on a
larger scale than the plan, or its character could not have been
exhibited.
§ xv. Now, in all these spurs, the reader will observe that
the narrowest are for the most part the earliest. No. 2, from
the upper colonnade of St. Mark's, is the only instance I ever
saw of the double spur, as transitive between the square and
octagon plinth ; the truncated form, 1, is also rare and very
ugly. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 are the general conditions of the
Byzantine spur ; 8 is a very rare form of plan in Byzantine
work, but proved to be so by its rude level profile ; while 7,
on the contrary, Byzantine in plan, is eminently Gothic in the
profile. 9 to 12 are from formed Gothic buildings, equally
refined in their profile and plan.
§ xvi. The character of the profile is indeed much altered
by the accidental nature of the surface decoration ; but the
importance of the broad difference between the raised and flat
profile will be felt on glancing at the examples 1 to 6 in Plate
XII. The three upper examples are the Romanesque types,
which occur as parallels with the Byzantine types, 1 to 3 of
Plate XI. Their plans would be nearly the same ; but instead
of resembling flat leaves, they are literally spurs, or claws, as
high as they are broad ; and the third, from St. Michele of
Pavia, appears to be intended to have its resemblance to a
claw enforced by the transverse fillet. 1 is from St. Ambrogio,
Milan ; 2 from Yienne, France. The 4th type, Plate XII.,
almost like the extremity of a man's foot, is a Byzantine form
(perhaps worn on the edges), from the nave of St. Mark's ;
and the two next show the unity of the two principles, form-
ing the perfect Italian Gothic types, — 5, from tomb of Can
Signorio della Scala, Yerona ; 6, from San Stefano, Yenice
(the base 11 of Plate XI., in perspective). The two other
bases, 10 and 12 of Plate XI., are conditions of the same kind,
showing the varieties of rise and fall in exquisite modulation ;
the 10th, a type more frequent at Yerona than Yeiiice, in
290 XXV. THE BASE. DECORATION.
which the spur profile overlaps the roll, instead of rising out
of it, and seems to hold it down, as if it were a ring held by-
sockets. This is a character found both in early and late work ;
a kind of band, or fillet, appears to hold, and even compress,
the centre of the roll in the base of one of the crypt shafts of
St. Peter's, Oxford, which has also spurs at its angles ; and
long bands flow over the base of the angle shaft of the Ducal
Palace of Venice, next the Porta dell a Carta.
§ xvn. When the main contours of the base are once deter-
mined, its decoration is as easy as it is infinite. I have merely
given, in Plate XII., three" examples to which I shall need to
refer, hereafter. No. 9 is a very early and curious one ; the
decoration of the base 6 in Plate XI., representing a leaf turned
over and flattened down ; or, rather, the idea of the turned
leaf, worked as well as could be imagined on the flat contour
of the spur. Then 10 is the perfect, but simplest possible
development of the same idea, from the earliest bases of the
upper colonnade of the Ducal Palace, that is to say, the bases
of the sea fagade ; and 7 and 8 are its lateral profile and trans-
verse section. Finally, 11 and 12 are two of the spurs of the
later shafts of the same colonnade on the Piazzetta side (No.
12 of Plate XI.). No. 11 occurs on one of these shafts only,
and is singularly beautiful. I suspect it to be earlier than the
other, which is the characteristic base of the rest of the series,
and already shows the loose, sensual, ungoverned character of
fifteenth century ornament in the dissoluteness of its rolling.
§ xvin. I merely give these as examples ready to my hand,
and necessary for future reference ; not as in anywise repre-
sentative of the variety of the Italian treatment of the general
contour, far less of the endless caprices of the North. The
most beautiful base I ever saw, on the whole, is a Byzantine
one in the Baptistery of St. Mark's, in which the spur profile
approximates to that of No. 10 in Plate XI. ; but it is formed
by a cherub, who sweeps downwards on the wing. His two
wings, as they half close, form the upper part of the ppur,
and the rise of it in the front is formed by exactly the action
of Alichino, swooping on the pitch lake : " quei drizzo, volando,
DECORATION. XXV. THE BASE. 291
suso 11 petto." But it requires noble management to confine
such a fancy within such limits. The greater number of the
best bases are formed of leaves ; and the reader may amuse
himself as he will by endless inventions of them, from types
which he may gather among the weeds at the nearest roadside.
The value of the vegetable form is especially here, as above
noted, Chap. XX., § xxxn., its capability of unity with the
mass of the base, and of being suggested by few lines ; none
but the Northern Gothic architects are able to introduce entire
animal forms in this position with perfect success. There is a
beautiful instance at the north door'of the west front of Rouen ;
a lizard pausing and curling himself round a little in the angle ;
one expects him the next instant to lash round the shaft and
vanish : and we may with advantage compare this base with
those of Renaissance Scuola di San Rocca * at Venice, in
which the architect, imitating the mediaeval bases, which he
did not understand, has put an elephant, four inches higher,
in the same position.
§ xix. I have not in this chapter spoken at all of the profiles
which are given in Northern architecture to the projections
•of the lower members of the base, 1) and c in Fig. II., nor of
the methods in which both these, and the rolls of the mould-
ings in Plate X., are decorated, especially in Roman architec-
ture, with superadded chain work or chasing of various patterns.
Of the first I have not spoken, because I shall have no occasion
to allude to them in the following essay ; nor of the second,
because I consider them barbarisms. Decorated rolls and dec-
orated ogee profiles, such, for instance, as the base of the Arc
de 1'Etoile at Paris, are among the richest and farthest refine-
ments of decorative appliances ; and they ought always to be
reserved for jambs, cornices, and archivolts : if you begin with
them in the base, you have no power of refining your decora-
tions as you ascend, and, which is still worse, you put your
* I have put in Appendix 24, "Renaissance Bases," ray memorandum
written respecting this building on the spot. But the reader had better
delay referring to it, until we have completed our examination of ornaments
in shafts and capitals.
2Q2 XXV. THE BASE. DECORATION.
most delicate work on the jutting portions of the foundation,,
—the very portions which are most exposed to abrasion. The
best expression of a base is that of stern endurance,— the look
of being able to bear roughing ; or, if the whole building is so
delicate that no one can be expected to treat even its base with
unkindness,* then at least the expression of quiet, prefatory
simplicity. The angle spur may receive such decoration as we
have seen, because it is one of the most important features in
the whole building ; and the eye is always so attracted to it
that it cannot be in rich architecture left altogether blank ;.
the eye is stayed upon it by its position, but glides, and ought
to glide, along the basic rolls to take measurement of their
length : and even with all this added fitness, the ornament of
the basic spur is best, in the long run, when it is boldest and
simplest. The base above described, § xviu., as the most beau-
tiful I ever saw, was not for that reason the best I ever saw :
beautiful in its place, in a quiet corner of a Baptistery sheeted
with jasper and alabaster, it would have been utterly wrong,,
nay, even offensive, if used in sterner work, or repeated along
a whole colonnade. The base No. 10 of Plate XII. is the
richest with which I was ever perfectly satisfied for general
service; and the basic spurs of the building which I have
named as the best Gothic monument in the world (p. 141),
have no ornament upon them whatever. The adaptation,
therefore, of rich cornice and roll mouldings to the level and
ordinary lines of bases, whether of walls or shafts, I hold to be
one of the worst barbarisms which the Roman and Renaissance
architects ever committed ; and that nothing can afterwards
redeem the effeminacy and vulgarity of the buildings in which
it prominently takes place.
§ xx. I have also passed over, without present notice, the
fantastic bases formed by couchant animals, which sustain
many Lombardic shafts. The pillars they support have inde-
pendent bases of the ordinary kind ; and the animal form
beneath is less to be considered as a true base (though often
* Appendix 25, " Romanist Decoration of Bases."
DECORATION. XXV. THE BASE. 293
exquisitely combined with it, as in the shaft on the south-west
angle of the cathedral of Genoa) than as a piece of sculpture,
otherwise necessary to the nobility of the building, and deriv-
ing its value from its special positive fulfilment of expressional
purposes, with which we have here no concern. As the em-
bodiment of a wild superstition, and the representation of
-supernatural powers, their appeal to the imagination sets at
utter defiance all judgment based on ordinary canons of law ;
and the magnificence of their treatment atones, in nearly every
case, for the extravagance of their conception. I should not
admit this appeal to the imagination, if it had been made by a
nation in whom the powers of body and mind had been languid ;
but by the Lombard, strong in all the realities of human life,
we need not fear being led astray : the visions of a distempered
fancy are not indeed permitted to replace the truth, or set
aside the laws of science : but the imagination which is
thoroughly under the command of the intelligent will,* has a
dominion indiscernible by science, and illimitable by law ; and
we may acknowledge the authority of the Lombardic gryphons
in the mere splendor of their presence, without thinking idol-
atry an excuse for mechanical misconstruction, or dreading to
be called upon, in other cases, to admire a systemless architec-
ture, because it may happen to have sprung from an irrational
religion.
* In all the wildness of the Lombardic fancy (described in Appendix 8),
'this command of the will over its action is as distinct as it is stern. The
fancy is, in the early work of the nation, visibly diseased; but never the
will, nor the reason.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT.
§ i. No subject has been more open ground of dispute
among architects than the decoration of the wall veil, because
no decoration appeared naturally to grow out of its construc-
tion ; nor could any curvatures be given to its surface large
enough to produce much impression on the eye. It has become,
therefore, a kind of general field for experiments of various
eifects of surface ornament, or has been altogether abandoned
to the mosaicist and fresco painter. But we may perhaps
conclude, from what was advanced in the Fifth Chapter, that
there is one kind of decoration which will, indeed, naturally
follow on its construction. For it is perfectly natural that the
different kinds of stone used in its successive courses should
be of different colors ; and there are many associations and
analogies which metaphysically justify the introduction of
horizontal bands of color, or of light and shade. They are, in
the first place, a kind of expression of the growth or age of
the wall, like the rings in the wood of a tree ; then they are a
farther symbol of the alternation of light and darkness, which
was above noted as the source of the charm of many inferior
mouldings : again, they are valuable as an expression of hori-
zontal space to the imagination, space of which the conception
is opposed, and gives more effect by its opposition, to the
enclosing power of the wall itself (this I spoke of as probably
the great charm of these horizontal bars to the Arabian mind) :
and again they are valuable in their suggestion of the natural
courses of rocks, and beds of the earth itself. And to all these
powerful imaginative reasons we have to add the merely ocular
charm of interlineal opposition of color; a charm so great,
DECORATION. XXVI. THE WALL VEIL AXD SHAFT. 295
that all the best colorists, without a single exception, depend
upon it for the most piquant of their pictorial effects, some
vigorous mass of alternate stripes or bars of color being made
central in all their richest arrangements. The whole system of
Tintoret's great picture of the Miracle of St. Mark is poised
on the bars of blue, which cross the white turban of the execu-
tioner.
§ ii. There are, therefore, no ornaments more deeply sug-
gestive in their simplicity than these alternate bars of horizon-
tal colors ; nor do I know any buildings more noble than those
of the Pisan Komanesque, in which they are habitually em-
ployed ; and certainly none so graceful, so attractive, so endur-
ingly delightful in their nobleness. Yet, of this pure and
graceful ornamentation, Professor Willis says, " a practice more
destructive of architectural grandeur can hardly be conceived :"
and modern architects have substituted for it the ingenious or-
nament of which the reader lias had one specimen above, Fig.
III., p. 61, and with which half the large buildings in London
are disfigured, or else traversed by mere straight lines, as, for
instance, the back of the Bank. The lines on the Bank may,
perhaps, be considered typical of accounts ; but in general the
walls, if left destitute of them, would have been as much
fairer than the walls charged with them, as a sheet of white
paper is than the leaf of a ledger. But that the reader may
have free liberty of judgment in this matter, I place two ex-
amples of the old and the Renaissance ornament side by side
on the opposite page. That on the right is Romanesque, from
St. Pietro of Pistoja ; that on the left, modern English, from
the Arthur Club-house, St. James's Street.
§ m. But why, it will be asked, should the lines which mark
the division of the stones be wrong when they are chiselled,
and right when they are marked by color ? First, because
the color separation is a natural one. You build with different
kinds of stone, of which, probably, one is more costly than
another ; which latter, as you cannot construct your building
of it entirely, you arrange in conspicuous bars. But the chis-
elling of the stones is a wilful throwing away of time and labor
296 XXVI. THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT. DECORATION.
in defacing the building : it costs much to hew one of those
monstrous blocks into shape ; and, when it is done, the building
is weaker than it was before, by just as much stone as has
been cut away from its joints. And, secondly, because, as I
have repeatedly urged, straight lines are ugly things as lines,
but admirable as limits of colored spaces ; and the joints of the
stones, which are painful in proportion to their regularity, if
drawn as lines, are perfectly agreeable when marked by varia-
tions of hue.
§ iv. What is true of the divisions of stone by chiselling,
is equally true of divisions of bricks by pointing, Nor, of
course, is the mere horizontal bar the only arrangement in
which the colors of brickwork or masonry can be gracefully
disposed. It is rather one which can only be employed with
advantage when the courses of stone are deep and bold. When
the masonry is small, it is better to throw its colors into cheq-
uered patterns. We shall have several interesting examples
to study in Venice besides the well-known one of the Ducal
Palace. The town of Moulins, in France, is one of the most
remarkable on this side the Alps for its chequered patterns in
bricks. The church of Christchurch, Streatham, lately built,
though spoiled by many grievous errors (the iron work in
the campanile being the grossest), yet affords the inhabitants
of the district a means of obtaining some idea of the vari-
ety of effects which are possible with no other material than
brick.
§ v. We have yet to notice another effort of the Kenais-
sance architects to adorn the blank spaces of their walls by
what is called Rustication. There is sometimes an obscure
trace of the remains of the imitation of something organic in
this kind of work. In some of the better French eighteenth
century buildings it has a distinctly floral character, like a final
degradation of Flamboyant leafage ; and some of our modern
English architects appear to have taken the decayed teeth of
elephants for their type ; but, for the most part, it resembles
nothing so much as worm casts ; nor these with any precision.
If it did, it would not bring it within the sphere of our prop-
DECORATION. XXVI. THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT. 297
erly imitative ornamentation. I thought it unnecessary to
warn the reader that he was not to copy forms of refuse or
corruption ; and that, while he might legitimately take the
worm or the reptile for a subject of imitation, he was not to
study the worm cast or coprolite.
§ vr. It is, however, I believe, sometimes supposed that rus-
tication gives an appearance of solidity to foundation stones.
Not so ; at least to any one who knows the look of a hard
stone. You may, by rustication, make your good marble or
granite look like wet slime, honeycombed by sand-eels, or like
half-baked tufo covered with slow exudation of stalactite, or
like rotten claystone coated with concretions of its own mud ;
but not like the stones of which the hard world is built. Do
not think that nature rusticates her foundations. Smooth
sheets of rock, glistening like sea waves, and that ring under
the hammer like a brazen bell, — that is her preparation for
first stories. She does rusticate sometimes : crumbly sand-
stones, with their ripple-marks filled with red mud ; dusty lime-
stones, which the rains wash into labyrinthine cavities ; spongy
lavas, which the volcano blast drags hither and thither into
ropy coils and bubbling hollows ; — these she rusticates, indeed,
when she wants to make oyster-shells and magnesia of them ;
but not when she needs to lay foundations with them. Then she
seeks the polished surface and iron heart, not rough looks and
incoherent substance.
§ vii. Of the richer modes of wall decoration it is impos-
sible to institute any general comparison ; they are quite in-
finite, from mere inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations
of elaborate bas-relief. The architect has perhaps more license
in them, and more power of producing good effect with rude
design than in any other features of the building ; the chequer
and hatchet work of the Normans and the rude bas-reliefs of
the Lombards being almost as satisfactory as the delicate pan-
elling and mosaic of the Duomo of Florence. But this is to
be noted of all good wall ornament, that it retains the expres-
sion of firm and massive substance, and of broad surface, and
that architecture instantly declined when linear design was sub-
298 XXVI. THE WALL VEIL ANT) SHAFT. DECORATION;
stituted for massive, and the sense of weight of wall was lost
in a wilderness of upright or undulating rods. Of the rich-
est and most delicate wall veil decoration by inlaid work, as
practised in Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, 1
have given the reader two characteristic examples in Plates XX,
and XXI.
§ viii. There are, however, three spaces in which the wall
veil, peculiarly limited in shape, was always felt to be fitted
for surface decoration of the most elaborate kind ; and in these
spaces are found the most majestic instances of its treatment,
even to late periods. One
Fig. LXI. . ,, , „
of these is the spandnl
space, or the filling be-
tween any two arches,
commonly of the shape
a, Fig. LXI. ; the half
of which, or the flank
filling of any arch, is
called a spandril. In
Chapter XVIL, on Filling of Apertures, the reader will find
another of these spaces noted, called the tympanum, and com-
monly of the form £, Fig. LXI. : and finally, in Chapter
XVIIL, he will find the third space described, that between
an arch and its protecting gable, approximating generally to
the form c, Fig. LXI.
§ ix. The methods of treating these spaces might alone
furnish subject for three very interesting essays ; but I shall
only note the most essential points respecting them.
(1.) The Spandril. It was observed in Chapter XII., that
this portion of the arch load might frequently be lightened
with great advantage by piercing it with a circle, or with a
group of circles ; and the roof of the Euston Square railroad
station was adduced as an example. One of the spandril
decorations of Bayeux Cathedral is given in the " Seven
Lamps," Plate VII. fig. 4. It is little more than one of these
Euston Square spandrils, with its circles foliated.
Sometimes the circle is entirely pierced ; at other times it
DECORATION. XXVI. THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT. 299
is merely suggested by a mosaic or light tracery on the wall
surface, as in the plate opposite, which is one of the spandrils
of the Ducal Palace at Venice. It was evidently intended
that all the spandrils of this building should be decorated in
this manner, but only two of them seem to have been com-
pleted.*
§ x. The other modes of spandril filling may be broadly
reduced to four heads. 1. Free figure sculpture, as in the
Chapter-house of Salisbury, and very superbly along the west
front of Bourges, the best Gothic spandrils I know. 2. Kadi-
ated foliage, more or less referred to the centre, or to the bot-
tom of the spandril for its origin ; single figures with expanded
wings often answering the same purpose. 3. Trefoils ; and 4.
ordinary wall decoration continued into the spandril space, as
in Plate XIII., above, from St. Pietro at Pistoja, and in West-
minster Abbey. The Eenaissance architects introduced span-
dril fillings composed of colossal human figures reclining on
the sides of the arch, in precarious lassitude ; but these cannot
come under the head of wall veil decoration.
§ xi. (2.) The Tympanum. It was noted that, in Gothic
architecture, this is for the most part a detached slab of stone,
having no constructional relation to the rest of the building.
The plan of its sculpture is therefore quite arbitrary ; and, as
it is generally in a conspicuous position, near the eye, and
above the entrance, it is almost always charged with a series of
rich figure sculptures, solemn in feeling and consecutive in
subject. It occupies in Christian sacred edifices very nearly
the position of the pediment in Greek sculpture. This latter
is itself a kind of tympanum, and charged with sculpture in
the same manner.
§ xii. (3.) The Gable. The same principles apply to it
which have been noted respecting the spandril, with one more
of some importance. The chief difficulty in treating a gable
lies in the excessive sharpness of its upper point. It may, in-
deed, on its outside apex, receive a finial ; but the meeting
* Vide end of Appendix 20.
gOO XXVI. THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT. DECORATION.
of the inside lines' of its terminal mouldings is necessarily both
harsh and conspicuous, unless artificially concealed. The most
beautiful victory I have ever seen obtained over this difficulty
was by placing a sharp shield, its point, as usual, downwards,
at the apex of the gable, which exactly reversed the offensive
lines, yet without actually breaking them ; the gable being
completed behind the shield. The same thing is done in the
Northern and Southern Gothic : in the porches of Abbeville
and the tombs of Yerona.
§ XIIL I believe there is little else to be noted of general
laws of ornament respecting the wall veil. We have next to
consider its concentration in the shaft.
Now the principal beauty of a shaft is its perfect propor-
tion to its work, — its exact expression of necessary strength.
If this has been truly attained, it will hardly need, in some
cases hardly bear, more decoration than is given to it by its
own rounding and taper curvatures ; for, if we cut ornaments
in intaglio on its surface, we weaken it ; if we leave them in
relief, we overcharge it, and the sweep of the line from its
base to its summit, though deduced in Chapter "VIII., from
necessities of construction, is already one of gradated curva-
ture, and of high decorative value.
§ xiv. It is, however, carefully to be noted, that decorations
are admissible on colossal and on diminutive shafts, which are
wrong upon those of middle size. For, when the shaft is
enormous, incisions or sculpture on its sides (unless colossal
also), do not materially interfere with the sweep of its curve,
nor diminish the efficiency of its sustaining mass. And if it
be diminutive, its sustaining function is comparatively of so
small importance, the injurious results of failure so much less,
and the relative strength and cohesion of its mass so much
greater, that it may oe suffered in the extravagance of orna-
ment or outline which would be unendurable in a shaft of mid-
dle size, and impossible in one of colossal. Thus, the shafts
drawn in Plate XIIL, of the " Seven Lamps," though given as
examples of extravagance, are yet pleasing in the general ef-
fect of the arcade they support ; being each some six or seven
DECORATION. XXVI. THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT. 301
feet high. But they would have been monstrous, as well as
unsafe, if they had been sixty or seventy.
§ xv. Therefore, to determine the general rule for shaft
decoration, we must ascertain the proportions representative of
the mean bulk of shafts : they might easily be calculated from
a sufficient number of examples, but it may perhaps be as-
sumed, for our present general purpose, that the mean stand-
ard would be of some twenty feet in height, by eight or nine
in circumference : then this will be the size on which decora-
tion is most difficult and dangerous : and shafts become more
and more fit subjects for decoration, as they rise farther above,
or fall farther beneath it, until very small and very vast shafts
will both be found to look blank unless they receive some
chasing or imagery; blank, whether they support a chair or
table on the one side, or sustain a village on the ridge of an
Egyptian architrave on the other.
§ xvi. Of the various ornamentation of colossal shafts, there
are no examples so noble as the Egyptian ; these the reader
can study in Mr. Roberts' work on Egypt nearly as well, I
imagine, as if he were beneath their shadow, one of their chief
merits, as examples of method, being the perfect decision and
visibility of their designs at the necessary distance : contrast
with these the incrustations of bas-relief* on the Trajan pillar,
much interfering with the smooth lines of the shaft, and yet
themselves untraceable, if not invisible.
§ xvii. On shafts of middle size, the only ornament which
has ever been accepted as right, is the Doric fluting, which,
indeed, gave the effect of a succession of unequal lines of
shade, but lost much of the repose of the cylindrical gradation.
The Corinthian fluting, which is a mean multiplication and
deepening of the Doric, with a square instead of a sharp ridge
between each hollow, destroyed the serenity of the shaft alto-
gether, and is always rigid and meagre. Both are, in fact,
wrong in principle ; they are an elaborate weakening * of the
shaft, exactly opposed (as above shown) to the ribbed form,
* Vide, however, their defence in the Essay above qiioted, p. 251.
302 XXYI. THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT. DECORATION.
which is the result of a group of shafts bound together, and
which is especially beautiful when special service is given to
each member.
§ xviu. On shafts of inferior size, every species of decora-
tion may be wisely lavished, and in any quantity, so only that
the form of the shaft be clearly visible. This I hold to be
absolutely essential, and that barbarism begins wherever the
sculpture is either so bossy, or so deeply cut, as to break the
contour of the shaft, or compromise its solidity. Thus, in
Plate XXI. (Appendix 8), the richly sculptured shaft of the
lower story has lost its dignity and definite function, and be-
come a shapeless mass, injurious to the symmetry of the build-
ing, though of some value as adding to its imaginative and
fantastic character. Had all the shafts been like it, the
fagade would have been entirely spoiled ; the inlaid pattern,
on the contrary, which is used on the shortest shaft of the
upper story, adds to its preciousness without interfering with
its purpose, and is every way delightful, as are all the inlaid
shaft ornaments of this noble church (another example of them
is given in Plate XII. of the " Seven Lamps"). The same
rule would condemn the Caryatid ; which I entirely agree
with Mr. Fergusson in thinking (both for this and other rea-
sons) one of the chief errors of the Greek schools ; and, more
decisively still, the Renaissance inventions of shaft ornament,
almost too absurd and too monstrous to be seriously noticed,
which consist in leaving square blocks between the cylinder
joints, as in the portico of No. 1, Regent Street, and many
other buildings in London ; or in rusticating portions of the
shafts, or wrapping fleeces about them, as at the entrance of
Burlington House, in Piccadilly ; or tying drapery round
them in knots, as in the new buildings above noticed (Chap.
20, § vii.), at Paris. But, within the limits thus defined, there
is no feature capable of richer decoration than the shaft ; the
most beautiful examples of all I have seen, are the slender
pillars, encrusted with arabesques, which flank the portals of
the Baptistery and Duomo at Pisa, and some others of the
ami Lucchese churches; but the varieties of sculpture
DKCORATION. XXVI. THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT. 303
and inlaying, with which the small Romanesque shafts, whether
Italian or Northern, are adorned when they occupy important
positions, are quite endless, and nearly all admirable. Mr.
Digby Wyatt has given a beautiful example of inlaid work s< >
employed, from the cloisters of the Lateran, in his work on
early mosaic ; an example which unites the surface decoration
of the shaft with the adoption of the spiral contour. This
latter is often all the decoration which is needed, and none can
be more beautiful ; it has been spoken against, like many other
good and lovely things, because it has been too often used in
extravagant degrees, like the well-known twisting of the pillars
in Raffaelle's " Beautiful gate." But that extravagant condi
tion was a Renaissance barbarism : the old Romanesque build-
ers kept their spirals slight and pure ; often, as in the example
from St. Zeno, in Plate XVII. below, giving only half a turn
from the base of the shaft to its head, and nearly always ob-
serving what I hold to be an imperative law, that no twisted
shaft shall be single, but composed of at least two distinct
members, twined with each other. I suppose Fig. LXH.
they followed their own right feeling in doing
this, and had never studied natural shafts ; '
but the type they might have followed was
caught by one of the few great painters who
were not affected by the evil influence of the
fifteenth century, Benozzo Gozzoli, who, in
the frescoes of the Ricardi Palace, among
stems of trees for the most part as vertical as
stone shafts, has suddenly introduced one of
the shape given in Fig. LXIL Many forest
trees present, in their accidental contortions,
types of most complicated spiral shafts, the
plan being originally of a grouped shaft rising from several
roots ; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find models for every
kind of shaft decoration, so graceful or so gorgeous, as he will
find in the great forest aisle, where the strength of the earth
itself seems to rise from the roots into the vaulting ; but the
shaft surface, barred as it expands with rings of ebony and
304 XXVI. THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT. DECORATION.
silver, is fretted with traceries of ivy, marbled- with purple
moss, veined with grey lichen, and tesselated, by the rays of
the rolling heaven, with flitting fancies of blue shadow and
burning gold.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE COKNICE AND CAPITAL.
§ i. THERE are no features to which the attention of archi-
tects has been more laboriously directed, in all ages, than these
crowning members of the wall and shaft ; and it would be vain
to endeavor, within any moderate limits, to give the reader any
idea of the various kinds of admirable decoration which have
been invented for them. But, in proportion to the effort and
straining of the fancy, have been the extravagances into which
it has occasionally fallen ; and while it is utterly impossible
severally to enumerate the instances either of its success or its
error, it is very possible to note the limits of the one and the
causes of the other. This is all that we shall attempt in the
present chapter, tracing first for ourselves, as in previous in-
stances, the natural channels by which invention is here to be
directed or confined, and afterwards remarking the places
where, in real practice, it has broken bounds.
§ n. The reader remembers, I hope, the main points re-
specting the cornice and capital, established above in the
Chapters on Construction. Of these I must, however, recapi-
tulate thus much : —
1. That both the cornice and capital are, with reference to
the slope of their profile or bell, to be divided into two great
orders ; in one of which the ornament is convex, and in the
other concave. (Ch. VI., § v.)
2. That the capital, with reference to the method of twist-
ing the cornice round to construct it, and to unite the circular
shaft with the square abacus, falls into five general forms, rep-
resented in Fig. XXII., p. 119.
3. That the most elaborate capitals were formed by true or
306 XXVII. THE COKNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
simple capitals with a common cornice added above their aba-
cus. (Ch. IX., § xxiv.)
We have then, in considering decoration, first to observe
the treatment of the two great orders of the cornice ; then their
gathering into the five of the capital ; then the addition of the
secondary cornice to the capital when formed.
§ in. The two great orders or families of cornice were above
distinguished in Fig. Y., p. 69. ; and it was mentioned in the
same place that a third family arose from their combination.
We must deal with the two great opposed groups first.
They were distinguished in Fig. Y. by circular curves
drawn on opposite sides of the same line. But we now know
that in these smaller features the circle is usually the least in-
teresting curve that we can use ; and that it will be well, since
the capital and cornice are both active in their expression, to
use some of the more abstract natural lines. We will go back,
therefore, to our old friend the salvia leaf ; and taking the
same piece of it we had before, x y, Plate YIL, we will apply it
to the cornice line ; first within it, giving the concave cornice,
then without, giving the convex cornice. In all the figures,
#, Z>, c, d, Plate XY., the dotted line is at the same slope, and
represents an average profile of the root of cornices («, Fig. Y.,
p. 69) ; the curve of the salvia leaf is applied to it in each case,
first with its roundest curvature up, then with its roundest
curvature down ; and we have thus the two varieties, a and &,
of the concave family, and c and d, of the convex family.
§ iv. These four profiles will represent all the simple cor-
nices in the world ; represent them, I mean, as central types :
for in any of the profiles an infinite number of slopes may be
given to the dotted line of the root (which in these four fig-
ures is always at the same angle) ; and on each of these innu-
merable slopes an innumerable variety of curves may be fitted,
from every leaf in the forest, and every shell on the shore, and
every movement of the human fingers and fancy ; therefore, if
the reader wishes to obtain something like a numerical repre-
sentation of the number of possible and beautiful cornices
which may be based upon these four types or roots, and among
XV.
V
m n.
7 89 10 11
(Sarah*
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 307
which the architect has leave to choose according to the cir-
cumstances of his building and the method of its composition,
let him set down a figure 1 to begin with, and write ciphers
after it as fast as he can, without stopping, for an hour.
§ v. None of the types are, however, found in perfection
of curvature, except in the best work. Very often cornices
are worked with circular segments (with a noble, massive effect,
for instance, in St. Michele of Lucca), or with rude approxi-
mation to finer curvature, especially #, Plate XV., which oc-
curs often so small as to render it useless to take much pains
upon its curve. It occurs perfectly pure in the condition rep-
resented by 1 of the series 1—6, in Plate XV., on many of the
Byzantine and early Gothic buildings of Venice; in more
developed form it becomes the profile of the bell of the capital
in the later Venetian Gothic, and in much of the best North-
ern Gothic. It also represents the Corinthian capital, in which
the curvature is taken from the bell to be added in some excess
to the nodding leaves. It is the most graceful of all simple
profiles of cornice and capital.
§ vi. b is a much rarer and less manageable type : for this
evident reason, that while a is the natural condition of a line
rooted and strong beneath, but bent out by superincumbent
weight, or nodding over in freedom, b is yielding at the base
and rigid at the summit. It has, however, some exquisite uses,
especially in combination, as the reader may see by glancing
in advance at the inner line of the profile 14 in Plate XV.
§ vn. c is the leading convex or Doric type, as a is the
leading concave or Corinthian. Its relation to the best Greek
Doric is exactly what the relation of a is to the Corinthian ;
that is to say, the curvature must be taken from the straighter
limb of the curve and added to the bolder bend, giving it a
sudden turn inwards (as in the Corinthian a nod outwards),
as the reader may see in the capital of the Parthenon in the
British Museum, where the lower limb of the curve is all but
a right line.* But these Doric and Corinthian lines are mere
* In very early Doric it was an absolute right line ; and that capital is
therefore derived from the pure cornice root, represented by the dotted line.
308 XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION,
varieties of the great families which are represented by the
central lines a and 0, including not only the Doric capital, but
all the small cornices formed by a slight increase of the curve
of c, which are of so frequent occurrence in Greek ornaments.
§ vm. d is the Christian Doric, which I said (Chap. I., § xx.)
was invented to replace the antique : it is the representative
of the great Byzantine and Norman families of convex cornice
and capital, and, next to the profile #, the most important of
the four, being the best profile for the convex capital, as a is
for the concave ; a being the best expression of an elastic line
inserted vertically in the shaft, and d of an elastic line -inserted
horizontally and rising to meet vertical pressure.
If the reader will glance at the arrangements of boughs of
trees, he will find them commonly dividing into these two
families, a and d : they rise out of the trunk and nod from it
as #, or they spring with sudden curvature out from it, and
rise into sympathy with it, as at d ; but they only accidentally
display tendencies to the lines b or c. Boughs which fall as
they spring from the tree also describe the curve d in the
plurality of instances, but reversed in arrangement ; their junc-
tion with the stem being at the top of it, their sprays bending
out into rounder curvature.
§ ix. These then being the two primal groups, we have
next to note the combined group, formed by the concave and
convex lines joined in various proportions of curvature, so as
to form together the reversed or ogee curve, represented in
one of its most beautiful states by the glacier line a, on Plate
VII. I would rather have taken this line than any other to
have formed my third group of cornices by, but as it is too
large, and almost too delicate, we will take instead that of the
Matterhorn side, ef, Plate VII. For uniformity's sake I keep
the slope of the dotted line the same as in the primal forms ;
and applying this Matterhorn curve in its four relative posi-
tions to that line, I have the types of the four cornices or capi-
tals of the third family, e,f, g, h, on Plate XV.
These are, however, general types only thus far, that their
line is composed of one short and one long curve, and that
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 309
they represent the four conditions of treatment of every such
line ; namely, the longest curve concave in e and/, and convex
in g and h ; and the point of contrary flexure set high in e
and g, and low in/ and h. The relative depth of the arcs, or
nature of their curvature, cannot be taken into consideration
without a complexity of system which my space does not
admit.
Of the four types thus constituted, e and /are of great im-
portance ; the other two are rarely used, having an appearance
of weakness in consequence of the shortest curve being con-
cave : the profiles e and/ when used for cornices, have usually
a fuller sweep and somewhat greater equality between the
branches of the curve ; but those here given are better repre-
sentatives of the structure applicable to capitals and cornices
indifferently.
§ x. Very often, in the farther treatment of the profiles e
or / another limb is added to their curve in order to join it to
the upper or lower members of the cornice or capital. I do
not consider this addition as forming another family of cor-
nices, because the leading and effective part of the curve is in
these, as in the others, the single ogee ; and the added bend is
merely a less abrupt termination of it above or below : still this
group is of so great importance in the richer kinds of orna-
mentation that we must have it sufficiently represented. We
shall obtain a type of it by merely continuing the line of the
Matterhorn side, of which before we took only a fragment.
The entire line e to g on Plate VII., is evidently composed of
three curves of unequal lengths, which if we call the shortest
1, the intermediate one 2, and the longest 3, are there arranged
in the order 1, 3, 2, counting upwards. But evidently we might
also have had the arrangements 1, 2, 3, and 2, 1, 3, giving us
three distinct lines, altogether independent of position, which
being applied to one general dotted slope will each give four
cornices, or twelve altogether. Of these the six most impor-
tant are those which have the shortest curve convex : they are
given in light relief from k to p, Plate XV., and, by turning
the page upside down, the other six will be seen in dark re-
310 XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
lief, only the little upright bits of shadow at the bottom are
not to be considered as parts of them, being only admitted in
order to give the complete profile of the more important cor-
nices in light.
§ xi. In these types, as in e and/', the only general condi-
tion is, that their line shall be composed of three curves of dif-
ferent lengths and different arrangements (the depth of arcs
and radius of curvatures being unconsidered). They are ar-
ranged in three couples, each couple being two positions of the
same entire line ; so that numbering the component curves
in order of magnitude and counting upwards, they will read —
k 1, 2, 3,
I 3, 2, 1,
m 1, 3, 2,
n 2, 3, 1,
o 2, 1, 3,
P 3, 1, 2.
m and n, which are the Matterhorn line, are the most beauti-
ful and important of all the twelve ; k and I the next ; o and
p are used only for certain conditions of flower carving on
the surface. The reverses (dark) of k and I are also of
considerable service ; the other four hardly ever used in good
work.
§ xn. If we were to add a fourth curve to the compo-
nent series, we should have forty-eight more cornices : but
there is no use in pursuing the system further, as such ar-
rangements are very rare and easily resolved into the simpler
types with certain arbitrary additions fitted to their special
place ; and, in most cases, distinctly separate from the main
curve, as in the inner line of No. 14, which is a form of the
type <?, the longest curve, i.e., the lowest, having deepest curva-
ture, and each limb opposed by a short contrary curve at its
extremities, the convex limb by a concave, the concave by a
convex.
§ xin. Such, then, are the great families of profile lines
XVI.
Cnrnice Secoration.
DECORATION. XXVII. THE COENICE AND CAPITAL. 3H
into which all cornices and capitals may be divided ; but their
best examples unite two such profiles in a mode which we
cannot understand till we consider the further ornament
with which the profiles are charged. And in doing this we
must, for the sake of clearness, consider, first tlie nature
of the designs themselves, and next the mode of cutting
them.
§ xiv. In Plate XVI., opposite, I have thrown together a
few of the most characteristic mediaeval examples of the treat-
ment of the simplest cornice profiles : the uppermost, a, is the
pure root of cornices from St. Mark's. The second, d, is the
Christian Doric cornice, here lettered d in order to avoid con-
fusion, its profile being d of Plate XV. in bold development,
and here seen on the left-hand side, truly drawn, though filled
up with the ornament to show the mode in which the angle
is turned. This is also from St. Mark's. The third, 6, is I
of Plate XV., the pattern being inlaid in black because its office
was in the interior of St. Mark's, where it was too dark to see
sculptured ornament at the required distance. (The other two
simple profiles, a and c of Plate XV., would be decorated in
the same manner, but require no example here, for the profile
d is of so frequent occurrence that it will have a page to itself
alone in the next volume ; and c may be seen over nearly every
shop in London, being that of the common Greek egg cornice.)
The fourth, e in Plate XVI., is a transitional cornice, passing
from Byzantine into Venetian Gothic : f is a fully developed
Venetian Gothic cornice founded on Byzantine traditions ; and
y the perfect Lombardic-Gothic cornice, founded on the Pisan
Romanesque traditions, and strongly marked with the noblest
Northern element, the Lombardic vitality restrained by classi-
cal models. I consider it a perfect cornice, and of the highest
order.
§ xv. Now in the design of this series of ornaments there
are two main points to be noted ; the first, that they all, except
&, are distinctly rooted in the lower part of the cornice, and
spring to the top. This arrangement is constant in all the best
cornices and capitals ; and it is essential to the expression of
312 XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
the supporting power of both. It is exactly opposed to the
system of running cornices and banded* capitals, in which
the ornament flows along them horizontally, or is twined round
them, as the mouldings are in the early English capital, and the
foliage in many decorated ones. Such cornices have arisen
from a mistaken appliance of the running ornaments, which
are proper to archi volts, jambs, &c., to the features which have
definite functions of support. A tendril may nobly follow the
outline of an arch, but must not creep along a cornice, nor
swathe or bandage a capital ; it is essential to the expression of
these features that their ornament should have an elastic and
upward spring ; and as the proper profile for the curve is that
of a tree bough, as we saw above, so the proper arrangement
of its farther ornament is that which best expresses rooted and
ascendant strength like that of foliage.
There are certain very interesting exceptions to the rule (we
shall see a curious one presently) ; and in the carrying out of
the rule itself, we may see constant licenses taken by the great
designers, and momentary violations of it, like those above
spoken of, respecting other ornamental laws — violations which
are for our refreshment, and for increase of delight in the
general observance ; and this is one of the peculiar beauties
of the cornice </, which, rooting itself in strong central clusters,
siiffers some of its leaves to fall languidly aside, as the droop-
ing outer leaves of a natural cluster do so often ; but at the
very instant that it does this, in order that it may not lose any
of its expression of strength, a fruit -stalk is thrown up above
the languid leaves, absolutely vertical, as much stiffer and
stronger than the rest of the plant as the falling leaves are
weaker. Cover this with your finger, and the cornice falls to
pieces, like a bouquet which has been untied.
§ xvi. There are some instances in which, though the real
arrangement is that of a running stem, throwing off leaves up
* The word banded is used by Professor Willis in a different sense ;
which I would respect, by applying it in his sense always to the Impost,
and in mine to the capital itself. (This note is not for the general reader,
who need not trouble himself about the matter.)
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 31H
and down, the positions of the leaves give nearly as much
elasticity and organisation to the cornice, as if they had been
rightly rooted ; and others, like 5, where the reversed portion
of the ornament is lost in the shade, and the general expression
of strength is got by the lower member. This cornice will,
nevertheless, be felt at once to be inferior to the rest ; and
though we may often be called upon to admire designs of
these kinds, which would have been exquisite if not thus mis-
placed, the reader will find that they are both of rare occur-
rence, and significative of declining style ; while the greater
mass of the banded capitals are heavy and valueless, mere
aggregations of confused sculpture, swathed round the extre-
mity of the shaft, as if she had dipped it into a mass of melted
ornament, as the glass-blower does his blow-pipe into the
metal, and brought up a quantity adhering glutinously to its
extremity. We have many capitals of this kind in England :
some of the worst and heaviest in the choir of York. The
later capitals of the Italian Gothic have the same kind of effect,
but owing to another cause : for their structure is quite pure,
and based on the Corinthian type: and it is the branching
form of the heads of the leaves which destroys the effect of
their organisation. On the other hand, some of the Italian
cornices which are actually composed by running tendrils,
throwing off leaves into oval interstices, are so massive in their
treatment, and so marked and firm in their vertical and arched
lines, that they are nearly as suggestive of support as if they
had been arranged on the rooted system. A cornice of this
kind is used in St. Michele of Lucca (Plate YI. in the « Seven
Lamps," and XXI. here), and with exquisite propriety ; for
that cornice is at once a crown to the story beneath it and a
foundation to that which is above it, and therefore unites the
strength and elasticity of the lines proper to the cornice with
the submission and prostration of those proper to the founda-
tion.
§ xvii. This, then, is the first point needing general notice
in the designs in Plate XYI. The second is the difference
between the freedom of the Northern and the sophistication
314 XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
of the classical cornices, in connection with what has been
advanced in Appendix 8. The cornices, a, d, and £>, are of
the same date, but they show a singular difference in the
workman's temper: that at & is a single copy of a classical
mosaic ; and many carved cornices occur, associated with it,
which are, in like manner, mere copies of the Greek and Roman
egg and arrow mouldings. But the cornices a and d are
copies of nothing of the kind : the idea of them has indeed
been taken from the Greek honeysuckle ornament, but the
chiselling of them is in no wise either Greek, or Byzantine, in
temper. The Byzantines were languid copyists : this work is
as energetic as its original ; energetic, not in the quantity of
work, but in the spirit of it : an indolent man, forced into toil,
may cover large spaces with evidence of his feeble action, or
accumulate his dulness into rich aggregation of trouble, but it
is gathered weariness still. The man who cut those two
uppermost cornices had no time to spare : did as much cornice
as he could in half an hour ; but would not endure the slightest
trace of error in a curve, or of bluntness in an edge. His
work is absolutely unreproveable ; keen, and true, as Nature's,
own ; his entire force is in it, and fixed on seeing that every
line of it shall be sharp and right : the faithful energy is in
him : we shall see something come of that cornice : The fellow
who inlaid the other (5), will stay where he is for ever ; and
when he has inlaid one leaf up, will inlay another down, — and
so undulate up and down to all eternity : but the man of a
and d will cut his way forward, or there is no truth in handi-
crafts, nor stubbornness in stone.
§ xvni. But there is something else noticeable in those two
cornices, besides the energy of them : as opposed either to J,
or the Greek honeysuckle or egg patterns, they are natural
designs. The Greek egg and arrow cornice is a nonsense
cornice, very noble in its lines, but utterly absurd in meaning.
Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at least since
Leda's time), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows, nor
the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles ;
they are all conventionalised into a monotonous successiveness
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 315
of nothing,— pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But
those Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive ;
there is not the tenth of the work in them that there is in the
Greek arrows, but, as far as that work will go, it has consistent
intention ; with the fewest possible incisions, and those of the
easiest shape, they suggest the true image, of clusters of
leaves, each leaf with its central depression from root to point,
and that distinctly visible at almost any distance from the eye,
and in almost any light.
§ xix. Here, then, are two great new elements visible;
energy and naturalism : — Life, with submission to the laws of
God, and love of his works ; this is Christianity, dealing with
her classical models. Now look back to what I said in Chap.
I. § xx. of this dealing of hers, and invention of the new Doric
line ; then to what is above stated (§ vm.) respecting that new
Doric, and the boughs of trees ; and now to the evidence in
the cutting of the leaves on the same Doric section, and see
how the whole is beginning to come together.
§ xx. We said that something would come of these two
cornices, a and d. In e and/1 we see that something has come
of them : e is also from St. Mark's, and one of the earliest
examples in Venice of the transition from the Byzantine to
the Gothic cornice. It is already singularly developed ; flow-
ers have been added between the clusters of leaves, and the
leaves themselves curled over : and observe the well-directed
thought of the sculptor in this curling ; — the old incisions are
retained below, and their excessive rigidity is one of the proofs
of the earliness of the cornice ; but those incisions now stand
for the under surface of the leaf ; and behold, when it turns
over, on the top of it you see true ribs. Look at the upper
and under surface of a cabbage-leaf, and see what quick steps
we are making.
§ xxi. The fifth example (/) was cut in 1347 ; it is from
the tomb of Marco Giustiniani, in the church of St. John and
Paul, and it exhibits the character of the central Venetian
Gothic fully developed. The lines are all now soft and undu-
latory, though elastic ; the sharp incisions have become deeply-
.316 XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
gathered folds ; the hollow of the leaf is expressed completely
beneath, and its edges are touched with light, and incised into
several lobes, and their ribs .delicately drawn above. (The
flower between is only accidentally absent ; it occurs in most
cornices of the time.)
But in both these cornices the reader will notice that while
the naturalism of the sculpture is steadily on the increase, the
classical formalism is still retained. The leaves are accurately
numbered, and sternly set in their places ; they are leaves in
office, and dare not stir nor wave. They have the shapes of
leaves, but not the functions, " having the form of knowledge,
but denying the power thereof." What is the meaning of this ?
§ xxn. Look back to the xxxmrd paragraph of the first
chapter, and you will see the meaning of it. These cornices
are the Venetian Ecclesiastical Gothic ; the Christian element
struggling with the Formalism of the Papacy, — the Papacy
being entirely heathen in all its principles. That officialism
of the leaves and their ribs means Apostolic succession, and I
don't know how much more, and is already preparing for the
transition to old Heathenism again, and the Renaissance.*
§ xxin. Now look to the last cornice (g). That is Protes-
tantism,— a slight touch of Dissent, hardly amounting to schism,
in those falling leaves, but true life in the whole of it. The
forms all broken through, and sent heaven knows where, but
the root held fast ; and the strong sap in the branches ; and,
best of all, good fruit ripening and opening straight towards
* The Renaissance period being one of return to formalism on the one
side, of utter licentiousness on the other, so that sometimes, as here, I have
to declare its lifelessness, at other times (Chap. XXV., § xvn.) its lascivi
ousness. There is, of course, no contradiction in this: but the reader
might well ask how I knew the change from the base 11 to the base 12, in
Plate XII., to be one from temperance to luxury; and from the cornice/
to the cornice #, in Plate XVI., to be one from formalism to vitality. I
know it, both by certain internal evidences, on which I shall have to dwell
at length hereafter, and by the context of the works of the time. But the
outward signs might in both ornaments be the same, distinguishable only
as signs of opposite tendencies by the event of both. The blush of shame
cannot always be told from the blush of indignation.
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 317
heaven, and in the face of it, even though some of the leaves
lie in the dust.
Now, observe. The cornice / represents Heathenism and
Papistry, animated by the mingling of Christianity and nature.
The good in it, the life of it, the veracity and liberty of it,
such as it has, are Protestantism in its heart ; the rigidity and
saplessness are the Eomanism of it. It is the mind of Fra
Angelico in the monk's dress, — Christianity before the Kefor-
mation. The cornice g has the Lombardic life element in its
fulness, with only some color and shape of Classicalism min-
gled with it — the good of classicalism ; as much method and
Formalism as are consistent with life, and fitting for it : The
continence within certain border lines, the unity at the root,
the simplicity of the great profile, — all these are the healthy
classical elements retained : the rest is reformation, new
strength, and recovered liberty.
§ xxiv. There is one more point about it especially notice-
able. The leaves are thoroughly natural in their general char-
acter, but they are of no particular species : and after being
something like cabbage-leaves in the beginning, one of them
suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end. Now I don't know
what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a classical char-
acter ; — it is eminently characteristic of Southern work ; and
markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which
would have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor
two things in one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element ;
but whether a good or bad element, I am not sure ; — whether
it is the last trace of Centaurism and other monstrosity dying
away ; or whether it has a figurative purpose, legitimate in
architecture (though never in painting), and has been rightly
retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working of
that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns
a law in its members warring against the law of its mind.
§ xxv. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the
spirit both of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to
return to the question proposed in § xin., and observe the
modifications of form of profile which resulted from the
318 XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
changing contours of the leafage ; for up to § xm., we had, as
usual, considered the possible conditions of form in the ab-
stract;—the modes in which they have been derived from
each other in actual practice require to be followed in their
turn. How the Greek Doric or Greek ogee cornices were
invented is not easy to determine, and, fortunately, is little to
our present purpose ; for the mediaeval ogee cornices have an
independent development of their own, from the first type of
the concave cornice a in Plate XY.
§ xxvi. That cornice occurs, in the simplest work, perfectly
pure, but in finished work it was quickly felt that there was a
meagreness in its junction
with the wall beneath it, where
it was set as here at «, Fig.
LXIIL, which could only be
conquered by concealing such
junction in a bar of shadow.
There were two ways of getting
* this bar : one by a projecting
roll at the foot of the cornice (Z>, Fig. LXIIL), the other by
slipping the whole cornice a little forward (c. Fig. LXIIL).
From these two methods arise two groups of cornices and
capitals, which we shall pursue in succession.
§ xxvu. First group. With the roll at the base (J, Fig.
LXIIL). The chain of its succession is represented from 1
to 6, in Plate XV. : 1 and 2 are the steps already gained, as in
Fig. LXIIL ; and in them the profile of cornice used is a of
Plate XY., or a refined condition of ~b of Fig. V., p. 69, above.
Now, keeping the same refined profile, substitute the condition
of it, f of Fig. Y. (and there accounted for), above the roll
here, and you have 3, Plate XY. This superadded abacus
was instantly felt to be harsh in its projecting angle ; but you
know what to do with an angle when it is harsh. Use your
simplest chamfer on it (a or &, Fig. LIIL, page 287, above),
but on the visible side only, and you have fig. 4, Plate XY.
(the top stone being made deeper that you may have room to
chamfer it). Now this fig. 4 is the profile of Lombardic and
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 319
Venetian early capitals and cornices, by tens of thousands ;
and it continues into the late Venetian Gothic, with this only
difference, that as times advances, the vertical line at the top
of the original cornice begins to slope outwards, and through
a series of years rises like the hazel wand in the hand of a
diviner : — but how slowly ! a stone dial which marches but 45
degrees in three centuries, and through the intermediate con-
dition 5 arrives at 6, and so stays.
In tracing this chain I have kept all the profiles of the same
height in order to make the comparison more easy ; the depth
chosen is about intermediate between that which is customary
in cornices on the one hand, which are often a little shorter,
and capitals on the other, which are often a little deeper.*
And it is to be noted that the profiles 5 and 6 establish them-
selves in capitals chiefly, while 4 is retained in cornices to the
latest times.
§ xxvui. Second group (c, Fig. LXIIL). If the lower
angle, which was quickly felt to be Fig LXiy
hard, be rounded off, we have the
form a, Fig. LXIV. The front of
the curved line is then decorated, as
we have seen ; and the termination
of the decorated surface marked by
an incision, as in an ordinary cham-
fer, as at b here. This I believe to
have been the simple origin of most of the Venetian ogee
* The reader must always remember that a cornice, in becoming a
capital, must, if not originally bold and deep, have depth added to its pro-
file, in order to reach the just proportion of the lower member of the shaft
head; and that therefore the small Greek egg cornices are utterly incapable
of becoming capitals till they have totally changed their form and depth.
The Renaissance architects, who never obtained hold of a right principle
but they made it worse than a wrong one by misapplication, caught the
idea of turning the cornice into a capital, but did not comprehend the
necessity of the accompanying change of depth. Hence we have pilaster
heads formed of small egg cornices, and that meanest of all mean heads
of shafts, the coarse Roman Doric profile chopped into a small egg and
arrow moulding, both which may be seen disfiguring half the buildings in
London.
320 XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
cornices ; but they are farther complicated by the curves given
to the leafage which flows over them. In the ordinary Greek
cornices, and in a and d of Plate XVI., the decoration is
Incised from the outside profile, without any suggestion of an
interior surface of a different contour. But in the leaf cor-
nices which follow, the decoration is represented as overlaid
on one of the early profiles, and has another outside contour
of its own ; which is, indeed, the true profile of the cornice,
but beneath which, more or less, the simpler profile is seen
or suggested, which terminates all the incisions of the chisel.
This under profile will often be found to be some condition of
the type a or &, Fig. LXIY. ; and the leaf profile to be another
ogee with its fullest curve up instead of down, lapping over
the cornice edge above, so that the entire profile might be con-
sidered as made up of two ogee curves laid, like packed her-
rings, head to tail. Figures 8 and 9 of Plate XY. exemplify
this arrangement. Fig. 7 is a heavier contour, doubtless com-
posed in the same manner, but of which I had not marked
the innermost profile, and which I have given here only to
complete the series which, from 7 to 12 inclusive, exemplifies
the gradual restriction of the leaf outline, from its boldest pro-
jection in the cornice to its most modest service in the capital.
This change, however, is not one which indicates difference of
age, but merely of office and position : the cornice 7 is from
the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (1350) in St. Mark's,
8 from a canopy over a door of about the same period, 9 from
the tomb of the Dogaressa Agnese Yenier (1411), 10 from that
of Pietro Comoro (1361),* and 11 from that of Andrea Moro-
sini (1347), all in the church of San Giov. and Paola, all these
being cornice profiles; and, finally, 12 from a capital of the
Ducal Palace, of fourteen century work.
§ xxix. Now the reader will doubtless notice that in the
three examples, 10 to 12, the leaf has a different contour from
that of 7, 8, or 9. This difference is peculiarly significant. I
* I have taken these dates roughly from Selvatico ; their absolute ac-
curacy to within a year or two, is here of no importance.
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 321
have always desired that the reader should theoretically con-
sider the capital as a concentration of the cornice ; but in prac-
tice it often happens that the cornice is, on the contrary, an
unrolled capital ; and one of the richest early forms of the
Byzantine cornice (not given in Plate XV., because its sepa-
rate character and importance require examination apart) is
nothing more than an unrolled continuation of the lower range
of acanthus leaves on the Corinthian capital. From this cor-
nice others appear to have been derived, like e in Plate XVI.,
in which the acanthus outline has become confused with that
of the honeysuckle, and the rosette of the centre of the Corin-
thian capital introduced between them ; and thus their forms
approach more and more to those derived from the cornice
itself. Now if the leaf has the contour of 10, 11, or 12, Plate
XV., the profile is either actually of a capital, or of a cornice
derived from a capital ; while, if the leaf have the contour of
7 or 8, the profile is either actually of a cornice or of a capital
derived from a cornice. Where the Byzantines use the acan-
thus, the Lombards use the Persepolitan water-leaf ; but the
connection of the cornices and capitals is exactly the same.
§ xxx. Thus far, however, we have considered the charac-
ters of profile which are common to the cornice and capital
both. We have now to note what farther decorative features
or peculiarities belong to the capital itself, or result from the
theoretical gathering of the one into the other.
Look back to Fig. XXII., p. 110. The five types there
given, represented the five different methods of concentration
of the root of cornices, a of Fig. V. Now, as many profiles
of cornices as were developed in Plate XV. from this cornice
root, there represented by the dotted slope, so many may be
applied to each of the five types in Fig. XXII., — applied sim-
ply in a and &, but with farther modifications, necessitated by
their truncations or spurs, in <?, d, and e.
Then, these cornice profiles having been so applied in such
length and slope as is proper for capitals, the farther condition
comes into effect described in Chapter IX. § xxiv., and any
one of the cornices in Plate XV. may become the abacus of a
322 XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
capital formed out of any other, or out of itself. The infinity
of forms thus resultant cannot, as may well be supposed, be
exhibited or catalogued in the space at present permitted to
us : but the reader; once master of the principle, will easily be
able to investigate for himself the syntax of all examples that
may occur to him, -and I shall only here, as a kind of exercise,
put before him a few of those which he will meet with most
frequently in his Venetian inquiries, or which illustrate points,
not hitherto touched upon, in the disposition of the abacus.
§ xxxi. In Plate XVII. the capital at the top, on the left
hand, is the rudest possible gathering of the plain Christian
Doric cornice, d of Plate XV. The shaft is octagonal, and
the capital is not cut to fit it, but is square at the base ; and
the curve of its profile projects on two of its sides more than
on the other two, so as to make the abacus oblong, in order to
carry an oblong mass of brickwork, dividing one of the upper
lights of a Lombard campanile at Milan. The awkward
stretching of the brickwork, to do what the capital ought to
have done, is very remarkable. There is here no second su-
perimposed abacus.
§ xxxn. The figure on the right hand, at the top, shows the
simple but perfect fulfilment of all the requirements in which
the first example fails. The mass of brickwork to be carried
is exactly the same in size and shape ; but instead of being
trusted to a single shaft, it has two of smaller area (compare
Chap. VIII., § xin.), and all the expansion necessary is now
gracefully attained by their united capitals, hewn out of one
stone. Take the section of these capitals through their angle,
and nothing can be simpler or purer ; it is composed of 2, in
Plate XV., used for the capital itself, with c of Fig. LXIII.
used for the abacus ; the reader could hardly have a neater
little bit of syntax for a first lesson. If the section be taken
through the side of the bell, the capital profile is the root of
cornices, a of Fig. V., with the added roll. This capital is
somewhat remarkable in having its sides perfectly straight,
some slight curvature being usual on so bold a scale ; but it is
all the better as a first example, the method of reduction being
XVII.
€ii|utal0.
CONCAVE GROUP.
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL.
323
of order d, in Fig. XXII., p. 110, and with a concave cut, as
in Fig. XXI., p. 109. These two capitals are from the cloister
of the duomo of Verona.
§ xxxin. The lowermost figure in Plate XVII. represents
an exquisitely finished example of the same type, from St.
Zeno of Verona. Above, at 2, in Plate II., the plan of the
shafts was given, but I inadvertently reversed their position :
in comparing that plan with Plate XVII., Plate II. must be
held upside down. The capitals, with the band connecting
them, are all cut out of one block ; their profile is an adapta-
tion of 4 of Plate XV., with a plain headstone superimposed.
This method of reduction is that of order d in Fig. XXIL,
Fig. LXV.
but the peculiarity of treatment of their truncation is highly
interesting. Fig. LXV. represents the plans of the capitals
at the base, the shaded parts being the bells : the open line,
the roll with its connecting band. The bell of the one, it will
be seen, is the exact reverse of that of the other : the angle
truncations are, in both, curved horizontally as well as up-
rightly ; but their curve is convex in the one, and in the other
concave. Plate XVII. will show the effect of both, with the
farther incisions, to the same depth, on the flank of the one
with the concave truncation, which join with the rest of its
singularly bold and keen execution in giving the impression
324 XXVII. THE COKNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
of its rather having been cloven into its form by the sweeps of
a sword, than bv the dull travail of a chisel. Its workman
was proud of it, as well he might be : he has written his name
upon its front (I would that more of his fellows had been as
kindly vain), and the goodly stone proclaims for ever, ADA-
MINUS DE SANCTO GIORGIO ME FECIT.
§ xxxiv. The reader will easily understand that the grace-
fulness of this kind of truncation, as he sees it in Plate XVIL,
soon suggested the idea of reducing it to a vegetable outline,
and laying four healing leaves, as it were, upon the wounds
which the sword had made. These four leaves, on the trun-
cations of the capital, correspond to the four leaves which we
saw, in like manner, extend themselves over the spurs of the
base, and, as they increase in delicacy of execution, form one
of the most lovely groups of capitals which the Gothic work-
men ever invented ; represented by two perfect types in the
capitals of the Piazzetta columns of Venice. But this pure
group is an isolated one ; it remains in the first simplicity of its
conception far into the thirteenth century, while around it rise
up a crowd of other forms, imitative of the old Corinthian,
and in which other and younger leaves spring up in luxuriant
growth among the primal four. The varieties of their group-
ing we shall enumerate hereafter : one general characteristic of
them all must be noted here.
§ xxxv. The reader has been told repeatedly * (that there
are two, and only two, real orders of capitals, originally repre-
sented by the Corinthian and the Doric ; and distinguished by
the concave or convex contours of their bells, as shown by the
dotted lines at <?, Fig. V., p. 65. And hitherto, respecting the
capital, we have been exclusively concerned with the methods
in which these two families of simple contours have gathered
themselves together, and obtained reconciliation to the abacus
above, and the shaft below. But the last paragraph introduces
us to the surface ornament disposed upon these, in the chisel-
ling of which the characters described above, § xxvni., which
* Chap. I. § xix., Appendix 7: and Chap. VI. § v.
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 325
are but feebly marked in the cornice, boldly distinguish and
divide the families of the capital.
§ xxxvi. Whatever the nature of the ornament be, it must
clearly have relief of some kind, and must present projecting
surfaces separated by incisions. But it is a very material ques-
tion whether the contour, hitherto broadly considered as that
of the entire bell, shall be that of the outside of the projecting
and relieved ornaments, or of the bottoms of the incisions
which divide them ; whether, that is to say, we shall first cut
out the bell of our capital quite smooth, and then cut farther
into it, with incisions, which shall leave ornamental forms in
relief, or whether, in originally cutting the contour of the bell,
we shall leave projecting bits of stone, which we may after-
wards work into the relieved ornament.
§ xxxvu. Now, look back to Fig. Y., p. 65. Clearly, if to
ornament the already hollowed profile, &, we cut deep incisions
into it, we shall so far weaken it at the top, that it will nearly
lose all its supporting power. Clearly, also, if to ornament
the already bulging profile c we were to leave projecting pieces
of stone outside of it, we should nearly destroy all its relation
to the original sloping line X, and produce an unseemly and
ponderous mass, hardly recognizable as a cornice profile. It is
evident, on the other hand, that we can afford to cut into this
profile without fear of destroying its strength, and that we can
afford to leave projections outside of the other, without fear of
destroying its lightness. Such is, accordingly, the natural dis-
position of the sculpture, and the two great families of capitals
are therefore distinguished, not merely by their concave and
convex contours, but by the ornamentation being left outside
the bell of the one, and cut into the bell of the other ; so that,
in either case, the ornamental portions will fall between the
dotted lines at 0, Fig. Y., and the pointed oval, or vesica piscis,
which is traced by them, may be called the Limit of ornamen-
tation.
§ xxxvin. Several distinctions in the quantity and style of
the ornament must instantly follow from this great distinction
in its position. First, in its quantity. For, observe : since in
326 XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
the Doric profile, c of Fig. V., the contour itself is to be com-
posed of the surface of the ornamentation, this ornamentation
must be close and united enough to form, or at least suggest, a
continuous surface ; it must, therefore, be rich in quantity and
close in aggregation ; otherwise it will destroy the massy char-
acter of the profile it adorns, and approximate it to its opposite,
the concave. On the other hand, the ornament left projecting
from the concave, must be sparing enough, and dispersed
enough, to allow the concave bell to be clearly seen beneath it ;
otherwise it will choke up the concave profile, and approximate
it to its opposite, the convex.
§ xxxix. And, secondly, in its style. For, clearly, as the
sculptor of the concave profile must leave masses of rough
stone prepared for his outer ornament, and cannot finish them
at once, but must complete the cutting of the smooth bell
beneath first, and then return to the projecting masses (for if
he were to finish these latter first, they would assuredly, if
delicate or sharp, be broken as he worked on ; since, I say, he
must work in this foreseeing and predetermined method, he is
sure to reduce the system of his ornaments to some definite
symmetrical order before he begins); and the habit of conceiving
beforehand all that he has to do, will probably render him not
only more orderly in its arrangement, but more skilful and
accurate in its execution, than if he could finish all as he
worked on. On the other hand, the sculptor of the convex
profile has its smooth surface laid before him, as a piece of
paper on which he can sketch at his pleasure ; the incisions he
makes in it are like touches of a dark pencil; and he is at
liberty to roam over the surface in perfect freedom, with light
incisions or writh deep ; finishing here, suggesting there, or
perhaps in places leaving the surface altogether smooth. It is
ten to one, therefore, but that, if he yield to the temptation, he
becomes irregular in design, and rude in handling; and we
shall assuredly find the two families of capitals distinguished,
the one by its symmetrical, thoroughly organised, and exquis-
itely executed ornament, the other by its rambling, confused,
and rudely chiselled ornament : But, on the other hand, while
XVIII.
=!OUN & BltRSTADT, N. Y.
Capitals.
CONVEX GKOUP.
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 327
we shall often have to admire the disciplined precision of the
one, and as often to regret the irregular rudeness of the other,
we shall not fail to find balancing qualities in both. The
severity of the disciplinarian capital represses the power of the
imagination ; it gradually degenerates into Formalism ; and
the indolence which cannot escape from its stern demand of
accurate workmanship, seeks refuge in copyism of established
forms, and loses itself at last in lifeless mechanism. The license
of the other, though often abused, permits full exercise to the
imagination : the mind of the sculptor, unshackled by the
niceties of chiselling, wanders over its orbed field in endless
fantasy ; and, when generous as well as powerful, repays the
liberty which has been granted to it with interest, by develop-
ing through the utmost wildness and fulness of its thoughts, an
order as much more noble than the mechanical symmetry of
the opponent school, as the domain which it regulates is
vaster.
§ XL. And now the reader shall judge whether I had not
reason to cast aside the so-called Five orders of the Kenaissance
architects, with their volutes and fillets, and to tell him that
there were only two real orders, and that there could never be
more.* For we now find that these two great and real orders
are representative of the two great influences which must for
ever divide the heart of man : the one of Lawful Discipline,
with its perfection and order, but its danger of degeneracy
into Formalism ; the other of Lawful Freedom, with its vigor
and variety, but its danger of degeneracy into Licentiousness.
§ XLI. I shall not attempt to give any illustrations here of
the most elaborate developments of either order ; they will be bet-
ter given on a larger scale : but the examples in Plate XVII. and
XYIII. represent the two methods of ornament in their earliest
appliance. The two lower capitals in Plate XVII. are a pure
type of the concave school ; the two in the centre of Plate
XVIIL, of the convex. At the top of Plate XVIII. are two
Lornbardic capitals ; that on the left from Sta. Sofia at Padua,
* Chap. I., §xix.
XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
Fig. LXVL
that on the right from the cortile of St. Ambrogio at Milan.
They both have the concave angle truncation ; but being of
date prior to the time when the idea of the concave bell was
developed, they are otherwise left square, and decorated with
the surface ornament characteristic of the convex school. The
relation of the designs to each other is interesting ; the cross
being prominent in the centre of each, but more richly relieved
in that from St. Ambrogio. The two beneath are from the
southern portico of St. Mark's ; the shafts having been of dif-
ferent lengths, and neither, in all probability, originally in-
tended for their present place, they have double abaci, of which
the uppermost is the cornice running round the whole facade.
The zigzagged capital is highly curious, and in its place very
effective and beautiful ; although
one of the exceptions which it
was above noticed that we should
sometimes find to the law stated
in § xv. above.
§ XLII. The lower capital,
which is also of the true convex
school, exhibits one of the condi-
tions of the spurred type, e of
Fig. XXII., respecting which one
or two points must be noticed.
If we were to take up the
plan of the simple spur, repre-
sented at e in Fig. XXII., p. 110, and treat it, with the salvia
leaf, as we did the spur of the base, we should have for the
head of our capital a plan like Fig. LXVL, which is actually
that of one of the capitals of the Fondaco de' Turchi at Venice ;
with this only difference, that the intermediate curves between
the spurs would have been circular: the reason they are not so,
here, is that the decoration, instead of being confined to the
spur, is now spread over the whole mass, and contours are
therefore given to the intermediate curves which fit them for
this ornament ; the inside shaded space being the head of the
shaft, and the outer, the abacus. The reader has in Fig.
DECORATION. XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. 329
LX VI. a characteristic type of the plans of the spurred capitals,
generally preferred by the sculptors of the convex school, but
treated with infinite variety, the spurs often being cut into
animal forms, or the incisions between them multiplied, for
richer effect ; and in our own Norman capital the type c of
Fig. XXII. is variously subdivided by incisions on its slope,
approximating in general effect to many conditions of the real
spurred type, 0, but totally differing from them in principle.
§ XLIII. The treatment of the spur in the concave school is
far more complicated, being borrowed in nearly every case
from the original Corinthian. Its plan may be generally
represented by Fig. LXVII. The spur itself is carved into
Fig LXVm.
Fig. LXVIL
a curling tendril or concave leaf, which supports the project-
ing angle of a four-sided abacus, whose hollow sides fall back
behind the bell, and have generally a rosette or other orna-
ment in their centres. The mediaeval architects often put
another square abacus above all, as represented by the shaded
portion of Fig. LXVII., and some massy conditions of this
form, elaborately ornamented, are very beautiful ; but it is apt
to become rigid and effeminate, as assuredly it is in the original
Corinthian, which is thoroughly mean and meagre in its upper
tendrils and abacus.
§ XLIV. The lowest capital in Plate XVIII. is from St.
Mark's, and singular in having double spurs ; it is therefore to
;;;{(> \\vii. 'nil1; COIJ.N ion AND CAIMTAI,. KK.COUATION.
be compared with the doubly spurred base, also from St Mark's,
in Plate XL In other respects it is a good example of the
union of breadth of mass with subtlety of curvature, which
characterises nearly all the spurred capitals of the convex
school. Its plan is given in Kig. LXVIIJ. : flic inner shaded
circle is the head of the shaft; the white cross, the hottoni
of the capital, which expands itself into the external shaded
portions at the top. Each spur, thus formed, is cut like a
ship's how, with the Doric profile; the surfaces so ohtained
arc then charged with arborescent ornament.
$ xi. v. I shall not here farther exemplify the conditions of
t,he treatment of the spur, hecanse I am afraid of confusing the
reader's mind, and diminishing the distinctness of his concep-
tion of the dill'ereiices between the two great orders, which it,
has been my principal ohject to develope throughout this
chapter. If all my renders lived in London, 1 could at once
li\ this dilVerence in their minds by a simple, vet somewhat
curious illustration. In many parts of the west, end of Lon-
don, as, for instance, at the corners of l.elgrave Square, and
the north side of Grosvenor Square, the Corinthian capitals of
newly-built houses are put into cages of wire. The wire cage
is the exact form of the typical capital of the convex school ;
the Corinthian capita,!, within, is a finished and highly deco-
rated example of the concave. The space between the. cage
and capital is the limit of ornamentation.
£ xi, vi. Those of my readers, however, to whom this illus-
tration is inaccessible, must be con lent with the two profiles,
13 and 14, Oil Plate XV. If they will glance along the line
of sections from 1 to C>, they will sec that the prolile i:1. is their
final development, with a superadded cornice for its abacus. It
is taken from a capital in a very important ruin of a palace,
near the Kialto of Venice, and hereafter to be described ; the
projection, outside of its principal curve, is the profile of its
OWptraddtd leaf ornamentation ; it may be taken as one of the
simplest., yet a perfect type of the concave group.
$ xi, vn. The prolile 11 is that of the capital of the main
shaft of the northern poriicoof St. Mark's, the most finished
IUCCOUATION. \\vii. TIN*; roiiNiru AND CAPITAL, Ml
example I ever met wil.li of the oonvei family, to which, in
spite of flic central inward bend of its profile, il is marked as
distinctly belonging, by the hold convex curve :i! i!s root,
springing fro.,, the shaft in the lino of the Christian Doric
cornice, and exactly reversing the structure of the other pro-
file, which rises ('mm the shaft, like ;, p;,!,,, I0ttf froin jj,s
stein. I'arfher, in the profile I:;, the innermost line is that
Of the bell ; luil, in ! lie profile I I, the outermost line is Mini
of the hell, ;ind Hi,- inner lino is the limit, of rhe incisions of
the ehisel, in undercutting u ret ieiihil.ed veil of onument, Bur
rounding a flower like a lily; rnoHt ingoniouHly, ami, I hope,
justly, ( Conjectured by the Marchm; Selv;iti<-o h, h.-.ve h.-en in
tend(-d for an imitation of the capitals of the temple 'of Solo-
mon, which Hiram made, with " nets of checker work, and
wreaths of chain work for the chapiters that were, on the top
of the pillai'H . . . and the chapiters that were upon the top of
the pillars were of lily work in the porch." (I Kings, vii. IT,
19.)
§ XLVIII. On this exquisite capital them is imposed an
abacus of the profile with which we began our investigation
long ago, the profile a of Fig. V. This abacus is formed by
the cornice already given, <L, of I Mate, X VI. : and therefore we
have, in this lovely Venetian capital, the summary of the re-
sults of our investigation, from its beginning to its close : the
type, of the first cornice ; the decoration of it, in its emergence
from the classical models; the g:i.tln-ring into the capital ; (he
super-imposition of the secondary cornice, and the refinement
of the bell of the capital by triple, curvature in the two limits
of chiselling. I cannot express the, exquisite refinements of
the curves on the small scale of Plate XV.; I will givr them
more, accurately in a larger engraving; but the scale on which
they are, here given will not prevent, tin; reader from per-
ceiving, and let him note if thoughtfully, that the, outer curve
of the noble capital is the, one which was our first example of
associated curves ; I hat I liuve had no need, throughout the
whole, of our innniry, to refer to any other ornamental line.
than the, three, which I at first chose, the simplest, of those
333
XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. DECORATION.
which Nature set by chance before me ; and that this lily, of
the delicate Venetian marble, has but been wrought, by the
highest human art, into the same line which the clouds disclose,
when they break from the rough rocks of the flank of the
Matterhorn.
r
CHAPTEK XXVIII.
: AKCHIVOLT AND APERTURE.
§ i. IF the windows and doors of some of our best north-
ern Gothic buildings were built up, and the ornament of their
archi volts concealed, there would often remain little but masses
of dead wall and unsightly buttress ; the whole vitality of the
building consisting in the graceful proportions or rich mould-
ings of its apertures. It is not so in the south, where, fre-
quently, the aperture is a mere dark spot on the variegated
wall ; but there the column, with its horizontal or curved
architrave, assumes an importance of another kind, equally
dependent upon the methods of lintel and archivolt decoration.
These, though in their richness of minor variety they defy all
exemplification, may be very broadly generalized.
Of the mere lintel, indeed, there is no specific decoration,
nor can be ; it has no organism to direct its ornament, and
therefore may receive any kind and degree of ornament, ac-
cording to its position. In a Greek temple, it has meagre hori-
zontal lines ; in a Romanesque church, it be'comes a row of
upright niches, with an apostle in each ; and may become any-
thing else at the architect's will. But the arch head has a natu-
ral organism, which separates its ornament into distinct families,
broadly definable,
§ n. In speaking of the arch-line and arch masonry, we
considered the arch to be cut straight through the wall ; so
that, if half built, it would have the appearance at a, Fig.
LXIX. But in the chapter on Form of Apertures, we found
that the side of the arch, or jamb of the aperture, might often
require to be bevelled, so as to give the section b, Fig. LXIX.
It is easily conceivable that when two ranges of voussoirs were
334
XXV 1 1 1. THE ARCHTVOLT AND APERTURE. DECORATION.
used, one over another, it would be easier to leave those be-
neath, of a smaller diameter, than to bevel them to accurate
junction with those outside. Whether in-
fluenced by this facility, or by decorative in-
stinct, the early northern builders often
substitute for the bevel the third condition,
GJ of Fig. LXIX. ; so that, of the three
forms in that figure, a belongs principally
to the south, c to the north, and b indiffer-
ently to both.
§ in. If the arch in the northern building
be very deep, its depth will probably be at-
tained by a succession of steps, like that in
c ; and the richest results of northern archi-
volt decoration are entirely based on the
aggregation of the ornament of these several
steps ; while those of the south are only the
complete finish and perfection of the orna-
ment of one. In this ornament of the single
arch, the points for general note are very few.
^§.*v. It was, in the first instance, derived from the classical
architrave,'* and the early Romanesque arches are nothing but
such an architrave, bent round. The horizontal lines of the
latter become semicircular, but their importance and value re-
main exactly the same ; their continuity is preserved across all
the voussoirs, and the joints and functions of the latter are
studiously concealed. As the builders get accustomed to the
arch, and love it better, they cease to be ashamed of its struc-
ture : the voussoirs begin to show themselves confidently, and
fight for precedence with the architrave lines ; and there is an
entanglement of the two structures, in consequence, like the
circular and radiating lines of a cobweb, until at last the archi-
* The architrave is properly the horizontal piece of stone laid across the
tops of the pillars in Greek buildings, and commonly marked with horizon-
tal lines, obtained by slight projections of its surface, while it is protected
above in the richer orders, by a small cornice.
DECORATION. XXVIII. THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTl'KK. 335
trave lines get worsted, and driven away outside of the vous-
soirs ; being permitted to stay at all only on condition of their
dressing themselves in mediaeval costume, as in the plate op-
posite.
§ v. In other cases, however, before the entire discomfiture
of the architrave, a treaty of peace is signed between the ad-
verse parties on these terms : That the architrave shall en-
tirely dismiss its inner three meagre lines, and leave the space
of them to the voussoirs, to display themselves after their
manner ; but that, in return for this concession, the architrave
shall have leave to expand the small cornice which usually
terminates it (the reader had better look at the original form
in that of the Erechtheum, in the middle of the Elgin room of
the British Museum) into bolder prominence, and even to put
brackets under it, as if it were a roof cornice, and thus mark
with a bold shadow the terminal line of the voussoirs. This
condition is seen in the arch from St. Pietro of Pistoja, Plate
XIII., above.
§ vi. If the Gothic spirit of the building be thoroughly
determined, and victorious, the architrave cornice is com-
pelled to relinquish its classical form, and take the profile of a
Gothic cornice or dripstone ; while, in other cases, as in much
of the Gothic of Verona, it is forced to disappear altogether.
But the voussoirs then concede, on the other hand, so much
of their dignity as to receive a running ornament of foliage or
animals, like a classical frieze, and continuous round the arch.
In fact, the contest between the adversaries may be seen run-
ning through all the early architecture of Italy : success in-
clining sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other, and
various kinds of truce or reconciliation being effected between
them : sometimes merely formal, sometimes honest and affec-
tionate, but with no regular succession in time. The greatest
victory of the voussoir is to annihilate the cornice, and re-
ceive an ornament of its own outline, and entirely limited
by its own joints : and yet this may be seen in the very early
apse of Murano.
vn. The most usual condition, however, is that unity of
336 XXVIII. THE ARCHIVOLT AND APEKTURE. DECORATION.
the two members above described, § v., and which may be
generally represented by the archivolt sec-
tion a, Fig. LXX. ; and from this descend
liililililillllfllllll a family of Gothic archivolts of the high-
CL J
cH ; W est importance. lor the cornice, thus at-
tached to the arch, suffers exactly the same
changes as the level cornice, or capital ; re-
ceives, in due time, its elaborate ogee pro-
file and leaf ornaments, like Fig. 8 or 9 of
Plate XV. ; and, when the shaft loses its
shape, and is lost in the later Gothic jamb,
the archivolt has influence enough to intro-
duce this ogee profile in the jamb also,
through the banded impost: and we immediately find our-
selves involved in deep successions of ogee mouldings in sides
of doors and windows, which never would have been thought
of, but for the obstinate resistance of the classical architrave
to the attempts of the voussoir at its degradation or banishment.
§ vni. This, then, will be the first great head under which
we shall in future find it convenient to arrange a large num-
ber of archivolt decorations. It is the distinctively Southern
and Byzantine form, and typically represented by the section
«, of Fig. LXX. ; and it is susceptible of almost every species
of surface ornament, respecting which only this general law
may be asserted : that, while the outside or vertical surface
may properly be decorated, and yet the soffit or under surface
left plain, the soffit is never to be decorated, and the outer
surface left plain. Much beautiful sculpture is, in the best
Byzantine buildings, half lost by being put under soffits ; but
the eye is led to discover it, and even to demand it, by the
rich chasing of the outside of the voussoirs. It would have
been an hypocrisy to carve them externally only. But there
is not the smallest excuse for carving the soffit, and not the
outside ; for, in that case, we approach the building under the
idea of its being perfectly plain ; we do not look for the soffit
decoration, and, of course, do not see it : or, if we do, it is
merely to regret that it should not be in a better place. In
DECORATION. XXVIII. THE AROHIVOLT AND APERTURE. 337
the Renaissance architects, it may, perhaps, for once, be con-
sidered a merit, that they put their bad decoration systemat-
ically in the places where we should least expect it, and can
seldomest see it : — Approaching the Scuola di San Rocco, you
probably will regret the extreme plainness and barrenness of
the window traceries ; but, if you will go very close to the
wall beneath the windows, you may, on sunny days, discover a
quantity of panel decorations which the ingenious architect has
concealed under the soffits.
The custom of decorating the arch soffit with panelling is a
Roman application of the Greek roof ornament, which, what-
ever its intrinsic merit (compare Chap. XXIX. § iv.), may
rationally be applied to waggon vaults, as of St. Peter's, and
to arch soffits under which one walks. But the Renaissance
architects had not wit enough to reflect that people usually do
not walk through windows.
§ ix. So far, then, of the Southern archivolt: In Fig.
LXIX., above, it will be remembered that c represents the
simplest form of the Northern. In the farther development
of this, which we have next to consider, the voussoirs, in con-
sequence of their own negligence or over-confidence, sustain a
total and irrecoverable defeat. That archivolt is in its earliest
conditions perfectly pure and nndecorated, — the simplest and
rudest of Gothic forms. Necessarily, when it falls on the pier,
and meets that of the opposite arch, the entire section of
masonry is in the shape of a cross, and is carried by the cross-
let shaft, which we above stated to be distinctive of Northern
design. I am more at a loss to account for the sudden and
fixed development of this type of archivolt than for any other
architectural transition with which I am acquainted. But
there it is, pure and firmly established, as early as the building
of St. Michele of Pavia ; and we have thenceforward only to
observe what comes of it.
§ x. We find it first, as I said, perfectly barren ; cornice
and architrave altogether ignored, the existence of such things
practically denied, and a plain, deep-cut recess with a single
mighty shadow occupying their place. The voussoirs, think-
338 XXVIII. THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTURE. DECORATIOK.
ing their great adversary utterly defeated, are at no trouble
to show themselves; visible enough in both the upper and
under archivolts, they are content to wait the time when, as
might have been hoped, they should receive a new decoration
peculiar to themselves.
§ xi. In this state of paralysis, or expectation, their flank
is turned by an insidious chamfer. The edges of the two great
blank archivolts are felt to be painfully conspicuous ; all the
four are at once beaded or chamfered, as at Z>, Fig. LXX. ; a
rich group of deep lines, running concentrically with the arch,
is the result on the instant, and the fate of the voussoirs is
sealed. They surrender at once without a struggle, and uncon-
ditionally ; the chamfers deepen and multiply themselves, cover
the soffit, ally themselves with other forms resulting from
grouped shafts or traceries, and settle into the inextricable rich-
ness of the fully developed Gothic jamb and arch ; farther
complicated in the end by the addition of niches to their
recesses, as above described.
§ xn. The voussoirs, in despair, go over to the classical
camp, in hope of receiving some help or tolerance from their
former enemies. They receive it indeed : but as traitors should,
to their own eternal dishonor. They are sharply chiselled at
the joints, or rusticated, or cut into masks and satyrs' heads,
and so set forth and pilloried in the various detestable forms of
which the simplest is given above in Plate XIII. (on the left) :
and others may be seen in nearly every large building in Lon-
don, more especially in the bridges ; and, as if in pure spite at
the treatment they had received from the archivolt, they are
now not content with vigorously showing their lateral joints,
but shape themselves into right-angled steps at their heads,
cutting to pieces their limiting line, which otherwise would
have had sympathy with that of the arch, and fitting themselves
to their new friend, the Renaissance Ruled Copy-book wall.
It had been better they had died ten times over, in their own
ancient cause, than thus prolonged their existence.
§ xni. We bid them farewell in their dishonor, to return
to our victorious chamfer. It had not, we said, obtained so
DECORATION. XXVIII. THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTURE. 339
easy a conquest, unless by the help of certain forms of the
grouped shaft. The chamfer was quite enough to decorate
the archivolts, if there were no more than two ; but if, as
above noticed in § in., the archivolt was very deep, and com-
posed of a succession of such steps, the multitude of chamfer-
ings were felt to be weak and insipid, and instead of dealing
with the outside edges of the archivolts, the group was soft-
ened by introducing solid shafts in their dark inner angles.
This, the manliest and best condition of the early northern
jamb and archivolt, is represented in section at fig. 12 of Plate
II. ; and its simplest aspect in Plate Y., from the Broletto of
Como, — an interesting example, because there the voussoirs
being in the midst of their above-described southern contest
with the architrave, were better prepared for the flank attack
upon them by the shaft and chamfer, and make a noble resist-
ance, with the help of color, in which even the shaft itself
gets slightly worsted, and cut across in several places, like
General Zach's column at Marengo.
§ xiv. The shaft, however, rapidly rallies, and brings up its
own peculiar decorations to its aid ; and the intermediate archi-
volts receive running or panelled ornaments, also, until we reach
the exquisitely rich conditions of our own Norman archivolts,
and of the parallel Lombardic designs, such as the entrance of
the Duomo, and of San Fermo, at Yerona. This change,
however, occupies little time, and takes place principally in
doorways, owing to the greater thickness of wall, and depth of
archivolt ; so that we find the rich shafted succession of orna-
ment, in the doorway and window aperture, associated with the
earliest and rudest double archivolt, in the nave arches, at St.
Michele of Pavia. The nave arches, therefore, are most
usually treated by the chamfer, and the voussoirs are there
defeated much sooner than by the shafted arrangements, which
they resist, as we saw, in the south by color ; and even in the
north, though forced out of their own shape, they take that of
birds' or monsters' heads, which for some time peck and pinch
the rolls of the archivolt to their hearts' content ; while the
ISTorman zigzag ornament allies itself with them, each zigzag
340 XXVIII. THE AECHIVOLT AXD APERTURE. DECORATION.
often restraining itself amicably between the joints of each
voussoir in the ruder work, and even in the highly finished
arches, distinctly presenting a concentric or sunlike arrange-
ment of lines ; so much so, as to prompt the conjecture, above
stated, Chap. XX. § xxvi., that all such ornaments were in-
tended to be typical of light issuing from the orb of the arch.
I doubt the intention, but acknowledge the resemblance ;
which perhaps goes far to account for the never-failing delight-
fulness of this zigzag decoration. The diminution of the zig-
zag, as it gradually shares the defeat of the voussoir, and is at
last overwhelmed by the complicated, railroad-like fluency of
the later Gothic mouldings, is to me one of the saddest sights
in the drama of architecture.
§ xv. One farther circumstance is deserving of especial note
in Plate V., the greater depth of the voussoirs at the top of
the arch. This has been above alluded to as a feature of good
construction, Chap. XL, § in. ; it is to be noted now as one
still more valuable in decoration : for when we arrive at the
deep succession of concentric archi volts, with which northern
portals, and many of the associated windows, are headed, we
immediately find a difficulty in reconciling the outer curve
with the inner. If, as is sometimes the case, the width of the
group of archivolts be twice or three times that of the inner
aperture, the inner arch may be distinctly pointed, and the
outer one, if drawn with concentric arcs, approximate very
nearly to a round arch. This is actually the case in the later
Gothic of Yerona ; the outer line of the archivolt having a
hardly perceptible point, and every inner arch of course form-
ing the point more distinctly, till the innermost becomes a
lancet. By far the nobler method, however, is that of the
pure early Italian Gothic ; to make every outer arch a magni-
fied fac-simile of the innermost one, every arc including the
same number of degrees, but degrees of a larger circle. The
result is the condition represented in Plate Y., often found in
far bolder development ; exquisitely springy and elastic in its
expression, and entirely free from the heaviness and monotony
of the deep northern archivolts.
DECORATION. XXVIII. THE ARCH1VOLT ANT) APERTURE. 341
, § xvi. We have not spoken of the intermediate form, b, of
Fig. LXIX. (which its convenience for admission of light has
rendered common in nearly all architectures), because it has
no transitions peculiar to itself: in the north it sometimes
shares the fate of the outer architrave, and is channelled into
longitudinal mouldings ; sometimes remains smooth and massy,
as in military architecture, or in the simpler forms of domestic
and ecclesiastical. In Italy it receives surface decoration like
the architrave, but has, perhaps, something of peculiar expres-
sion in being placed between the tracery of the window within,
and its shafts arid tabernacle work without, as in the Duomo
of Florence : in this position it is always kept smooth in sur-
face, and inlaid (or painted) with delicate arabesques ; while
the tracery and the tabernacle work are richly sculptured.
The example of its treatment by colored voussoirs, given in
Plate XIX., may be useful to the reader as a kind of central
expression of the aperture decoration of the pure Italian
Gothic ; — aperture decoration proper ; applying no shaft work
to the jambs, but leaving the bevelled opening unenriched ;
using on the outer archivolt the voussoirs and concentric
architrave in reconcilement (the latter having, however, some
connection with the Norman zigzag); and beneath them, the
pure Italian two-pieced and mid-cusped arch, with rich cusp
decoration. It is a Veronese arch, probably of the thirteenth
century, and finished with extreme care ; the red portions are
all in brick, delicately cast : and the most remarkable feature
of the whole is the small piece of brick inlaid on the angle of
each stone voussoir, with a most just feeling, which every
artist will at once understand, that the color ought not to be
let go all at once.
§ xvii. We have traced the various conditions of treatment
in the archivolt alone ; but, except in what has been said of
the peculiar expression of the voussoirs, we might throughout
have spoken in the same terms of the jamb. Even a parallel
to the expression of the voussoir may be found in the Lorn-
bardic and Norman divisions of the shafts, by zigzags and
•other transverse ornamentation, which in the end are all swept
342 xxvui. THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTURE. DECORATION.
away by the canaliculated mouldings. Then, in the recesses
of these and of the archivolts alike, the niche and statue deco-
ration develops itself; and the vaulted and cavernous apertures
are covered with incrustations of fretwork, and with every
various application of foliage to their fantastic mouldings.
§ xvm. I have kept the inquiry into the proper ornament
of the archivolt wholly free from all confusion with the ques-
tions of beauty in tracery ; for, in fact, all tracery is a mere
multiplication and entanglement of small archivolts, and its
cusp ornament is a minor condition of that proper to the span-
dril. It does not reach its completely defined form until the
jamb and archivolt have been divided into longitudinal mould-
ings ; and then the tracery is formed by the innermost group
of the shafts or fillets, bent into whatever forms or foliations
the designer may choose ; but this with a delicacy of adapta-
tion which I rather choose to illustrate by particular examples,
of which we shall meet with many in the course of our inquiry,
than to delay the reader by specifying here. As for the con-
ditions of beauty in the disposition of the tracery bars, I see
no hope of dealing with the subject fairly but by devoting, if
I can find time, a separate essay to it — which, in itself, need
not be long, but would involve, before it could be completed,
the examination of the wThole mass of materials lately collected
by the indefatigable industry of the English architects who
have devoted their special attention to this subject, and which
are of the highest value as illustrating the chronological suc-
cession or mechanical structure of tracery, but which, in most
cases, touch on their aesthetic merits incidentally only. Of
works of this kind, by far the best I have met with is Mr..
Edmund Sharpens, on Decorated Windows, which seems to me,
as far as a cursory glance can enable me to judge, to exhaust
the subject as respects English Gothic; and which may be
recommended to the readers who are interested in the subject,
as containing a clear and masterly enunciation of the general
principles by which the design of tracery has been regulated,
from its first development to its final degradation.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE ROOF.
§ i. THE modes of decoration hitherto considered, have been
common to the exteriors and interiors of all noble buildings ;
and we have taken no notice of the various kinds of ornament
which require protection from weather, and are necessarily
confined to interior work. But in the case of the roof, the
exterior and interior treatments become, as we saw in con-
struction, so also in decoration, separated by broad and bold
distinctions. One side of a wall is, in most cases, the same as
another, and if its structure be concealed, it is mostly on the
inside ; but, in the roof, the anatomical structure, out of which
decoration should naturally spring, is visible, if at all, in the
interior only : so that the subject of internal ornament becomes
both wide and important, and that of external, comparatively
subordinate.
§ n. Now, so long as we were concerned principally with
the outside of buildings, we might with safety leave expres-
sional character out of the question for the time, because it is
not to be expected that all persons who pass the building, or
see it from a distance, shall be in the temper which the build-
ing is properly intended to induce ; so that ornaments some-
what at variance with this temper may often be employed
externally without painful effect. But these ornaments would
be inadmissible in the interior, for those who enter will for the
most part either be in the proper temper which the building
requires, or desirous of acquiring it. (The distinction is not
rigidly observed by the mediaeval builders, and grotesques, or
profane subjects, occur in the interior of churches, in bosses,
crockets, capitals, brackets, and such other portions of minor
344 XXIX. THE ROOF. DECORATION.
ornament : but we do not find the interior wall covered with
hunting and battle pieces, as often the Lombardic exteriors.)
And thus the interior expression of the roof or ceiling becomes
necessarily so various, and the kind and degree of fitting deco-
ration so dependent upon particular circumstances, that it is
nearly impossible to classify its methods, or limit its application.
§ in. I have little, therefore, to say here, and that touching
rather the omission than the selection of decoration, as far as
regards interior roofing. Whether of timber or stone, roofs
are necessarily divided into surfaces, and ribs or beams ;— sur-
faces, flat or carved ; ribs, traversing these in the directions
where main strength is required ; or beams, filling the hollow
of the dark gable with the intricate roof-tree, or supporting
the flat ceiling. Wherever the ribs and begins are simply and
unaffectedly arranged, there is no difficulty about decoration ;
the beams may be carved, the ribs moulded, and the eye is
satisfied at once; but when the vaulting is unribbed, as in
plain waggon vaults and much excellent early Gothic, or when
the ceiling is flat, it becomes a difficult question how far their
services may receive ornamentation independent of their struc-
ture. I have never myself seen a flat ceiling satisfactorily
decorated, except by painting : there is much good and fanci-
ful panelling in old English domestic architecture, but it
always is in some degree meaningless and mean. The flat ceil-
ings of Yenice, as in the Scuola di San Rocco and Ducal
Palace, have in their vast panellings some of the noblest paint-
ings (on stretched canvas) which the world possesses: and
this is all very well for the ceiling ; but one would rather have
the painting in a better place, especially when the rain soaks
through its canvas, as I have seen it doing through many a
noble Tintoret. On the whole, flat ceilings are as much to be
avoided as possible ; and, when necessary, perhaps a panelled
ornamentation with rich colored patterns is the most satisfying,
and loses least of valuable labor. But I leave the question
to the reader's thought, being myself exceedingly undecided
respecting it : except only touching one point — that a blank
ceiling is not to be redeemed by a decorated ventilator.
DECORATION. XXIX. THE KOOF. 345
§ iv. I have a more continued opinion, however, respecting
the decoration of curved surfaces. The majesty of a roof is
never, I think, so great, as when the eye can pass undisturbed
over the course of all its curvatures, and trace the dying of the
shadows along its smooth and sweeping vaults. And I would
rather, myself, have a plain ridged Gothic vault, with all its
rough stones visible, to keep the sleet and wind out of a cathe-
dral aisle, than all the fanning and pendanting and foliation
that ever bewildered Tudor weight. But mosaic or fresco
may of course be used as far as we can afford or obtain them ;
for these do not break the curvature. Perhaps the most
-solemn roofs in the world are the apse conchas of the Roman-
esque basilicas, with their golden ground and severe figures.
Exactly opposed to these are the decorations which disturb the
serenity of the curve without giving it interest, like the vulgar
panelling of St. Peter's and the Pantheon ; both, I think, in
the last degree detestable.
§ v. As roofs internally may be divided into surfaces and
ribs, externally they may be divided into surfaces, and points,
or ridges ; these latter often receiving very bold and distinc-
tive ornament. The outside surface is of small importance in
central Europe, being almost universally low in slope, and
tiled throughout Spain, South France, and North Italy: of
still less importance where it is flat, as a terrace ; as often in
South Italy and the East, mingled with low domes : but the
larger Eastern and Arabian domes become elaborate in orna-
mentation : I cannot speak of them with confidence ; to the
mind of an inhabitant of the north, a roof is a guard against
wild weather; not a surface which is forever to bask in
serene heat, and gleam across deserts like a rising moon. I
can only say, that I have never seen any drawing of a richly
decorated Eastern dome that made me desire to see the original.
§ vi. Our own northern roof decoration is necessarily sim-
ple. Colored tiles are used in some cases with quaint effect ;
but I believe the dignity of the building is always greater
when the roof is kept in an undisturbed mass, opposing itself
to the variegation and richness of the walls. The Italian
346 XXIX. THE KOOF. DECOKATION.
round tile is itself decoration enough, a deep and rich fluting,
which all artists delight in ; this, however, is fitted exclusively
for low pitch of roofs. On steep domestic roofs, there is no
ornament better than may be obtained by merely rounding,
or cutting to an angle, the lower extremities of the flat tiles
or shingles, as in Switzerland: thus the whole surface is
covered with an appearance of scales, a fish-like defence
against water, at once perfectly simple, natural, and effective
at any distance; and the best decoration of sloping stone
roofs, as of spires, is a mere copy of this scale armor; it
enriches every one of the spires and pinnacles of the cathedral
of Coutances, and of many Norman and early Gothic build-
ings. Roofs covered or edged with lead have often patterns
designed upon the lead, gilded and relieved with some dark
color, as on the house of Jaques Cceur at Bourges ; and I
imagine the effect of this must have been singularly delicate
and beautiful, but only traces of it now remain. The north-
ern roofs, however, generally stand in little need of surface
decoration, the eye being drawn to the fantastic ranges of
their dormer windows, and to the finials and fringes on their
points and ridges.
§ vn. Whether dormer windows are legitimately to be
classed as decorative features, seems to me to admit of doubt.
The northern spire system is evidently a mere elevation and
exaggeration of the domestic turret with its look-out windows,
and one can hardly part with the grotesque lines of the projec-
tions, though nobody is to be expected to live in the spire :
but, at all events, such windows are never to be allowed in
places visibly inaccessible, or on less than a natural and ser-
viceable scale.
§ viii. Under the general head of roof-ridge and point
decoration, we may include, as above noted, the entire race
of fringes, finials, and crockets. As there is no -use in any of
these things, and as they are visible additions and parasitical
portions of the structure, more caution is required in their use
than in any other features of ornament, and the architect and
spectator must both be in felicitous humor before they can be
DECORATION. XXIX. THE ROOF. 347
well designed or thoroughly enjoyed. They are generally most
admirable where the grotesque Northern spirit has most
power ; and I think there is almost always a certain spirit of
playfulness in them, adverse to the grandest architectural
effects, or at least to be kept in severe subordination to the
serener character of the prevalent lines. But as they are op-
posed to the seriousness of majesty on the one hand, so they
are to the weight of dulness on the other ; and I know not any
features which make the contrast between continental domestic
architecture, and our own, more humiliatingly felt, or which give
so sudden a feeling of new life and delight, when we pass from
the streets of London to those of Abbeville or Kouen, as the
quaint points and pinnacles of the roof gables and turrets.
The commonest and heaviest roof may be redeemed by a spike
at the end of it, if it is set on with any spirit ; but the foreign
builders have (or had, at least) a peculiar feeling in this, and
gave animation to the whole roof by the fringe of its back,
and the spike on its forehead, so that all goes together, like
the dorsal fins and spines of a fish : but our spikes have a dull,
screwed on, look ; a far-off relationship to the nuts of machin-
ery ; and our roof fringes are sure to look like fenders, as if
they were meant to catch ashes out of the London smoke-
clouds.
§ ix. Stone finials and crockets are, I think, to be consid-
ered in architecture, what points and flashes of light are in
the color of painting, or of nature. There are some landscapes
whose best character is sparkling, and there is a possibility of
repose in the midst of brilliancy, or embracing it— as on the
fields of summer sea, or summer land :
" Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold,
And on the dews that drench the furze,
And on the silvery gossamers,
That twinkle into green and gold. "
And there are colorists who can keep their quiet in the midst
of a jewellery of light ; but, for the most part, it is better to
avoid breaking up either lines or masses by too many points.
348 XXIX. THE ROOF. DECORATION.
and to make the few points used exceedingly precious. So
the best crockets and finials are set, like stars, along the lines,
and at the points, which they adorn, with considerable inter-
vals between them, and exquisite delicacy and fancy of sculp-
ture in their own designs; if very small, they may become
more frequent, and describe lines by a chain of points ; but
their whole value is lost if they are gathered into bunches or
clustered into tassels and knots ; and an over-indulgence in
them always marks lowness of school. In Yenice, the addi
tion of the finial to the arch-head is the first sign of degrada-
tion ; all her best architecture is entirely without either crockets
or finials ; and her ecclesiastical architecture may be classed,
with fearless accuracy, as better or worse, in proportion to the
diminution or expansion of the crocket. The absolutely perfect
use of the crocket is found, I think, in the tower of Giotto,
and in some other buildings of the Pisan school. In the
North they generally err on one side or other, and are either
florid and huge, or mean in outline, looking as if they had
been pinched out of the stone-work, as throughout the entire
cathedral of Amiens ; and are besides connected with the gen-
erally spotty system which has been spoken of under the head
of archivolt decoration.
§ x. Employed, however, in moderation, they are among
the most delightful means of delicate expression ; and the
architect has more liberty in their individual treatment than
in any other feature of the building. Separated entirely from
the structural system, they are subjected to no shadow of any
other laws than those of grace and chastity ; and the fancy
may range without rebuke, for materials of their design,
through the whole field of the visible or imaginable creation.
CHAPTEE XXX.
THE VESTIBULE.
§ i. I HAVE hardly kept my promise. The reader has deco-
rated but little for himself as yet ; but I have not, at least,
attempted to bias his judgment. Of the simple forms of deco-
ration which have been set before him, he has always been
left free to choose ; and the stated restrictions in the methods
of applying them have been only those which followed on the
necessities of construction previously determined. These hav-
ing been now denned, I do indeed leave my reader free to
build ; and with what a freedom ! All the lovely forms of the
universe set before him, whence to choose, and all the lovely
lines that boufcd their substance or guide their motion ; and
of all these lines, — and there are myriads of myriads in every
bank of grass and every tuft of forest ; and groups of them
divinely harmonized, in the bell of every flower, and in every
several member of bird and beast, — of all these lines, for the
principal forms of the most important members of architec-
ture, I have used but Three ! What, therefore, must be the
infinity of the treasure in them all ! There is material enough
in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals,
but suppose we were satisfied with less exhaustive appliance,
and built a score of cathedrals, each to illustrate a single
flower? that would be better than trying to invent new
styles, I think. There is quite difference of style enough, be-
tween a violet and a harebell, for all reasonable purposes.
§ n. Perhaps, however, even more strange than the strug-
gle of our architects to invent new styles, is the way they com-
monly speak of this treasure of natural infinity. Let us take
our patience to us for an instant, and hear one of them, not
among the least intelligent : —
350 XXX. THE VESTIBULE.
"It is not true that all natural forms are beautiful. We may hardly
be able to detect this in Nature herself; but when the forms are separated
from the things, and exhibited alone (by sculpture or carving), we then see
that they are not all fitted for ornamental purposes; and indeed that very
few, perhaps none, are so fitted without correction. Yes, I say correction,
for though it is the highest aim of every art to imitate nature, this is not to
be done by imitatirig any natural form, but by criticising and correcting it, —
criticising it by Nature's rules gathered from all her works, but never com-
pletely carried out by her in any one work ; correcting it, by rendering it
more natural, i.e. more conformable to the general tendency of Nature, ac-
cording to that noble maxim recorded of Raffaelle, ' that the artist's object
was to make things not as Nature makes them, but as she WOULD make
them;' as she ever tries to make them, but never succeeds, though her aim
may be deduced from a comparison of her efforts; just as if a number of
archers had aimed unsuccessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark
were then removed, we could by the examination of their arrow marks
point out the most probable position of the spot aimed at, with a certainty
of being nearer to it than any of their shots."*
§ in. I had thought that, by this time, we had done with
that stale, second-hand, one-sided, and misunderstood saying
of Raffaelle's ; or that at least, in these days of purer Christian
light, men might have begun to get some insight into the
meaning of it : Raffaelle was a painter of humanity, and as-
suredly there is something the matter with humanity, a few
dovrebbds, more or less, wanting in it. We have most of us
heard of original sin, and may perhaps, in our modest moments,
conjecture that we are not quite what God, or nature, would
have us to be. Raffaelle had something to mend in Humanity :
I should have liked to have seen him mending a daisy ! — or a
pease-blossom, or a moth, or a mustard seed, or any other of
God's slightest works. If he had accomplished that, one
might have found for him more respectable employment,—
to set the stars in better order, perhaps (they seem grievously
scattered as they are, and to be of all manner of shapes and
sizes, — except the ideal shape, and the proper size) ; or to give
us a corrected view of the ocean ; that, at least, seems a very
irregular and improveable thing ; the very fishermen do not
know, this day, how far it will reach, driven up before the
* Garbett on Design, p. 74.
XXX. THE VESTIBULE. 351
west wind : — perhaps Some One else does, but that is not our
business. Let us go down and stand by the beach of it, of
the great irregular sea, and count whether the thunder of it is
not out of time. One, — two : — here comes a well-formed wave
at last, trembling a little at the top, but, on the whole, orderly.
So, crash among the shingle, and up as far as this grey pebble ;
now stand by and watch ! Another : — Ah, careless wave ! why
couldn't you have kept your crest on ? it is all gone away into
spray, striking up against the cliffs there— I thought as much
—missed the mark by a couple of feet ! Another : — How now,
impatient one ! couldn't you have waited till your friend's re-
flux was done with, instead of rolling yourself up with it in
that unseemly manner ? You go for nothing. A fourth, and
a goodly one at last. What think we of yonder slow rise, and
crystalline hollow, without a flaw ? Steady, good wave ; not
so fast ; not so fast ; where are you coming to ? — By our archi-
tectural word, this is too bad ; two yards over the mark, and
ever so much of you in our face besides ; and a wave which we
had some hope of, behind there, broken all to pieces out at sea,
and laying a great white table-cloth of foam all the way to the
shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off it ! Alas, for
these unhappy arrow shots of Nature ; she will never hit her
mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them
into the ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years. Let us
send for a Greek architect to do it for her. He comes — the
great Greek architect, with measure and rule. Will he not
also make the weight for the winds ? and weigh out the waters
by measure ? and make a decree for the rain, and a way for the
lightning of the thunder ? He sets himself orderly to his work,
and behold ! this is the mark of nature, and this is the thing
into which the great Greek architect improves the sea—
®a\aTTa, SaXarra : Was it this, then, that they wept to see
from the sacred mountain — those wearied ones ?
352 XXX. THE VESTIBULE.
§ iv. But the sea was meant to be irregular ! Yes, and
were not also the leaves, and the blades of grass ; and, in a sort,
as far as may be without mark of sin, even the countenance of
man ? Or would it be pleasanter and better to have us all
alike, and numbered on our foreheads, that we might be known
one from the other ?
§ v. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's art ? Have
we only to copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the
universe ? Not so. We have work to do upon it ; there is
not any one of us so simple, nor so feeble, but he has work to
do upon it. But the work is not to improve, but to explain.
This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable, in its
whole ; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long
contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to
reach ; then set forth what he has learned of it for those be-
neath him ; extricating it from infinity, as one gathers a violet
out of grass ; one does not improve either violet or grass in
gathering it, but one makes the flower visible ; and then the
human being has to make its power upon his own heart visible
also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has raised
up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul.
And sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to
set it in strange lights, and display it in a thousand ways before
unknown: ways specially directed to necessary and noble pur-
poses, for which he had to choose instruments out of the wide
armory of God. All this he may do : and in this he is only
doing what every Christian has to do with the written, as well
as the created word, " rightly dividing the word of truth."
Out of the infinity of the written word, he has also to gather
and set forth things new and old, to choose them for the season
and the work that are before him, to explain and manifest them
to others, with such illustration and enforcement as may be in
his power, and to crown them with the history of what, by
them, God has done for his soul. And, in doing this, is he
improving the Word of God? Just such difference as there is
between the sense in which a minister may be said to improve
a text, to the people's comfort, and the sense in which an
XXX. THE VESTIBULE. 353
atheist might declare that he could improve the Book, which,
if any man shall add unto, there shall be added unto him the
plagues that are written therein ; just such difference is there
between that which, with respect to Nature, man is, in his
humbleness, called upon to do, and that which, in his insolence,
he imagines himself capable of doing.
§ vi. Have no fear, therefore, reader, in judging between
nature and art, so only that you love both. If you can love
one only, then let it be Nature ; you are safe with her : but do
not then attempt to judge the art, to which you do not care to
give thought, or time. But if you love both, you may judge
between them fearlessly; you may estimate the last, by its
making you remember the first, and giving you the same kind
of joy. If, in the square of the city, you can find a delight,
finite, indeed, but pure and intense, like that which you have
in a valley among the hills, then its art and architecture are
right ; but if, after fair trial, you can find no delight in them,
nor any instruction like that of nature, I call on you fearlessly
to condemn them.
We are forced, for the sake of accumulating our power and
knowledge, to live in cities ; but such advantage as we have
in association with each other is in great part counterbalanced
by our loss of fellowship with nature. We cannot all have
our gardens now, nor our pleasant fields to meditate in at
eventide. Then the function of our architecture is, as far as
may be, to replace these ; to tell us about nature ; to possess us
with memories of her quietness ; to be solemn and full of ten-
derness, like her, and rich in portraitures of her ; full of deli-
cate imagery of the flowers we can no more gather, and of the
living creatures now far away from us in their own solitude.
If ever you felt or found this in a London Street,— if ever it
furnished you with one serious thought, or one ray of true and
gentle pleasure,— if there is in your heart a true delight in its
grim railings and dark casements, and wasteful finery of shops,
and feeble coxcombry of club-houses,— it is well : promote the
building of more like them. But if they never taught you
anything, and never made you happier as you passed beneath
854 XXX. THE VESTIBULE.
them, do not think they have any mysterious goodness nor
occult sublimity. Have done with the wretched affectation,
the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy : for, as surely as
you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is
better than the wood pavement, cut into hexagons; and as
surely as you know the fresh winds and sunshine of the upland
are better than the choke-damp of the vault, or the gas-light of
the ball-room, you may know, as I told you that you should,
that the good architecture, which has life, and truth, and joy
in it, is better than the bad architecture, which has death, dis-
honesty, and vexation of heart in it, from the beginning to the
end of time.
§ vii. And now come with me, for I have kept you too
long from your gondola : come with me, on an autumnal
morning, through the dark gates of Padua, and let us take the
broad road leading towards the East.
It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms, and vine
festoons full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic,
and their clusters deepened into gloomy blue ; then mounts an
embankment above the Brenta, and runs between the river
and the broad plain, which stretches to the north in endless
lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows slowly, but
strongly ; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that
neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its
monotonous banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy
twisted for an instant into its opaque surface, and vanishing,
as if something had been dragged into it and gone down.
Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the dyke on its
northern side ; and the tall white tower of Dolo is seen trem-
bling in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than
it did at first. Presently you pass one of the much vaunted
u villas on the Brenta :" a glaring, spectral shell of brick and
stucco, its windows with painted architraves like picture-
frames, and a court-yard paved with pebbles in front of it, all
burning in the thick glow of the feverish sunshine, but fenced
from the high road, for magnificence sake, with goodly posts
and chains ; then another, of Kew Gothic, with Chinese varia-
XXX. THE VESTIBULE. 355
lions, painted red and green ; a third composed for the greater
part of dead-wall, with fictitious windows painted upon it,
each with a pea-green blind, and a classical architrave in bad
perspective ; and a fourth, with stucco figures set on the top
of its garden-wall : some antique, like the kind to be seen at
the corner of the New Road, and some of clumsy grotesque
dwarfs, with fat bodies and large boots. This is the architec-
ture to which her studies of the Renaissance have conducted
modern Italy.
g vin. The sun climbs steadily, and warms into intense
white the walls of the little piazza of Dolo, where we change
horses. Another dreary stage among the now divided
branches of the Brenta, forming irregular and half -stagnant
canals ; with one or two more villas on the other side of them,
but these of the old Venetian type, which we may have
recognised before at Padua, and sinking fast into utter ruin,
black, and rent, and lonely, set close to the edge of the dull
water, with what were once small gardens beside them, kneaded
into mud, and with blighted fragments of gnarled hedges and
broken stakes for their fencing ; and here and there a few
fragments of marble steps, which have once given them
graceful access from the water's edge, now settling into the
mud in broken joints, all aslope, and slippery with green weed.
At last the road turns sharply to the north, and there is an
open space, covered with bent grass, on the right of it : but do
not look that way.
§ ix. Five minutes more, and we are in the upper room of
the little inn at Mestre, glad of a moment's rest in shade.
The table is (always, I think) covered with a cloth of nominal
white and perennial grey, with plates and glasses at due inter-
vals, and small loaves of a peculiar white bread, made with oil,
and more like knots of flour than bread. The view from its
balcony is not cheerful : a narrow street, with a solitary brick
church and barren campanile on the other side of it ; and some
«oventual buildings, with a few crimson remnants of fresco
about their windows ; and, between them and the street, a
ditch with some slow current in it, and one or two small houses
356 XXX. THE VESTIBULE.
beside it, one with an arbor of roses at its door, as in an Eng-
lish tea-garden ; the air, however, about us having in it noth-
ing of roses, but a close smell of garlic and crabs, warmed by
the smoke of various stands of hot chestnuts. There is much
vociferation also going on beneath the window respecting cer-
tain wheelbarrows which are in rivalry for our baggage : we
appease their rivalry with our best patience, and follow them
down the narrow street.
§ x. We have but walked some two hundred yards when
we come to a low wharf or quay, at the extremity of a canal,
with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter
we fancy for an instant has become black with stagnation ;
another glance undeceives us, — it is covered with the black
boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they
be real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide
away ; at first feeling as if the water were yielding continually
beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is
something clearer than any water we have seen lately, and of
a pale green ; the banks only two or three feet above it, of
mud and rank grass, with here and there a stunted tree ; glid-
ing swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as if they
were dragged by upon a painted scene.
Stroke by stroke we count the plunges of the oar, each
heaving up the side of the boat slightly as her silver beak
shoots forward. We lose patience, and extricate ourselves
from the cushions : the sea air blows keenly by, as we stand
leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In front, nothing to
be seen but long canal and level bank ; to the west, the tower
of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen pur-
ple shapes, of the color of dead rose-leaves, all round the hori-
zon, feebly defined against the afternoon sky, — the Alps of
Bassano. Forward still : the endless canal bends at last, and
then breaks into intricate angles about some low bastions, now
torn to pieces and staggering in ugly rents towards the water,
— the bastions of the fort of Malghera. Another turn, and
another perspective of canal ; but not interminable. The
silver beak cleaves it fast, — it widens : the rank grass of the
XXX. THE VESTIBULE.
357
banks sinks lower, and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots
along an expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but
a few years back, we might have seen the lagoon stretching to
the horizon, and the warm southern sky bending over Mala-
mocco to the sea. Now we can see nothing but what seems a
low and monotonous dock-yard wall, with flat arches to let the
tide through it ; — this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous
above all things. But at the end of those dismal arches, there
rises, out of the wide water, a straggling line of low and con-
fused brick buildings, which, but for the many towers which
are mingled among them, might be the suburbs of an English
manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale, and appar-
ently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line ;
but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of
black smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which
issues from the belfry of a church.
It is Yenice.
APPENDIX.
1. FOUNDATION OF VENICE.
I FIND the chroniclers agree in fixing the year 421, if any:
the following sentence from De Monaci may perhaps interest the
reader.
"God, who punishes the sins of men by war sorrows, and
whose ways are past finding out, willing both to save the innocent
blood, and that a great power, beneficial to the whole world,
should arise in a spot strange beyond belief, moved the chief
men of the cities of the Venetian province (which from the
border of Pannonia, extended as far as the Adda, a river of Lom-
bardy), both in memory of past, and in dread of future distress,
to establish states upon the nearer islands of the inner gulphs of
the Adriatic, to which, in the last necessity, they might retreat
for refuge. And first Galienus de Fontana, Simon de Glauco-
nibus, and Antonius Calvus, or, as others have it, Adalburtus
Falerius, Thomas Candiano, Comes Daulus, Consuls of Padua,
by the command of their King and the desire of the citizens,
laid the foundations of the new commonwealth, under good
auspices, on .the island of the Eialto, the highest and nearest to
the mouth of the deep river now called the Brenta, in the year
of Our Lord, as many writers assure us, four hundred and twenty-
one, on the 25th day of March. " *
It is matter also of very great satisfaction to know that Venice
was founded by good Christians: "La qual citade e stada hedifi-
cada da veri e boni Christiani : " which information I found in
* Ed. Venetis, 1758, Lib. I.
3GO APPENDIX, 2, 3.
the MS. copy of the Zancarol Chronicle, in the library of St.
Mark's.
Finally the conjecture as to the origin of her name, recorded
by Sansovino, will be accepted willingly by all who love Venice:
"Fu interpretato da alcuni, che questa voce VENETIA voglia dire
VENI ETIAM, cioe, vieni ancora, e ancora, percioche quante
volte yerrai, sempre vedrai nuove cose, enuove bellezze."
2. POWER OF THE DOGES.
The best authorities agree in giving the year 697 as that of
the election of the first doge, Paul Luke Anafeste. He was
elected in a general meeting of the commonalty, tribunes, and
clergy, at Heraclea, "divinis rebus procuratis," as usual, in all
serious work, in those times. His authority is thus defined by
Sabellico, who was not likely to have exaggerated it: — "Penes
quern decus omne imperil ac majestas esset: cui jus concilium
cogendi quoties de republica aliquid referri oporteret; qui tri-
bunos annuos in singulas insulas legeret, a quibus ad Ducem
esset provocatio. Caeterum, si quis dignitatem, ecclesiam, sacer-
dotumve cleri populique suffragio esset adeptus, ita demum id
ratum haberetur si dux ipse auctor factus esset." (Lib. I.) The
last clause is very important, indicating the subjection of the
ecclesiastical to the popular and ducal (or patrician) powers,
which, throughout her career, was one of the most remarkable
features in the policy of Venice. The appeal from the tribunes
to the doge is also important; and the expression "decus omne
imperii," if of somewhat doubtful force, is at least as energetic
as could have been expected from an historian under the influence
of the Council of Ten.
3. SERRAR DEL CONSIGLIO.
The date of the decree which made the right of sitting in the
grand council hereditary, is variously given; the Venetian histo-
rians themselves saying as little as they can about it. The thing
was evidently not accomplished at once, several decrees following
in successive years: the Council of Ten was established without
any doubt in 1310, in consequence of the conspiracy of Tiepolo.
APPENDIX, 4.
The Venetian verse, quoted by Mutinelli (Annali Urban! di
Venezia, p. 153), is worth remembering.
"Del mille tresento e diese
A mezzo el mese delle ceriese
Bagiamonte passd el ponte
E per esso fo fatto el Consegio di diese. "
The reader cannot do better than take 1297 as the date of the
beginning of the change of government, and this will enable him
exactly to divide the 1100 years from the election of the first doge
into 600 of monarchy and 500 of aristocracy. The coincidence
of the numbers is somewhat curious; 697 the date of the establish-
ment of the government, 1297 of its change, and 1797 of its fall.
4. S. PIETKO DI CASTELLO.
It is credibly reported to have been founded in the seventh
century, and (with somewhat less of credibility) in a place where
the Trojans, conducted by Antenor, had, after the destruction
of Troy, built " un castello, chiamato prima Troja, poscia Olivolo,
interpretato, luogo pieno." It seems that St. Peter appeared in
person to the Bishop of Heraclea, and commanded him to found
in his honor, a church in that spot of the rising city on the
Kialto: "ove avesse veduto una mandra di buoi e di pecore pas-
colare unitamente. Questa fu la prodigiosa origine della Chiesa
di San Pietro, che poscia, o rinovata, o ristaurata, da Orso Par-
ticipazio IV Vescovo Olivolense, divenne la Cattedrale della
Nuova citta." (Notizie Storiche delle Chiese e Monasteri di
Venezia. Padua, 1758.) What there was so prodigious in oxen
and sheep feeding together, we need St. Peter, I think, to tell
us. The title of Bishop of Castello was first taken in 1091 : St.
Mark's was not made the cathedral church till 1807. It may be
thought hardly fair to conclude the small importance of the old
St. Pietro di Castello from the appearance of the wretched
modernisations of 1620. But these modernisations are spoken
of as improvements; and I find no notice of peculiar beauties in
the older building, either in the work above quoted, or by Sanso-
vino; who only says that when it was destroyed by fire (as every-
thing in Venice was, I think, about three times in a century), in
362 APPENDIX, 5.
the reign of Vital Michele, it was rebuilt "with good thick walls,
maintaining, for all that, the order of its arrangement taken
from the Greek mode of building." This does not seem the
description of a very enthusiastic effort to rebuild a highly ornate
cathedral. The present church is among the least interesting in
Venice; a wooden bridge, something like that of Battersea on a
small scale, connects its island, now almost deserted, with a
wretched suburb of the city behind the arsenal; and a blank level
of lifeless grass, rotted away in places rather than trodden, is ex-
tended before its mildewed faqade and solitary tower.
5. PAPAL POWER IK VENICE.
I may refer the reader to the eleventh chapter of the twenty-
eighth book of Daru for some account of the restraints to which
the Venetian clergy were subjected, I have not myself been able
to devote any time to the examination of the original documents
bearing on this matter, but the following extract from a letter
of a friend, who will not at present permit me to give his name,
but who is certainly better conversant with the records of the
Venetian State than any other Englishman, will be of great value
to the general reader: —
"In the year 1410, or perhaps at the close of the thirteenth
century, churchmen were excluded from the Grand Council and
declared ineligible to civil employment; and in the same year,
1410, the Council of Ten, with the Giunta, decreed that when-
ever in the state's councils matters concerning ecclesiastical
affairs were being treated, all the kinsfolk of Venetian beneficed
clergymen were to be expelled; and, in the year 1434, the RELA-
TIONS of churchmen were declared ineligible to the post of am-
bassador at Eome.
" The Venetians never gave possession of any see in their
territories to bishops unless they had been proposed to the pope
by the senate, which elected the patriarch, who was supposed, at
the end of the sixteenth century, to be liable to examination by
his Holiness, as an act of confirmation of installation; but of
course, everything depended on the relative power at any given
time of Rome and Venice: for instance, a few days after the
accession of Julius II., in 1503, he requests the Signory, cap in
APPENDIX, 5. 363
hand, to ALLOW him to confer the archbishopric of Zara on a
dependant of his, one Cipico the Bishop of Famagosta. Six
years later, when Venice was overwhelmed by the leaguers of
Cambrai, that furious pope would assuredly have conferred Zara
on Cipico WITHOUT asking leave. In 1608, the rich Camaldolite
Abbey of Vangadizza, in the Polesine, fell vacant through the
death of Lionardo Loredano, in whose family it had been since
some while. The Venetian ambassador at Rome received the
news on the night of the 28th December; and, on the morrow,
requested Paul IV. not to dispose of this preferment until he
heard from the senate. The pope talked of ' poor cardinals *
and of his nephew, but made no positive reply; and, as Francesco
Contarini was withdrawing, said to him : ' My Lord ambassador,
with this opportunity we will inform you that, to our very great
regret, we understand that the chiefs of the Ten mean to turn
sacristans; for they order the parish priests to close the church
doors at the Ave Maria, and not to ring the bells at certain hours.
This is precisely the sacristan's office; we don't know why their
lordships, by printed edicts, which we have seen, choose to inter-
fere in this matter. This is pure and mere ecclesiastical juris-
diction; and even, in case of any inconvenience arising, is there
not the patriarch, who is at any rate your own; why not apply
to him, who could remedy these irregularities? These are mat-
ters which cause us very notable displeasure; we say so that they
may be written and known: it is decided by the councils and
canons, and not uttered by us, that whosoever forms any resolve
against the ecclesiastical liberty, cannot do so without incurring
censure: and in order that Father Paul [Bacon's correspondent]
may not say hereafter, as he did in his past writings, that our
predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare
that we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we
blame it, and let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the
rest, every one may take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas
a Becket, whose festival is celebrated this very day, suffered
martyrdom for the ecclesiastical liberty; it is our duty likewise
to support and defend it.' Contarini says: 'This remonstrance
was delivered with some marks of anger, which induced me to
tell him how the tribunal of the most excellent the Lords chiefs
of the Ten is in our country supreme; that it does not do its
364 APPENDIX, 0.
business unadvisedly, or condescend to unworthy matters; and
that, therefore, should those Lords have come to any public
declaration of their will, it must be attributed to orders anterior,
and to immemorial custom and authority, recollecting that, on
former occasions likewise, similar corn-missions were given to
prevent divers incongruities; wherefore an upright intention,
such as this, ought not to be taken in any other sense than its
own, especially as the parishes of Venice were in her own gift,'
&c. &c. The pope persisted in bestowing the abbacy on his
nephew, but the republic would not give possession, and a com-
promise was effected by its being conferred on the Venetian
Matteo Priuli, who allowed the cardinal five thousand ducats per
annum out of its revenues. A few years before this, this very
same pope excommunicated the State, because she had im-
prisoned two churchmen for heinous crimes; the strife lasted for
more than a year, and ended through the mediation of Henry
IV., at whose suit the prisoners were delivered to the French
ambassador, who made them over to a papal commissioner.
" In January, 1484, a tournament was in preparation on St.
Mark's Square: some murmurs had been heard about the distri-
bution of the prizes having been pre-arranged, without regard to
the ' best man. ' One of the chiefs of the Ten was walking along
Kialto on the 28th January, when a young priest, twenty-two
years old, a sword-cutler's son, and a Bolognese, and one of
Perugia, both men-at-arms under Robert Sansoverino, fell upon
a clothier with drawn weapons. The chief of the Ten desired
they might be seized, but at the moment the priest escaped; he
was, however, subsequently retaken, and in that very evening
hanged by torch-light between the columns with the two soldiers.
Innocent VIII. was less powerful than Paul IV. ; Venice weaker
in 1605 than in 1484.
tt * * * The exclusion from the Grand Council, whether at
the end of the fourteenth or commencement of the following
century, of the Venetian ecclesiastics, (as induced either by the
republic's acquisitions on the main land then made, and which,
through the rich benefices they embraced, might have rendered
an ambitious churchman as dangerous in the Grand Council as a
victorious condottiere; or from dread of their allegiance being
divided between the church and their country, it being acknowl-
APPENDIX, 5. 365
edged that no man can serve two masters,) did not render them
hostile to their fatherland, whose interests were, with very few
exceptions, eagerly fathered by the Venetian prelates at Eome,
who, in their turn, received all honor at Venice, where state re-
ceptions given to cardinals of the houses of Correr, Grimani,
Cornaro, Pisani, Contarini, Zeno, Delfino, and others, vouch for
the good understanding that existed between the ' Papalists ' and
their countrymen. The Cardinal Grimani was instrumental in
detaching Julius II. from the league of Cambrai; the Cardinal
Cornaro always aided the state to obtain anything required of
Leo X.; and, both before and after their times, all Venetians
that had a seat in the Sacred College were patriots rather than
pluralists: I mean that they cared more for Venice than for their
benefices, admitting thus the soundness of that policy which de-
nied them admission into the Grand Council."
To this interesting statement, I shall add, from the twenty-
eighth book of Darn, two passages, well deserving consideration
by us English in present days:
" Pour etre parfaitement assuree centre les envahissements
de la puissance ecclesiastique, Venise commenga par lui 6ter
tout pretexte d'intervenir dans les affaires de 1'Etat; elle resta
invariablement fidele au dogme. Jamais aucune des opinions
nouvelles n'y prit la moindre faveur; jamais aucun heresiarque
ne sortit de Venise. Les conciles, les disputes, les guerres de
religion, se passerent sans qu'elle y prit jamais la moindre part.
Inebranlable dans sa foi, elle ne fut pas moins invariable dans
son systeme de tolerance. Non seulement ses sujets de la religion
grecque conserverent 1'exercise de leur culte, leurs eVeques et
leurs pretres; mais les Protestantes, les Armeniens, les Mahomi-
tans, les Juifs, toutes les religions, toutes les sectes qui se trou-
vaient dans Venise, avaient des temples, et la sepulture dans les
6glises n'etait point refuse aux heretiques. Une police vigilante
s'appliquait avec le meme soin a eteindre les discordes, et a em-
pecher les fanatiques et les novateurs de troubler 1'Etat."
sfc % * # ' # * * *
"Si on considere que c'est dans un temps ou presque toutes
les nations tremblaient devant la puissance pontificale, que les
Venitiens surent tenir leur clerge dans la dependance, et braver
sou vent les censures ecclesiastiques et les interdits, sans encourir
366 APPENDIX, 5.
jamais aucun reproche sur la purete de leur foi, on sera force de
reconnaitre que cette republique avait devance de loin les autres
peuples dans cette partie de la science du gouvernement. La
fameuse maxime, ' Siamo veneziani, poi christiani,' n'etait qu'une
formule energique qui ne prouvait point quils voulussent placer
1'interet de la religion apres celui de 1'Etat, mais qui annongait
leur invariable resolution de ne pas souffrir qu'un pouvoir
etranger portat atteinte aux droits de la republique.
"Dans toute la duree de son existence, au milieu des revers
comme dans la prosperite, cet inebranlable gouvernement ne fit
qu'une seule fois des concessions a la cour de Rome, et ce fut
pour detacher le Pape Jules II. de la ligue de Cambrai.
"Jamais il ne se relacha du soin de tenir le clerge dans une
nullite absolue relativement aux affaires politiques ; on peut en
juger par la conduite qu'il tint avec 1'ordre religieux le plus re-
doutable et le plus accoutume a s'immiscer dans les secrets de
1'Etat et dans les interets temporels."
The main points, next stated, respecting the Jesuits are,
that the decree which permitted their establishment in Venice
required formal renewal every three years; that no Jesuit could
stay in Venice more than three years; that the slightest disobe-
dience to the authority of the government was instantly punished
by imprisonment; that no Venetian could enter the order with-
out express permission from the government; that the notaries
were forbidden to sanction any testamentary disposal of property
to the Jesuits; finally, that the heads of noble families were for-
bidden to permit their children to be educated in the Jesuits'
colleges, on pain of degradation from their rank.
Now, let it be observed that the enforcement of absolute ex-
clusion of the clergy from the councils of the state, dates exactly
from the period which I have marked for the commencement of
the decline of the Venetian power. The Romanist is welcome
to his advantage in this fact, if advantage it be; for I do not
bring forward the conduct of the senate of Venice, as Daru does,
by way of an example of the general science of government,
The Venetians accomplished therein what we ridiculously call a
separation of " Church and State" (as if the State were not, in
all Christendom, necessarily also the Church*), but ought to call
* Compare Appendix 12.
APPENDIX, 5. 367
a separation of lay and clerical officers. I do not point out this
separation as subject of praise, but as. the witness borne by the
Venetians against the principles of the Papacy. If they were to
blame, in yielding to their fear of the ambitious spirit of Rome
so far as to deprive their councils of all religious element, what
excuse are we to offer for the state, which, with Lords Spiritual
of her own faith already in her senate, permits the polity of
Rome to be represented by lay members? To have sacrificed
religion to mistaken policy, or purchased security with ignominy,
would have been no new thing in the world's history; but to be
at once impious and impolitic, and seek for danger through dis-
honor, was reserved for the English parliament of 1829.
I am glad to have this opportunity of referring to, and farther
enforcing, the note on this subject which, not without delibera-
tion, I appended to the "Seven Lamps;" and of adding to it the
following passage, written by my father in the year 1839, and
published in one of the journals of that year: — a passage remark-
able as much for its intrinsic value, as for having stated, twelve
years ago, truths to which the mind of England seems but now,
and that slowly, awakening.
" We hear it said, that it cannot be merely the Roman religion
that causes the difficulty [respecting Ireland], for we were once
all Roman Catholics, and nations abroad of this faith are not as
the Irish. It is totally overlooked, that when we were so, our
government was despotic, and fit to cope with this dangerous
religion, as most of the Continental governments yet are. In
what Roman Catholic state, or in what age of Roman Catholic
England, did we ever hear of such agitation as now exists in
Ireland by evil men taking advantage of an anomalous state of
things— Roman Catholic ignorance in the people, Protestant
toleration in the government? We have yet to feel the tremen-
dous difficulty in which Roman Catholic emancipation has in-
volved us. Too late we discover that a Roman Catholic is wholly
incapable of being safely connected with the British constitution,
as it now exists, in any near relation. The present constitution
is no longer fit for Catholics. It is a creature essentially Prot-
estant, growing with the growth, and strengthening with the
strength, of Protestantism. So entirely is Protestantism inter-
woven with the whole frame of our constitution and laws, that I
368 APPENDIX, 5.
take my stand on this, against all agitators in existence, that the
Roman religion is totally incompatible with the British constitu-
tion. We have, in trying to combine them, got into a maze of
difficulties; we are the worse, and Ireland none the better. It
is idle to talk of municipal reform or popular Lords Lieutenant.
The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is not strong enough
for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a. Republi-
can would not shrink from sending half the misguided population
and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an in-
dustrious Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you
cannot convert the Irish, nor by other means make them fit to
wear the mild restraints of a Protestant Government. It was,
moreover, a strange logic that begot the idea of admitting
Catholics to administer any part of our laws or constitution.
It was admitted by all that, by the very act of abandoning the
Roman religion, we became a free and enlightened people. It
was only by throwing off the yoke of that slavish religion that
we attained to the freedom of thought which has advanced us in
the scale of society. We are so much advanced by adopting and
adhering to a reformed religion, that to prove our liberal and
unprejudiced views, we throw down the barriers betwixt the two
religions, of which the one is the acknowledged cause of light
and knowledge, the other the cause of darkness and igno-
rance. We are so much altered to the better by leaving this
people entirely, and giving them neither part nor lot amongst
us, that it becomes proper to mingle again with them. We have
found so much good in leaving them, that we deem it the best
possible reason for returning to be among them. No fear of
their Church again shaking us, with all our light and knowledge.
It is true, the most enlightened nations fell under the spell of
her enchantments, fell into total darkness and superstition; but
no fear of us — we are too well informed! What miserable reason-
ing! infatuated presumption! I fear me, when the Roman
religion rolled her clouds of darkness over the earlier ages, that
she quenched as much light, and knowledge, and judgment as
our modern Liberals have ever displayed. I do not expect a
statesman to discuss the point of Transubstantiation betwixt
Protestant and Catholic, nor to trace the narrow lines which di-
vide Protestant sectarians from each other; but can any states-
'— fe
*
APPENDIX, 6. 369
man that shall have taken even a cursory glance at the face of
Europe, hesitate a moment on the choice of the Protestant re-
ligion? If he unfortunately knew nothing of its being the true
one in regard to our eternal interests, he is at least bound to see
whether it be not the best for the worldly prosperity of a people.
He may be but moderately imbued with pious zeal for the salva-
tion of a kingdom, but at least he will be expected to weigh the
comparative merits of religion, as of law or government; and
blind, indeed, must he be if he does not discern that, in neglect-
ing to cherish the Protestant faith, or in too easily yielding to
any encroachments on it, he is foregoing the use of a state engine
more powerful than all the laws which the uninspired legislators
of the earth have ever promulgated, in promoting the happiness,
the peace, prosperity, and the order, the industry, and the wealth,
of a people; in forming every quality valuable or desirable in a
subject or a citizen; in sustaining the public mind at that point
of education and information that forms the best security for the
state, and the best preservative for the freedom of a people,
whether religious or political."
6. RENAISSANCE ORNAMENTS.
There having been three principal styles of architecture in
Venice, — the Greek or Byzantine, the Gothic, and the Renais-
sance, it will be shown, in the sequel, that the Eenaissance itself
is divided into three correspondent families: Kenaissance en-
grafted on Byzantine, which is earliest and best; Renaissance en-
grafted on Gothic, which is second, and second best; Renaissance
on Renaissance, which is double darkness, and worst of alL The
palaces in which Renaissance is engrafted on Byzantine are those
noticed by Commynes: they are characterized by an ornamenta-
tion'very closely resembling, and in some cases identical with,
early Byzantine work; namely, groups of colored marble circles
inclosed in interlacing bands. I have put on the opposite page
one of these ornaments, from the Ca' Trevisan, in which a most
curious and delicate piece of inlaid design is introduced into a
band which is almost exactly copied from the church of Theo-
tocos at Constantinople, and correspondent with others in S
Mark's. There is also much Byzantine feeling in the treatment
370 APPENDIX, 7.
of the animals, especially in the two birds of the lower compart-
ment, while the peculiar curves of the cinque cento leafage are
visible in the leaves above. The dove, alighted, with the olive-
branch plucked off, is opposed to the raven with restless expand-
ed wings. Beneath are evidently the two sacrifices "of every
clean fowl and of every clean beast." The color is given with
green and white marbles, the dove relieved on a ground of grey-
ish green, and all is exquisitely finished.
In Plate I., p. 13, the upper figure is from the same palace
(Ca' Trevisan), and it is very interesting in its proportions. If
we take five circles in geometrical proportion, each diameter
being two-thsrds of the diameter next above it, and arrange the
circles so proportioned, in contact with each other, in the manner
shown in the plate, we shall find that an increase quite imper-'
ceptible in the diameter of the circles in the angles, will enable
us to inscribe the whole in a square. The lines so described will
then run in the centre of the white bands. I cannot be certain
that this is the actual construction of the Trevisan design, be-
cause it is on a high wall surface, where I could not get at its
measurements; but I found this construction exactly coincide
with the lines of my eye sketch. The lower figure in Plate I. is
from the front of the Ca' Dario, and probably struck the eye
of Commynes in its first brightness. Salvatico, indeed, con-
siders both the Ca' Trevisan (which once belonged to Bianca
Cappello) and the Ca' Dario, as buildings of the sixteenth cen-
tury. I defer the discussion of the question at present, but have,
I believe, sufficient reason for assuming the Ca' Dario to have
been built about 1486, and the Ca' Trevisan not much later.
7. VARIETIES OF THE ORDEES.
Of these phantasms and grotesques, one of some general im-
portance is that commonly called Ionic, of which the idea was
taken (Vitruvins says) from a woman's hair, curled; but its lat-
eral processes look more like rams' horns: be that as it may, it
is a mere piece of agreeable extravagance, and if, instead of rams'
horns, you put ibex horns, or cows' horns, or an ass's head at
once, you will have ibex orders, or ass orders, or any number of
other orders, one for every head or horn. You may have heard
APPENDIX, 8. 371
of another order, the Composite, which is Ionic and Corinthian
mixed, and is one of the worst of ten thousand forms referable
to the Corinthian as their head: it may be described as a spoiled
Oorinthian. And you may have also heard of another order,
called Tuscan (which is no order at all, but a spoiled Doric) : and
of another called Roman Doric, which is Doric more spoiled,
both which are simply among the most stupid variations ever in-
vented upon forms already known. I find also in a French pam-
phlet upon architecture,* as applied to shops and dwelling houses,
a sixth order, the " Ordre Francais," at least as good as any of
the three last, and to be hailed with acclamation, considering
whence it comes, there being usually more tendency on the other
side of the channel to the confusion of " orders" than their mul-
tiplication : but the reader will find in the end that there are in
very deed only two orders, of which the Greek, Doric, and Corin-
thian are the first examples, and they not perfect, nor in anywise
sufficiently representative of the vast families to which they be-
long; but being the first and the best known, they may properly
be considered as the types of the rest. The essential distinctions
of the two great orders he will find explained in §§ xxxv. and
xxxvi. of Chap. XXVII., and in the passages there referred to;
but I should rather desire that these passages might be read in the
order in which they occur.
8. THE NORTHERN ENERGY.
I have sketched above, in the First Chapter, the great events
of architectural history in the simplest and fewest words I could;
but this indraught of the Lombard energies upon the Byzantine
rest, like a wild north wind descending into a space of rarified
atmosphere, and encountered by an Arab simoom from the south,
may well require from us some farther attention; for the differ-
ences in all these schools are more in the degrees of their im-
* L' Artiste en Bailments, par Louis Berteaux: Dijon, 1848. My printer
writes at the side of the page a note, which I insert with thanks:—
is not the first attempt at a French order. The writer has a Treatte
Sebastian Le Clerc, a great man in his generation, which contains a
order a Spanish order, which the inventor appears to think very grand,
and a new French order nationalised by the Gallic cock crowing and
ping its wings in the capital."
372 APPENDIX, 8.
petuosity and refinement (these qualities being, in most cases, in
inverse ratio, yet much united by the Arabs) than in the style of
the ornaments they employ. The same leaves, the same animals,
the same arrangements, are used by Scandinavians, ancient Bri-
tons, Saxons, Normans, Lombards, Komans, Byzantines, and
Arabians; all being alike descended through classic Greece from
Egypt and Assyria, and some from Phoenicia. The belts which
encompass the Assyrian bulls, in the hall of the British Museum,
are the same as the belts of the ornaments found in Scandinavian
tumuli; their method of ornamentation is the same as that of the
gate of Mycenae, and of the Lombard pulpit of St. Ambrogio of
Milan, and of the church of Theotocos at Constantinople; the
essential differences among the great schools are their differences
of temper and treatment, and science of expression; it is absurd
to talk of Norman ornaments, and Lombard ornaments, and
Byzantine ornaments, as formally distinguished; but there is
irreconcileable separation between Arab temper, and Lombard
temper, and Byzantine temper.
Now, as far as I have been able to compare the three schools,
it appears to me that the Arab and Lombard are both distin-
guished from the Byzantine by their energy and love of excite-
ment, but the Lombard stands alone in his love of jest: Neither
an Arab nor Byzantine ever jests in his architecture; the Lom-
bard has great difficulty in ever being thoroughly serious; thus
they represent three conditions of humanity, one in perfect rest,
the Byzantine, with exquisite perception of grace and dignity;
the Arab, with the same perception of grace, but with a restless
fever in his blood; the Lombard, equally energetic, but not
burning himself away, capable of submitting to law, and of en-
joying jest. But the Arabian feverishness infects even the Lom-
bard in the South, showing itself, however, in endless invention,
with a refreshing firmness and order directing the whole of it.
The excitement is greatest in the earliest times, most of all shown
in St. Michele of Pavia; and I am strongly disposed to connect
much of its peculiar manifestations with the Lombard's habits of
eating and drinking, especially his carnivorousness. The Lom-
bard of early times seems to have been exactly what a tiger
would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous imagina-
tion, strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of northern
APPENDIX, 8. 373
mythology, a stone den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him pac-
ing up and down in the said den to digest his dinner, and striking
on the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, and you
have the Lombardic sculptor. As civilisation increases the supply
of vegetables, and shortens that of wild beasts, the excitement
diminishes ; it is still strong in the thirteenth century at Lyons
and Rouen; it dies away gradually in the later Gothic, and is
quite extinct in the fifteenth century.
I think I shall best illustrate this general idea by simply
copying the entries in my diary which were written when, after
six months' close study of Byzantine work in Venice, I came
again to the Lombard work of Verona and Pavia. There are
some other points alluded to in these entries not pertaining to the
matter immediately in hand; but I have left them, as they will be
of use hereafter.
" (Verona.) Comparing the arabesque and sculpture of the
Duomo here with St. Mark's, the first thing that strikes one is
the low relief, the second, the greater motion and spirit, with
infinitely less grace and science. With the Byzantine, however
rude the cutting, every line is lovely, and the animals or men are
placed in any attitudes which secure ornamental effect, sometimes
impossible ones, always severe, restrained, or languid. With the
Eomanesque workmen all the figures show the effort (often suc-
cessful) to express energetic action; hunting chiefly, much fight-
ing, and both spirited; some of the dogs running capitally,
straining to it, and the knights hitting hard, while yet the faces
and drawing are in the last degree barbarous. At Venice all is
graceful, fixed, or languid; the eastern torpor is in every line,—
the mark of a school formed on severe traditions, and keeping to
them, and never likely or desirous to rise beyond them, but
with an exquisite sense of beauty, and much solemn religious
faith.
" If the Greek outer archivolt of St. Mark's is Byzantine, the
law is somewhat broken by its busy domesticity; figures engaged
in every trade, and in'the preparation of viands of all kinds; a
crowded kind of London Christmas scene, interleaved (literally)
by the superb balls of leafage, unique in sculpture; but even this
is strongly opposed to the wild war and chase passion of the
Lombard. Farther, the Lombard building is as sharp, precise,
374 APPENDIX, 8.
and accurate, as that of St. Mark's is careless. The Byzantines
seem to have been too lazy to put their stones together ; and, in
general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four
months in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect
feeling here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lom-
bard surface ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing"
can possibly be more chaste, pure, or solemn."
I have said much of the shafts of the entrance to the crypt of
St. Zeno;* the following note of the sculptures on the archivolt
above them is to our present purpose:
"It is covered by very light but most effective bas-reliefs of
jesting subject: — two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long
staff to which a fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between
them: the strut of the foremost cock, lifting one leg at right
angles to the other, is delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a cen-
taur horseman drawing a bow; the arrow has gone clear through
the stag's throat, and is sticking there. Several capital hunts
with dogs, with fruit trees between, and birds in them; the
leaves, considering the early time, singularly well set, with the-
edges outwards, sharp, and deep cut: snails and frogs filling up
the intervals, as if suspended in the air, with some saucy puppies
on their hind legs, two or three nondescript beasts; and, finally,
on the centre of one of the arches on the south side, an elephant
and castle, — a very strange elephant, yet cut as if the carver had
seen one."
Observe this elephant and castle; we shall meet with him
farther north.
"These sculptures of St. Zeno are, however, quite quiet and
tame compared with those of St. Michele of Pavia, which are
designed also in a somewhat gloomier mood; significative, as I
think, of indigestion. (Note that they are much earlier than
St. Zeno; of the seventh century at latest. There is more of
n i.u-htmare, and less of wit in them. ) Lord Lindsay has described
them admirably, but has not said half enough; the state of mind
represented by the west front is more that of a feverish dream,
than resultant from any determined architectural purpose, or
even from any definite love and delight in the grotesque. One
capital is covered with a muss of grinning heads, other heads
* The lower group in Plate XVII.
APPENDIX, 8. 375
grow out of two bodies, or out of and under feet; the creatures
are all fighting, or devouring, or struggling which shall be upper-
most, and yet in an ineffectual way, as if they would fight for
ever, and come to no decision. Neither sphinxes nor centaurs
did I notice, nor a single peacock (I believe peacocks to be purely
Byzantine), but mermaids with two tails (the sculptor having
perhaps seen double at the time), strange, large fish, apes, slugs
(bulls?), dogs, wolves, and horses, griffins, eagles, long-tailed
birds (cocks?), hawks, and dragons, without end, or with a dozen
of ends, as the case maybe; smaller birds, with rabbits, and small
nondescripts, filling the friezes. The actual leaf, which is used
in the best Byzantine mouldings at Venice, occurs in parts of
these Pavian designs. But the Lombard animals are nil alive,
and fiercely alive too, all impatience and spring: the Byzantine
birds peck idly at the fruit, and the animals hardly touch it with
their noses. The cinque cento birds in Venice hold it up dain-
tily, like train-bearers; the birds in the earlier Gothic peck at
it hungrily and naturally; but the Lombard beasts gripe at it
like tigers, and tear it off with writhing lips and glaring eyes.
They are exactly like Jip with the bit of geranium, worrying
imaginary cats in it."
The notice of the leaf in the above extract is important, — it
is the vine-leaf ; used constantly both by Byzantines and Lom-
bards, but by the latter with especial frequency, though at this
time they were hardly able to indicate what they meant. It
forms the most remarkable generality of the St. Michele decora-
tion ; though, had it not luckily been carved on the facade,
twining round a stake, and with grapes, I should never have
known what it was meant for, its general form being a succes-
sion of sharp lobes, with incised furrows to the point of each.
But it is thrown about in endless change ; four or five var
of it might be found on every cluster of capitals : and nol
tent with this, the Lombards hint the same form even
griffin winirs. Thev love the vine very heartily.
In St. Miohele of Lucca we have perhaps the noblest instance
in Italy of the Lombard spirit in its later refinement,
some four centuries later than St. Michele of Pavia and
method of workmanship is altogether different,
church, nearly all the ornament is cut in a coarse sandsi
376 APPENDIX, 8.
bold relief : a darker and harder stone (I think, not serpentine,
but its surface is so disguised by the lustre of ages that I could
not be certain) is used for the capitals of the western door, which
are especially elaborate in their sculpture ; — two devilish apes,
or apish devils, I know not which,, with bristly moustaches and
edgy teeth, half-crouching, with their hands impertinently on
their knees, ready for a spit or a spring if one goes near them ;
but all is pure bossy sculpture ; there is no inlaying, except of
some variegated tiles in the shape of saucers set concave (an orna-
ment used also very gracefully in St. Jacopo of Bologna) : and
the whole surface of the church is enriched with the massy re-
liefs, well preserved everywhere above the reach of human
animals, but utterly destroyed to some five or six feet from the
ground : worn away into large cellular hollows and caverns, some
almost deep enough to render the walls unsafe, entirely owing to
the uses to which the recesses of the church are dedicated by
the refined and high-minded Italians. But St. Michele of Lucca
is wrought entirely in white marble and green serpentine ; there
is hardly any relieved sculpture except in the capitals of the
shafts and cornices, and all the designs of wall ornament are
inlaid with exquisite precision — white on dark ground ; the
ground being cut out and filled with serpentine, the figures left
in solid marble. The designs of the Pavian church are encrusted
on the walls ; of the Lucchese, incorporated with them ; small
portions of real sculpture being introduced exactly where the
eye, after its rest on the flatness of the wall, will take most delight
in the piece of substantial form. The entire arrangement is
perfect beyond all praise, and the morbid restlessness of the old
designs is now appeased. Geometry seems to have acted as a
febrifuge, for beautiful geometrical designs are introduced amidst
the tumult of the hunt ; and there is no more seeing double,
nor ghastly monstrosity of conception ; no more ending of every-
thing in something else ; no more disputing for spare legs among
bewildered bodies ; no more setting on of heads wrong side fore-
most. The fragments have come together : we are out of the
Inferno with its weeping down the spine ; we are in the fair
hunting-fields of the Lucchese mountains (though they had their
tears also), — with horse, and hound, and hawk ; and merry blast
of the trumpet. — Very strange creatures to be hunted, in all
APPENDIX, 8. 377
truth ; but still creatures with a single head, and that on their
.shoulders, which is exactly the last place in the Pavian church
where a head is to be looked for.
My good friend Mr. Cockerell wonders, in one of his lectures,
why I give so much praise to this " crazy front of Lucca." But
it is not crazy ; not by any means. Altogether sober, in com-
parison with the early Lombard work, or with our Norman.
Crazy in one sense it is : utterly neglected, to the breaking of
its old stout heart ; the venomous nights and salt frosts of the
Maremma winters have their way with it — " Poor Tom's a
cold !" The weeds that feed on the marsh air, have twisted
themselves into its crannies ; the polished fragments of serpen-
tine are spit and rent out of their cells, and lie in green ruins
along its ledges ; the salt sea winds have eaten away the fair
shafting of its star window into a skeleton of crumbling rays.
It cannot stand much longer ; may Heaven only, in its benignity,
preserve it from restoration, and the sands of the Serchio give it
honorable grave.
In the " Seven Lamps," Plate VI., I gave a faithful drawing
of one of its upper arches, to which I must refer the reader ; for
there is a marked piece of character in the figure of the horseman
on the left of it. And in making this reference, I would say a few
words about those much abused plates of the "Seven Lamps."
They are black, they are overbitten, they are hastily drawn, they
;are coarse and disagreeable ; how disagreeable to many readers
I venture not to conceive. But their truth is carried to an ex-
tent never before attempted in architectural drawing. It does
not in the least follow that because a drawing is delicate, or looks
careful, it has been carefully drawn from the thing represented ;
in nine instances out of ten, careful and delicate drawings are
made at home. It is not so easy as the reader, perhaps, imagines,
to finish a drawing altogether on the spot, especially of details
seventy feet from the ground ; and any one who will try the
position in which I have had to do some of my work — standing,
namely, on a cornice or window sill, holding by one arm round
a shaft, and hanging over the street (or canal, at Venice), with
my sketch-book supported against the wall from which I was
drawing, by my breast, so as to leave my right hand free— will
not thenceforward wonder that shadows should be occasionally
378 APPENDIX, 8.
carelessly laid in, or lines drawn with some unsteadiness. But,
steady, or infirm, the sketches of which those plates in the
" Seven Lamps" are fac-similes, were made from the architecture
itself, and represent that architecture with its actual shadows at
the time of day at which it was drawn, and with every fissure
and line of it as they now exist ; so that when I am speaking of
some new point, which perhaps the drawing was not intended to
illustrate, I can yet turn back to it with perfect certainty that
if anything be found in it bearing on matters now in hand, I may
depend upon it just as securely as if I had gone back to look again
at the building.
It is necessary that my readers should understand this
thoroughly, and I did not before sufficiently explain it ; but I
believe I can show them the use of this kind of truth, now that
we are again concerned with this front of Lucca. They will find a
drawing of the entire front in Gaily Knight's "Architecture of
Italy." It may serve to give them an idea of its general disposi-
tion, and it looks very careful and accurate ; but every bit of the
ornament on it is drawn out of the artist's head. There is not
one line of it that exists on the building. The reader will there-
fore, perhaps, think my ugly black plate of somewhat more value,
upon the whole, in its rough veracity, than the other in its deli-
cate fiction.*
As, however, I made a drawing of another part of the church
somewhat more delicately, and as I do not choose that my favor-
ite church should suffer in honor by my coarse work, I have had
this, as far as might be, fac-similied by line engraving (Plate
XXI.). It represents the southern side of the lower arcade of the
west front ; and may convey some idea of the exquisite finish and
grace of the whole ; but the old plate, in the " Seven Lamps,"
* One of the upper stories is also in Gaily Knight's plate represented as.
merely banded, and otherwise plain: it is, in reality, covered with as deli-
cate inlaying as the rest. The whole front is besides out of proportion, and
out of perspective, at once; and yet this work is referred to as of authority,
by our architects. Well may our architecture fall from its place among the
fine arts, as it is doing rapidly; nearly all our works of value being devoted
to the Greek architecture, which is utterly useless to us — or worse. One
most noble book, however, has been dedicated to our English abbeys,— Mr.
E. Sharpe's "Architectural Parallels"— almost a model of what I should
like to see done for the Gothic of all Europe.
XXI.
HAKHOUN & BlbHSfAOT,
Secorntion.
APPENDIX, 8. 379
gives a nearer view of one of the upper arches, and a more faith-
ful impression of the present aspect of the work, and especially
of the seats of the horsemen ; the limb straight, and well down
on the stirrup (the warrior's seat, observe, not the jockey's), with
a single pointed spur on the heel. The bit of the lower cornice
under this arch I could not see, and therefore had not drawn ;
it was supplied from beneath another arch. I am afraid, how-
ever, the reader has lost the thread of my story while I have been
recommending my veracity to him. I was insisting upon the
healthy tone of this Lucca work as compared with the old spec-
tral Lombard friezes. The apes of the Pavian church ride with-
out stirrups, but all is in good order and harness here: civilisation
had done its work ; there was reaping of corn in the Val d'Arno,
though rough hunting still upon its hills. But in the north,
though a century or two later, we find the forests of the Rhone,
and its rude limestone cotes, haunted by phantasms still (more
meat-eating, then, I think). I do not know a more interesting
group of cathedrals than that of Lyons, Vicnne, and Valencia:
a more interesting indeed, generally, than beautiful; but there
is a row of niches on the west front of Lyons, and a course of
panelled decoration about its doors, which is, without exception,
the most exquisite piece of Northern Gothic I ever beheld, and
with which I know nothing that is even comparable, except the
work of the north transept of Rouen, described in the " Seven
Lamps," p. 159; work of about the same date,and exactly the same
plan; quatrefoils filled with grotesques, but somewhat less finished
in execution, and somewhat less wild in imagination. I wrote
down hastily, and in their own course, the subjects of some of
the quatrefoils of Lyons; of which I here give the reader the
sequence : —
1. Elephant and castle ; less graphic than the St. Zcno onn.
2. A huge head walking on two legs, turned backwards,
hoofed ; the head has a horn behind, with drapery
over it, which ends in another head.
3. A boar hunt ; the boar under a tree, very spirited.
4. A bird putting its head between its legs to bite its own
tail, which ends in a head.
5. A dragon with a human head set on the wrong way.
380 APPENDIX, 8.
fl. St. Peter awakened by the angel in prison; full of spirit,
the prison picturesque, with a trefoiled arch5 the angel
eager, St. Peter startled, and full of motion.
7. St. Peter led out by the angel.
"8. The miraculous draught of fishes ; fish and all, in the
small space.
'9. A large leaf, with two snails rampant, coming out of nau-
tilus shells, with grotesque faces, and eyes at the ends
of their horns.
10. A man with an axe striking at a dog's head, which comes
out of a nautilus shell: the rim of the shell branches
into a stem with two large leaves.
11. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian ; his body very full of arrows.
12. Beasts coming to ark; Noah opening a kind of wicker
cage.
13. Noah building the ark on shores.
14. A vine leaf with a dragon's head and tail, the one biting
the other.
15. A man riding a goat, catching a flying devil.
16. An eel or muraena growing into a bunch of flowers, which
turns into two wings.
17. A sprig of hazel, with nuts, thrown all around the quatre-
foils with a squirrel in centre, apparently attached to
the tree only by its enormous tail, richly furrowed into
hair, and nobly sweeping.
18. Four hares fastened together by the ears, galloping in a
circle. Mingled with these grotesques are many sword
and buckler combats, the bucklers being round and
conical like a hat; I thought the first I noticed,
carried by a man at full gallop on horseback, had been
a small umbrella.
This list of subjects may sufficiently illustrate the feverish
character of the Northern Energy ; but influencing the treatment
of the whole there is also the Northern love of what is called the
Grotesque, a feeling which I find myself, for the present, quite
incapable either of analysing or defining, though we all have a
distinct idea attached to the word : I shall try, however, in the
next volume.
APPENDIX, 9, 10, 11. 381
9. WOODEN CHUKCHES OF THE NORTH.
I cannot pledge myself to this theory of the orfgin of the
vaulting shaft, but the reader will find some interesting confirma-
tions of it in Dahl's work on the wooden churches of Norway.
The inside view of the church of Borgund shows the timber con-
struction of one shaft run up through a crossing architrave, and
continued into the clerestory ; while the church of Times is in
the exact form of a basilica ; but the wall above the arches is
formed of planks, with a strong upright above each capital. The
passage quoted from Stephen Eddy's Life of Bishop Wilfrid, at
p. 86 of Churton's " Early English Church," gives us one of the
transformations or petrifactions of the wooden Saxon churches.
"At Ripon he built a new church of polished stone, with columns
variously ornamented, and porches." Mr. Churton adds : " It
was perhaps in bad imitation of the marble buildings he had seen
in Italy, that he washed the walls of this original York Minster,
and made them ' whiter than snow.' r
10. CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA.
The very cause which enabled the Venetians to possess them-
selves of the body of St. Mark, was the destruction of the church
by the caliph for the sake of its marbles: the Arabs and
Venetians, though bitter enemies, thus building on the same
models ; these in reverence for the destroyed church, and those
with the very pieces of it. In the somewhat prolix account of
the matter given in the Notizie Storiche (above quoted) the main
points are, that "il Califa de' Saraceni, per f abbricarsi un Palazzo
presse di Babilonia, aveva ordinato che dalle Chiese d' Cristiani
si togliessero i piu scelti marmi ;" and that the Venetians, "videro
sotto i loro occhi flagellarsi crudelmente un Oistiano per aver
infranto un marmo." I heartily wish that the same kind of
punishment were enforced to this day, for the same sin.
11. RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE.
I am glad here to re-assert opinions which it has grieved me
to be suspected of having changed. The calmer tone of the
382 APPENDIX, 11.
second volume of " Modern Painters/' as compared with the
first, induced, I believe, this suspicion, very justifiably, in the
minds of many of its readers. The difference resulted, however,
from the simple fact, that the first was written in great haste
and indignation, for a special purpose and time ; — the second,
after I had got engaged, almost unawares, in inquiries which
could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued; my opinions re- .
maining then, and remaining now, altogether unchanged on the
subject which led me into the discussion. And that no farther
doubt of them may be entertained by any who may think them
worth questioning, I shall here, once for all, express them in the
plainest and fewest words I can. I think that J. M. W. Turner
is not only the greatest (professed) landscape painter who ever
lived, but that he has in him as much as would have furnished all
the rest with such power as they had; and that if we put Nicolo
Poussin, Salvator, and our own Gainsborough out of the group, he
would cut up into Claudes, Cuyps, Ruysdaels, and such others, by
uncounted bunches. I hope this is plainly and strongly enough
stated. And farther, I like his later pictures, up to the year
1845, the best ; and believe that those persons who only like his
early pictures do not, in fact, like him at all. They do not like
that which is essentially his. They like that in which he resem-
bles other men; which he had learned from Loutherbourg, Claude,
or Wilson; that which is indeed his own, they do not care for.
Not that there is not much of his own in his early works; they are
all invaluable in their way ; but those persons who can find no
beauty in his strangest fantasy on the Academy walls, cannot
distinguish the peculiarly Turneresque characters of the earlier
pictures. And, therefore, I again state here, that I think his
pictures painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest;
and that his entire power is best represented by such pictures as
the Temeraire, the Sun of Venice going to Sea, and others,
painted exactly at the time when the public and the press were
together loudest in abuse of him.
I desire, however, the reader to observe that I said, above,
professed landscape painters, among whom, perhaps, I should
hardly have put Gainsborough. The landscape of the great
figure painters is often majestic in the highest degree, and Tin-
toret's especially shows exactly the same power and feeling as
APPENDIX, 11. 383
Turner's. If with Turner I were to rank the historical painters
as landscapists, estimating rather the power they show, than
the actual value of the landscape they
produced, I should class those, 'whose Turner. Tintoret.
landscapes I have studied, in some such Massaccio.
order as this at the side of the page :— John Bellini,
associating with the landscape of Peru- Albert Durer.
gino that of Francia and Angelico, and Giorgione.
the other severe painters of religious Paul Veronese,
subjects. I have put Turner and Tin- Titian,
toret side by side, not knowing which is, Rubens,
in landscape, the greater; I had nearly Correggio.
associated in the same manner the noble Orcagna.
names of John Bellini and Albert Durer; Benozzo Gozzoli.
but Bellini must be put first, for his Giotto,
profound religious peace yet not sepa- Raffaelle.
rated from the other, if but that we Perugino.
might remember his kindness to him in
' Venice ; and it is well we should take note of it here, for it fur-
nishes us with a most interesting confirmation of what was said
in the text respecting the position of Bellini as the last of the
religious painters of Venice. The following passage is quoted in
Jackson's "Essay on Wood-engraving," from Albert Durer's
Diary:
" I have many good friends among the Italians who warn me
not to eat or drink with their painters, of whom several are my
enemies, and copy my picture in the church, and others of mine,
wherever they can find them, and yet they blame them, and say
they are not according to ancient art, and therefore not good.
Giovanni Bellini, however, has praised me highly to several gen-
tlemen, and wishes to have something of my doing : he called on
me himself, and requested that I would paint a picture for him,
for which, he said, he would pay me well. People are all sur-
prised that I should be so much thought of by a person of his
reputation : he is very old, but is still the best painter of them
all."
A choice little piece of description this, of the Renaissance
painters, side by side with the good old Venetian, who was soon
to leave them to their own ways. The Renaissance men are seen
384 APPENDIX, 12.
in perfection, envying, stealing, and lying, but without wit
chough to lie to purpose.
12. KOMANIST MODERN ART.
It is of the highest importance, in these days, that Romanism
should be deprived of the miserable influence which its pomp and
picturesqueness have given it over the weak sentimentalism of
the English people ; I call it a miserable influence, for of all
motives to sympathy with the Church of Rome, this I unhesita-
tingly class as the basest: lean, in some measure, respect the other
feelings which have been the beginnings of apostasy; I can respect
the desire for unity which would reclaim the Romanist by love,
and the distrust of his own heart which subjects the proselyte to
priestly power ; I say I can respect these feelings, though I cannot
pardon unprincipled submission to them, nor enough wonder at
the infinite fatuity of the unhappy persons whom they have be-
trayed:— Fatuity, self-inflicted, and stubborn in resistance to
God's Word and man's reason ! — to talk of the authority of the
Church, as if the Church were anything else than the whole
company of Christian men, or were ever spoken of in Scripture *'
as other than a company to be taught and fed, not to teach and
feed. — Fatuity ! to talk of a separation of Church and State, as
if a Christian state, and every officer therein, were not necessarily
a part of the Church, f and as if any state officer could do his
duty without endeavoring to aid and promote religion, or any
clerical officer do his duty without seeking for such aid and ac-
cepting it : — Fatuity ! to seek for the unity of a living body of
truth and trust in God, with a dead body of lies and trust in
* Except in the single passage " tell it unto the Church." which is simply
the extension of what had been commanded before, i.e., tell the fault first
"between thee and him," then taking "with thee one or two more," then,
to all Christian men capable of hearing the cause : if he refuse to hear their
common voice, ' ' let him be unto thee as a heathen man and publican :"
(But consider how Christ treated both.)
f One or two remarks on this subject, some of which I had intended to>
have inserted here, and others in Appendix 5, I have arranged in more con-
sistent order, and published in a separate pamphlet, "Notes on the Con-
struction of Sheep-folds," for the convenience of readers interested in other
architecture than that of Venetian palaces,
APPENDIX, 12. 385
wood, and thence to expect anything else than plague, and con-
sumption by worms undying, for both. Blasphemy as well as
fatuity! to ask for any better interpreter of God's Word than
God, or to expect knowledge of it in any other way than tin-
plainly ordered way: if any man will DO he shall KNOW. But
of all these fatuities, the basest is the being lured into the Ro-
manist Church by the glitter of it, like larks into a trap by
broken glass ; to be blown into a change of religion by the whine
of an organ-pipe ; stitched into a new creed by gold threads on
priests' petticoats ; jangled into a change of conscience by the
chimes of a belfry. I know nothing in the shape of error so dark
as this, no imbecility so absolute, no treachery so contemptible.
I had hardly believed that it was a thing possible, though vague
stories had been told me of the effect, on some minds, of mere
scarlet and candles, until I came on this passage in Pugin's
" Remarks on articles in the Rambler": —
•'Those who have lived in want and privation are the best
qualified to appreciate the blessings of plenty ; thus, those who
have been devout and sincere members of the separated portion
of the English Church ; who have prayed, and hoped, and loved,
through all the poverty of the maimed rites which it has retained
— to them does the realisation of all their longing desires appear
truly ravishing. * * * Oh! then, what delight ! what joy
unspeakable ! when one of the solemn piles is presented to them,
in all its pristine life and glory! — the stoups are filled to the-
brim ; the rood is raised on high ; the screen glows with sacred
imagery and rich device ; the niches are filled ; the altar is re-
placed, sustained by sculptured shafts, the relics of the saints
repose beneath, the body of Our Lord is enshrined on its conse-
crated stone ; the lamps of the sanctuary burn bright ; the
saintly portraitures in the glass windows shine all gloriously ; and
the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the cope chests are
filled with orphreyed baudekins ; and pix and pax, and chrisma-
tory are there, and thurible, and cross."
One might have put this man under a pix, and left him, one
should have thought; but he has been brought forward, and
partly received, as an example of the effect of ceremonial splendor
on the mind of a great architect. It is very necessary, therefore,
that all those who have felt sorrow at this should know at once
386 APPENDIX, 12.
that he is not a great architect, but one of the smallest possible
or conceivable architects ; and that by his own account and
setting forth of himself. Hear him : —
" I believe, as regards architecture, few men have been so un-
fortunate as myself. I have passed my life in thinking of fine
things, studying fine things, designing fine things, and realising
very poor ones. I have never had the chance of producing a
single fine ecclesiastical building, except my own church, where I
am both paymaster and architect ; but everything else, either
for want of adequate funds or injudicious interference and
control, or some other contingency, is more or less a fail-
ure. * * *
"St. George's was spoilt by the very instructions laid down
by the committee, that it was to hold 3000 people on the floor at
a limited price ; in consequence, height, proportion, everything,
was sacrificed to meet these conditions. Nottingham was spoilt by
the style being restricted to lancet, — a period well suited to a
Cistercian abbey in a secluded vale, but very unsuitable for the
centre of a crowded town. *
"Kirkham was spoilt through several hundred pounds being
reduced on the original estimate ; to effect this, which was a
great sum in proportion to the entire cost, the area of the church
was contracted, the walls lowered, tower and spire reduced, the
thickness of walls diminished, and stone arches omitted." (Re-
marks, &c., by A. "Welby Pugin: Dolman, 1850.)
Is that so? Phidias can niche himself into the corner of a
pediment, and Raffaelle expatiate within the circumference of a
clay platter ; but Pugin is inexpressible in less than a cathedral ?
Let his ineffableness be assured of this, once for all, that no diffi-
culty or restraint ever happened to a man of real power, but his
power was the more manifested in the contending with, or con-
quering it ; and that there is no field so small, no cranny so con-
tracted, but that a great spirit can house and manifest itself
therein. The thunder that smites the Alp into dust, can gather
itself into the width of a golden wire. Whatever greatness there
was in you, had it been Buonarroti's own, you had room enough
for it in a single niche : you might have put the whole power of
it into two feet cube of Caen stone. St. George's was not high
enough for want of money ? But was it want of money that
APPENDIX, 12.
made you put that blunt, overloaded, laborious ogee door into
the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that you sunk the t acet
o he parapet in its clumsy zigzags? Was it in parsimony til
you buried its paltry pinnacles in that eruption of diseased
crockets.' or m pecuniary embarrassment tj you set up he
belfry foolscaps, with the mimicry of dormer windows, wh ch
nobody can ever reach nor look out of ? Not so, but in mere in-
capability of better things.
I am sorry to have to speak thus of any living architect ; and
there is much m this man, if he were rightly estimated, which
one might both regard and profit by. He has a most sincere
love for his profession, a heartily honest enthusiasm for pixes
and piscinas ; and though he will never design so much as a pix
or a piscina thoroughly well, yet better than most of the experi-
mental architects of the day. Employ him by all means, but on
small work. Expect no cathedrals from him ; but no one at
present, can design a better finial. That is an exceedingly beau-
tiful one over the western door of St. George's ; and there is
some spirited impishness and switching of tails in the supporting
figures at the imposts. Only do not allow his good designing of
finials to be employed as an evidence in matters of divinity, nor
thence deduce the incompatibility of Protestantism and art. I
should have said all that I have said above, of artistical apostasy,
if Giotto had been now living in Florence, and if art were still
doing all that it did once for Rome. But the grossness of the
error becomes incomprehensible as well as unpardonable, when
we look to what level of degradation the human intellect has
sunk at this instant in Italy. So far from Eomanism now pro-
ducing anything greater in art, it cannot even preserve what has
been given to its keeping. I know no abuses of precious inheri-
tance half so grievous, as the abuse of all that is best in art
wherever the Romanist priesthood gets possession of it. It
amounts to absolute infatuation. The noblest pieces of mediaeval
sculpture in North Italy, the two griffins at the central (west)
door of the cathedral of Verona, were daily permitted to be brought
into service, when I was there in the autumn of 1849, by a
washerwoman living in the Piazza, who tied her clothes-lines to
their beaks : and the shafts of St. Mark's at Venice were used
by a salesman of common caricatures to fasten his prints upon
388 APPENDIX, 13.
(Compare Appendix 25); and this in the face of the continually
passing priests : while the quantity of noble art annually de-
stroyed in altarpieces by candle-droppings, or perishing by pure
brutality of neglect, passes all estimate. I do not know, as I
have repeatedly stated, how far the splendor of architecture, or
other art, is compatible with the honesty and usefulness of re-
ligious service. The longer I live, the more I incline to severe
judgment in this matter, and the less I can trust the sentiments
excited by painted glass and colored tiles. But if there be in-
deed value in such things, our plain duty is to direct our strength
against the superstition which has dishonored them ; there are
thousands who might possibly be benefited by them, to whom
they are now merely an offence, owing to their association with
idolatrous ceremonies. I have but this exhortation for all who
love them, — not to regulate their creeds by their taste in colors,
but to hold calmly to the right, at whatever present cost to their
imaginative enjoyment ; sure that they will one day find in
heavenly truth a brighter charm than in earthly imagery, and
striving to gather stones for the eternal building, whose walls
shall be salvation, and whose gates shall be praise.
13. MK. FEKGUSSON'S SYSTEM.
The reader may at first suppose this division of the attributes of
buildings into action, voice, and beauty, to be the same division
as Mr. Fergusson's, now well known, of their merits, into tech-
nic, aesthetic and phonetic.
But there is no connection between the two systems; mine,
indeed, does not profess to be a system, it is a mere arrangement
of my subject, for the sake of order and convenience in its treat-
ment: but, as far as it goes, it differs altogether from Mr. Fer-
gusson's in these two following respects : —
The action of a building, that is to say its standing or con-
sistence, depends on its good construction; and the first part
of the foregoing volume has been entirely occupied with the con-
sideration of the constructive merit of buildings: but construc-
tion is not their only technical merit. There is as much of
technical merit in their expression, or in their beauty, as in
their construction. There is no more mechanical or technical
APPENDIX, 13. 389
admirableness in the stroke of the painter who covers them with
fresco, than in the dexterity of the mason who cements their
stones : there is just as much of what is technical in their beauty,
therefore, as in their construction; and, on the other hand, there
is often just as much intellect shown in their construction as
there is in either their expression or decoration. Now Mr.
Fergusson means by his " Phonetic" division, whatever expresses
intellect : my constructive division, therefore, includes part of
his phonetic : and my expressive and decorative divisions include
part of his technical.
Secondly, Mr. Fergusson tries to make the same divisions fit
the subjects of art, and art itself ; and therefore talks of technic,
aesthetic, and phonetic, arts, (or, translating the Greek,) of art-
ful arts, sensitive arts, and talkative arts ; but I have nothing to
do with any division of the arts, I have to deal only with the
merits of buildings. As, however, I have been led into reference
to Mr. Fergusson's system, I would fain say a word or two to
effect Mr. Fergusson's extrication from it. I hope to find in him
a noble ally, ready to join with me in war upon affectation, false-
hood, and prejudice, of every kind: I have derived much instruc-
tion from his most interesting work, and I hope for much more
from its continuation; but he must disentangle himself from his
system, or he will be strangled by it ; never was anything so in-
geniously and hopelessly wrong throughout; the whole of it is
founded on a confusion of the instruments of man with his ca-
pacities.
Mr. Fergusson would have us take —
" First, man's muscular action or power." (Technics.)
" Secondly, those developments of sense by which he does! !
as much as by his muscles." (^Esthetics.)
" Lastly, his intellect, or to confine this more correctly to its
external action, Us power of speech I ! I " (Phonetics. )
Granting this division of humanity correct, or sufficient, the
writer then most curiously supposes that he may arrange the arts
as if there were some belonging to each division of man, — never
observing that every art must be governed by, and addressed to,
one division, and executed by another ; executed by the muscu-
lar, addressed to the sensitive or intellectual; and that, to be an
art at all, it must have in it work of the one, and guidance from
390 APPENDIX, 13.
the other. If, by any lucky accident, he had been led to arrange-
the arts, either by their objects, and the things to which they
are addressed, or by their means, and the things by which they
are executed, he would have discovered his mistake in an instant.
As thus : —
These arts are addressed to the, — Muscles ! !
Senses,
Intellect ;
or executed by, — Muscles,
Senses ! !
Intellect.
Indeed it is true that some of the arts are in a sort addressed to
the muscles, surgery for instance ; but this is not among Mr.
Fergusson's technic, but his politic, arts ! and all the arts may,
in a sort, be said to be performed by the senses, as the senses guide
both muscles and intellect in their work : but they guide them
as they receive information, or are standards of accuracy, but
not as in themselves capable of action. Mr. Fergusson is, I be-
lieve, the first person who has told us of senses that act or do, they
having been hitherto supposed only to sustain or perceive. The
weight of error, however, rests just as much in the original divi-
sion of man, as in the endeavor to fit the arts to it. The slight
omission of the soul makes a considerable difference when it
begins to influence the final results of the arrangement.
Mr. Fergusson calls morals and religion " Politick arts" (as if
religion were an art at all! or as if both were not as necessary to
individuals as to societies); and therefore, forming these into a
body of arts by themselves, leaves the best of the arts to do with-
out the soul and the moral feeling as rest they may. Hence,
"expression," or "phonetics," is of intellect only (as if men
never expressed their feelings!)', and then, strangest and worst
of all, intellect is entirely resolved into talking ! There can be
no intellect but it must talk, and all talking must be intellectual.
I believe people do sometimes talk without understanding; and I
think the world would fare ill if they never understood without
talking. The intellect is an entirely silent faculty, and has noth-
ing to do with parts of speech any more than the moral part has.
A man may feel and know things without expressing either the
feeling or knowledge ; and the talking is a muscular mode of
APPENDIX, 13. 391
communicating the workings of the intellect or heart :— muscu-
lar, whether it be by tongue or by sign, or by carving or writing,
or by expression of feature ; so that to divide a man into muscu-
lar and talking parts, is to divide him into body in general, and
tongue in particular, the endless confusion resulting from which
arrangement is only less marvellous in itself, than the resolution
with which Mr. Fergusson has worked through it, and in spite
of it, up to some very interesting and suggestive truths ; although
starting with a division of humanity which does not in the least
raise it above the brute, for a rattlesnake has his muscular, aesthe-
tic, and talking part as much as man, only he talks with his tail,
and says, " I am angry with you, and should like to bite you,"
more laconically and effectively than any phonetic biped could,
were he so minded. And, in fact, the real difference between
the brute and man is not so much that the one has fewer means
of expression than the other, as that it has fewer thoughts to ex-
press, and that we do not understand its expressions. Animals
can talk to one another intelligibly enough when they have any-
thing to say, and their captains have words of command just as
clear as ours, and better obeyed. We have indeed, in watching
the efforts of an intelligent animal to talk to a human being, a
melancholy sense of its dumbness ; but the fault is still in its in-
telligence, more than in its tongue. It has not wit enough to
systematise its cries or signs, and form them into language.
But there is no end to the fallacies and confusions of Mr.
Fergusson's arrangement. It is a perfect entanglement of gun-
cotton, and explodes into vacuity wherever one holds a light to
it. I shall leave him to do so with the rest of it for himself, and
should perhaps have left it to his own handling altogether, but for
the intemperateness of the spirit with which he has spoken on a
subject perhaps of all others demanding gentleness and caution.
No man could more earnestly have desired the changes lately in-
troduced into the system of the University of Oxford than I did
myself : no man can be more deeply sensible than I of grievous
failures in the practical working even of the present system: but
I believe that these failures may be almost without exception
traced to one source, the want of evangelical, and the excess of
rubrical religion among the tutors; together with such rusti
nesses and stiffnesses as necessarily attend the continual opera-
392 APPENDIX, 13.
tion of any intellectual machine. The fault is, at any rate, far
less in the system than in the imperfection of its administration;
and had it been otherwise, the terms in which Mr. Fergusson
speaks of it are hardly decorous in one who can but be imper-
fectly acquainted with its working. They are sufficiently an-
swered by the structure of the essay in which they occur; for if
the high powers of mind which its author possesses had been
subjected to the discipline of the schools, he could not have
wasted his time on the development of a system which their sim-
plest formulae of logic would have shown him to be untenable.
Mr. Fergusson will, however, find it easier to overthrow his
system than to replace it. Every man of science knows the diffi-
culty of arranging a reasonable system of classification, in any
subject, by any one group of characters ; and that the best classi-
fications are, in many of their branches, convenient rather than
reasonable: so that, to any person who is really master of his
subject, many different modes of classification will occur at dif-
ferent times ; one of which he will use rather than another, ac-
cording to the point which he has to investigate. I need only
instance the three arrangements of minerals, by their external
characters, and their positive or negative bases, of which the first
is the most useful, the second the most natural, the third the
most simple; and all in several ways unsatisfactory.
But when the subject becomes one which no single mind can
grasp, and which embraces the whole range of human occupation
and enquiry, the difficulties become as great, and the methods as
various, as the uses to which the classification might be put ; and
Mr. Fergusson has entirely forgotten to inform us what is the
object to which his arrangements are addressed. For observe :
there is one kind of arrangement which is based on the rational
connection of the sciences or arts with one another ; an arrange-
ment which maps them out like the rivers of some great country,
and marks the points of their junction, and the direction and
force of their united currents ; and this without assigning to any
one of them a superiority above another, but considering them
all as necessary members of the noble unity of human science
and effort. There is another kind of classification which contem-
plates the order of succession in which they might most usefully be
presented to a single mind, so that the given mind should obtain
APPENDIX, 13. 393
the most effective and available knowledge of them all: and,
finally, the most usual classification contemplates the powers of
mind which they each require for their pursuit, the objects to
which they are addressed, or with which they are concerned; and
assigns to each of them a rank superior or inferior, according to
the nobility of the powers they require, or the grandeur of the
subjects they contemplate.
Now, not only would it be necessary to adopt a different
classification with respect to each of these great intentions, but
it might be found so even to vary the order of the succession
of sciences in the case of every several mind to which they were
addressed; and that their rank would also vary with the power
and specific character of the mind engaged upon them. I once
heard a very profound mathematician remonstrate against the
impropriety of Wordsworth's receiving a pension from govern-
ment, on the ground that he was "only a poet." If the study
•of mathematics had always this narrowing effect upon the sympa-
thies, the science itself would need to be deprived of the rank-
usually assigned to it; and there could be no doubt that, in the
effect it had on the mind of this man, and of such others, it was
a very contemptible science indeed. Hence, in estimating the
real rank of any art or science, it is necessary for us to conceive
it as it would be grasped by minds of every order. There are
some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no one has
risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested ; and
others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general
meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown
around them: thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible
of all the sciences, has been raised to unjust dignity by Johnson.*
And the subject is farther complicated by the question of useful-
ness ; for many of the arts and sciences require considerable in-
tellectual power for their pursuit, and yet become contemptible
by the slightness of what they accomplish: metaphysics, for in-
stance, exercising intelligence of a high order, yet useless to the
mass of mankind, and, to its own masters, dangerous. Yet, as it has
*Not, however, by Johnson's testimony: Vide Adventurer, No. 39.
" Such operations as required neither celerity nor strength,-the low drudg-
ery of collating copies, comparing authorities, digesting dictionaries, 01
cumulating compilations."
394 APPENDIX, 14.
become so by the want of the true intelligence which its inquiries
need, and by substitution of vain subtleties in its stead, it may
in future vindicate for itself a higher rank than a man of com-
mon sense usually concedes to it.
Nevertheless, the mere attempt at arrangement must be use-
ful, even where it does nothing more than develop difficulties.
Perhaps the greatest fault of men of learning is their so often
supposing all other branches of science dependent upon or inferior
to their own best beloved branch ; and the greatest deficiency of
men comparatively unlearned, their want of perception of the
connection of the branches with each other. He who holds the
tree only by the extremities, can perceive nothing but the separa-
tion of its sprays. It must always be desirable to prove to
those the equality of rank, to these the closeness of sequence, of
what they had falsely supposed subordinate or separate. And,
after such candid admission of the co-equal dignity of the truly
noble arts and sciences, we may be enabled more justly to esti-
mate the inferiority of those which indeed seem intended for
the occupation of inferior powers and narrower capacities. In
Appendix 14, following, some suggestions will be found as to
the principles on which classification might be based ; but the
arrangement of all the arts is certainly not a work which could
with discretion be attempted in the Appendix to an essay on a
branch of one of them.
14. DIVISIONS OF HUMANITY.
The reader will probably understand this part of the subject
better if he will take the trouble briefly to consider the actions
of the mind and body of man in the sciences and arts, which
give these latter the relations of rank usually attributed to them.
It was above observed (Appendix 13) that the arts were
generally ranked according to the nobility of the powers they
require, that is to say, the quantity of the being of man which
they engaged or addressed. Now their rank is not a very im-
portant matter as regards each other, for there are few disputes
more futile than that concerning the respective dignity of arts,
all of which are necessary and honorable. But it is a very im-
portant matter as regards themselves ; very important whether
APPENDIX, 14. 395
they are practised with the devotion and regarded with the
spec which are necessary or due to their perfection d e not"
a all matter whether architecture or sculpture be the noblest
^tit ma tors much whether thethought is bestowed upon build-
ings, or the feeling is expressed in statues, which make either
deserving of our admiration. It is foolish and insolent to m !hL
that he art which we ourselves practise is greater than any other
but it is wise to take care that in our own hands it is as noble as
we can make it Let us take some notice, therefore, in what
degrees the faculties of man may be engaged in his several arts-
we may consider the entire man as made up of body, soul, and
ntellect (Lord Lindsay, meaning the same thing, says inaccurate-
ly_sense, intellect, and spirit-forgetting that there is a moral
sense as well as a bodily sense, and a spiritual body as well as a
natural body, and so gets into some awkward confusion, though
right m the main points). Then, taking the word soul as a
short expression of the moral and responsible part of being, each
of these three parts has a passive and active power. The body
has senses and muscles; the soul, feeling and resolution; the
intellect, understanding and imagination. The scheme may be
put into tabular form, thus:
Passive or Receptive Part. Active or Motive Part.
BodJ Senses. Muscles.
Soul' - - - Feeling. Resolution.
Intellect - - - Understanding. Imagination.
In this scheme I consider memory a part of understanding, and
conscience I leave out, as being the voice of God in the heart,
inseparable from the system, yet not an essential part of it. The
sense of beauty I consider a mixture of the Senses of the body
and soul.
Now all these parts of the human system have a reciprocal
action on one another, so that the true perfection of any of them
is not possible without some relative perfection of the others, and
yet any one of the parts of the system may be brought into a
morbid development, inconsistent with the perfection of the
others. Thus, in a healthy state, the acuteness of the senses
quickens that of the feelings, and these latter quicken the un-
396 APPENDIX, 14.
derstanding, and then all the three quicken the imagination, and
then all the four strengthen the resolution; while jet there is a
danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid feel-
ing may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over
shrewd and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or
that the understanding and imagination together may take place
of, or undermine, the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere
bodily frame there is a delightful perfection of the senses, con-
sistent with the utmost health of the muscular system, as in the
quick sight and hearing of an active savage: another false deli-
cacy of the senses, in the Sybarite, consequent on their over in-
dulgence, until the doubled rose-leaf is painful; and this inconsist-
ent with muscular perfection. Again; there is a perfection of
muscular action consistent with exquisite sense, as in that of the
fingers of a musician or of a painter, in which the muscles are
guided by the slightest feeling of the strings, or of the pencil:
another perfection of muscular action inconsistent with acute-
ness of sense, as in the effort of battle, in which a soldier does not
perceive his wounds. So that it is never so much the question,
what is the solitary perfection of a given part of the man, as
what is its balanced perfection in relation to the whole of him:
and again, the perfection of any single power is not merely to
be valued by the mere rank of the power itself, but by the har-
mony which it indicates among the other powers. Thus, for
instance, in an archer's glance along his arrow, or a hunter's
raising of his rifle, there is a certain perfection of sense and
finger which is the result of mere practice, of a simple bodily
perfection; but there is a farther value in the habit which results
from the resolution and intellect necessary to the forming of it:
in the hunter's raising of his rifle there is a quietness implying
far more than mere practice, — implying courage, and habitual
meeting of danger, and presence of mind, and many other such
noble characters. So also in a musician's way of laying finger on
his instrument, or a painter's handling of his pencil, there are
many qualities expressive of the special sensibilities of each,
operating on the production of the habit, besides the sensibility
operating at the moment of action. So that there are three dis-
tinct stages of merit in what is commonly called mere bodily
dexterity: the first, the dexterity given by practice, called com-
APPENDIX, U. .J97
mand of tools or of weapons; the second stage, the dexterity
GSSf^S^S^f^fSS
th, ; and, thirdly, there
the perfection of action produced by the operation of present
strength feehng, or intelligence on instruments thus previously
bo K Ir, handliDS°f a ««•* P^ter - rendered more
eautiful by his ,mmed,ate care and feeling and love of his sub-
t, or knowledge of it, and as physical strength is increased by
rength of will and greatness of heart. Imagine, for instance!
ifference m manner of fighting, and in actual muscular
strength and endurance, between a common soldier, and a man
m the circumstances of the Horatii, or of the temper of Leoni-
das.
Mere physical skill, therefore, the mere perfection and power
of the body as an instrument, is manifested in three stages:
First, Bodily power by practice;
Secondly, Bodily power by moral habit;
Thirdly, Bodily power by immediate energy ;
and the arts will be greater or less, casteris paribus, according to
the degrees of these dexterities which they admit. A smith's
work at his anvil admits little but the first; fencing, shooting,
and riding, admit something of the second; while the fine arts
admit (merely through the channel of the bodly dexterities) an
expression almost of the whole man.
Nevertheless, though the higher arts admit this higher bodily
perfection, they do not all require it in equal degrees, but can
dispense with it more and more in proportion to their dignity.
The arts whose chief element is bodily dexterity, may be classed
together as arts of the third order, of which the highest will be
those which admit most of the power of moral habit and energy,
such as riding and the management of weapons; and the rest may
be thrown together under the general title of handicrafts, of
which it does not much matter which are the most honorable,
but rather, which are the most necessary and least injurious to
398 APPENDIX, 14.
health, which it is not our present business to examine. Men
engaged in the practice of these are calld artizans, as opposed
to artists, who are concerned with the fine arts.
The next step in elevation of art is the addition of the intelli-
gences which have no connection with bodily dexterity ; as, for
instance, in hunting, the knowledge of the habits of animals
and their places of abode ; in architecture, of mathematics ; in
painting, of harmonies of color ; in music, of those of sound ; all
this pure science being joined with readiness of expedient in
applying it, and with shrewdness in apprehension of difficulties,
either present or probable.
It will often happen that intelligence of this kind is possessed
without bodily dexterity, or the need of it ; one man directing
and another executing, as for the most part in architecture, war,
and seamanship. And it is to be observed, also, that in propor-
tion to the dignity of the art, the bodily dexterities needed even
in its subordinate agents become less important, and are more
and more replaced by intelligence ; as in the steering of a ship,
the bodily dexterity required is less than in shooting or fencing,
but the intelligence far greater : and so in war, the mere swords-
manship and marksmanship of the troops are of small importance
in comparison with their disposition, and right choice of the
moment of action. So that arts of this second order must be
estimated, not by the quantity of bodily dexterity they require,
but by the quantity and dignity of the knowledge needed in their
practice, and by the degree of subtlety needed in bringing such
knowledge into play. War certainly stands first in the general
mind, not only as the greatest of the arts which I have called of
the second order, but as the greatest of all arts. It is not, how-
ever, easy to distinguish the respect paid to the Power, from
that rendered to the Art of the soldier ; the honor of victory
being more dependent, in the vulgar mind, on its results, than
its difficulties. I believe, however, that taking into considera-
tion the greatness of the anxieties under which this art must be
practised, the multitude of circumstances to be known and re-
garded in it, and the subtleties both of apprehension and strata-
gem constantly demanded by it, as well as the multiplicity of
disturbing accidents and doubtful contingencies against which it
must make provision on the instant, it must indeed rank as far
APPEHDIX, 15.
399
sou are joined : as poetry, architecture, and painting • ho
forming a kind of cross, in their part of the scheme of the human
being, wi h those of the second order, which wed the Intent
part of the intellect and Resolute part of the soul But the
reader must feel more and more, at every step, the impossibility
>f classing the arts themselves, independently of the men by
whom they are practised; and how an art, low in itself, may
be made noble by the quantity of human strength and being
which a great man will pour into it ; and an art, great in itself
be made mean by the meanness of the mind occupied in it I do
not intend, when I call painting an art of the first, and war an art
of the second, order, to class Dutch landscape painters with good
soldiers ; but I mean, that if from such a man as Napoleon we
were to take away the honor of all that he had done in law and
civil government, and to give him the reputation of his soldier-
ship only, his name would be less, if justly weighed, than that
of Buonarroti, himself a good soldier also, when need was. But
I will not endeavor to pursue the inquiry, for I believe that of all
the arts of the first order it would be found that all that a man
has, or is, or can be, he can fully express in them, and give to
any of them, and find it not enough.
15. INSTINCTIVE JUDGMENTS.
The same rapid judgment which I wish to enable the reader
to form of architecture, may in some sort also be formed of
painting, owing to the close connection between execution and
expression in the latter; as between structure and expression
in the former. We ought to be able to tell good painting by a
side glance as we pass along a gallery ; and, until we can do so,
we are not fit to pronounce judgment at all : not that I class this
easily visible excellence of painting with the great expressional
qualities which time and watchfulness only unfold. I have again
and again insisted on the supremacy of these last and shall
400 APPENDIX, 15.
always continue to do so. But I perceive a tendency among-
some of the more thoughtful critics of the day to forget that the
business of a painter is to paint, and so altogether to despise
those men, Veronese and Eubens for instance, who were painters,
par excellence, and in whom the expressional qualities are subor-
dinate. Now it is well, when we have strong moral or poetical
feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as the best .part of
the work ; but it is not well to consider as a thing of small
account, the painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed;
for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed
be a just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a painter, and it
was wrong of him to paint. He had much better put his morality
into sermons, and his poetry into verse, than into a language of
which he was not master. And this mastery of the language is
that of which we should be cognizant by a glance of the eye;
and if that be not found, it is wasted time to look farther: the
man has mistaken his vocation, and his expression of himself
will be cramped by his awkward efforts to do what he was not
fit to do. On the other hand, if the man be a painter indeed,
and have the gift of colors and lines, what is in him will come
from his hand freely and faithfully ; and the language itself is
so difficult and so vast, that the mere possession of it argues the
man is great, and that his works are worth reading. So that I
have never yet seen the case in which this true artistical excel-
lence, visible by the eye-glance, was not the index of some true
expressional worth in the work. Neither have I ever seen a good
expressional work without high artistical merit: and that this is
ever denied is only owing to the narrow view which men are apt
to take both of expression and of art; a narrowness consequent
on their own especial practice and habits of thought. A man
long trained to love the monk's visions of Fra Angelico, turns
in proud and ineffable disgust from the first work of Eubens
which he encounters on his return across the Alps. But is he
right in his indignation ? He has forgotten, that while Angelico
prayed and wept in his olive shade, there was different work
doing in the dank fields of Flanders; — wild seas to be banked
out ; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be
drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay ; care-
ful breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; close setting of brick
APPENDIX, 15. 401
walls against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands
and gross stoutening of bodies in all this ; gross jovialities of
harvest homes and Christmas feasts, which were to be the reward
of it; rough affections, and sluggish imagination; fleshy, sub-
stantial, ironshod humanities, but humanities still ; humanities
which God had his eye upon, and which won, perhaps, here and
there, as much favor in his sight as the wasted aspects of the
whispering monks of Florence (Heaven forbid it should not be
so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen
and reapers still). And are we to suppose there is no nobility in
Rubens' masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with
his large human rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by
birth, and feeling, and education, and place ; and, when he
chose, lordly in conception also? He had his faults, perhaps
great and lamentable faults, though more those of his time and
his country than his own ; he has neither cloister breeding nor
boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in missals or
annuals ; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in him,
that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court, knight's
camp, or peasant's cottage. On the other hand, a man trained here
in England, in our Sir Joshua school, will not and cannot allow
that there is any art at all in the technical work of Angelico.
But he is just as wrong as the other. .Fra Angelico is as true a
master of the art necessary to his purposes, as Rubens was of that
necesary for his. We have been taught in England to think there
can be no virtue but in a loaded brush and rapid hand ; but if
we can shake our common sense free of such teaching, we shall
understand that there is art also in the delicate point and in the
hand which trembles as it moves ; not because it is more liable
to err, but because there is more danger in its error, and more
at stake upon its precision. The art of Angelico, both as a color-
ist and a draughtsman, is consummate ; so perfect and beautiful,
that his work may be recognised at any distance by the rainbow-
play and brilliancy of it : However closely it may be surrounded
by other works of the same school, glowing with enamel and
gold, Angelico's may be told from them at a glance, like so many
huge pieces of opal lying among common marbles. So again
with Giotto ; the Arena chapel is not only the most perfect ex-
402 APPENDIX, 10.
pressional work, it is the prettiest piece of wall decoration and
fair color, in North Italy.
Now there is a correspondence of the same kind between the
technical and expressional parts of architecture ; — not a true or
entire correspondence, so that when the expression is best, the
building must be also best ; but so much of correspondence as
that good building is necessary to good expression, comes before
it, and is to be primarily looked for : and the more, because
the manner of building is capable of being determinately esti-
mated and classed ; but the expressional character not so : we
can at once determine the true value of technical qualities, we can
only approximate to the value of expressional qualities : and
besides this, the looking for the technical qualities first will
enable us to cast a large quantity of rubbish aside at once, and
so to narrow the difficult field of inquiry into expression : we
shall get rid of Chinese pagodas and Indian temples, and Renais-
sance Palladianisms, and Alhambra stucco and filigree, in one
great rubbish heap ; and shall not need to trouble ourselves about
their expression, or anything else concerning them. Then taking
the buildings which have been rightly put together, and which
show common sense in their structure, we may look for their
farther and higher excellences ; but on those which are absurd
in their first steps we need waste no time.
16. STRENGTH OF SHAFTS.
I could have wished, before writing this chapter, to have given
more study to the difficult subject of the strength of shafts of
different materials and structure ; but I cannot enter into every
inquiry which general criticism might suggest, and this I believe
to be one which would have occupied the reader with less profit
than many others : all that is necessary for him to note is, that
the great increase of strength gained by a tubular form in iron
shafts, of given solid contents, is no contradiction to the general
principle stated in the text, that the strength of materials is
most available when they are most concentrated. The strength
of the tube is owing to certain properties of the arch formed by
its sides, not to the dispersion of its materials : and the principle
is altogether inapplicable to stone shafts. No one would think of
APPENDIX, 17. 403
building a pillar of a succession of sandstone rings ; however
strong it might be, it would be still stronger filled up, and; the
substitution of such a pillar for a solid one of the same contents
would lose too much space ; for a stone pillar, even when solid,
must be quite as thick as is either graceful or convenient, an. I
in modern churches is often too thick as it is, hindering sight of
the preacher, and checking the sound of his voice.
17. ANSWER TO MR. GARBETT.
Some three months ago, and long after the writing of this
passage, I met accidentally with Mr. Garbett's elementary Treatise
on Design. (Weale, 1850.) If I had cared about the reputation
of originality, I should have been annoyed — and was so, at first,
>on finding Mr. Garbett's illustrations of the subject exactly the
same as mine, even to the choice of the elephant's foot for the
parallel of the Doric pillar : I even thought of omitting, or re-
writing, great part of the chapter, but determined at last to let it
stand. I am striving to speak plain truths on many simple and
trite subjects, and I hope, therefore, that much of what I say has
been said before, and am quite willing to give up all claim to
originality in any reasoning or assertion whatsoever, if any one
•cares to dispute it. I desire the reader to accept what I say, not
as mine, but as the truth, which maybe all the world's, if they look
for it. If I remember rightly, Mr. Frank Howard promised at
some discussion respecting the "Seven Lamps," reported in the
" Builder," to pluck all my borrowed feathers off me ; but I did
not see the end of the discussion, and do not know to this day
how many feathers I have left : at all events the elephant's foot
must belong to Mr. Garbett, though, strictly speaking, neither
he nor I can be quite justified in using it, for an elephant in
reality stands on tiptoe ; and this is by no means the expression
of a Doric shaft. As, however, I have been obliged to speak of
this treatise of Mr. Garbett's, and desire also to recommend it
as of much interest and utility in its statements of fact, it is
impossible for me to pass altogether without notice, as if un-
answerable, several passages in which the writer has objected to
views stated in the " Seven Lamps." I should at any rate have
noticed the passage quoted above, (Chap. 30th,) which runs
404 APPENDIX, 17.
counter to the spirit of all I have ever written, though without
referring to me; but the references to the " Seven Lamps" I
should not have answered, unless I had desired, generally, to
recommend the book, and partly also, because they may serve
as examples of the kind of animadversion which the "Seven
Lamps" had to sustain from architects, very generally; which
examples being once answered, there will be little occasion for
my referring in future to other criticisms of the kind.
The first reference to the "Seven Lamps" is in the second
page, where Mr. Garbett asks a question, "Why are not con-
venience and stability enough to constitute a fine building ?"-
which I should have answered shortly by asking another, " Why
we have been made men, and not bees nor termites :" but Mr.
Garbett has given a very pretty, though partial, answer to it
himself, in his 4th to 9th pages, — an answer which I heartily beg
the reader to consider. But, in page 12, it is made a grave
charge against me, that I use the words beauty and ornament in-
terchangeably. I do so, and ever shall; and so, I believe, one
day, will Mr. Garbett himself; but not while he continues to
head his pages thus: — "Beauty not dependent on ornament, or
superfluous features." What right has he to assume that orna-
ment, rightly so called, ever was, or can be, superfluous? I have
said before, and repeatedly in other places, that the most beau-
tiful things are the most useless; I never said superfluous. I said
useless in the well-understood and usual sense, as meaning, inap-
plicable to the service of the body. Thus I called peacocks and
lilies useless; meaning, that roast peacock was unwholesome
(taking Juvenal's word for it), and that dried lilies made bad
hay: but I do not think peacocks superfluous birds, nor that the
world could get on well without its lilies. Or, to look closer,
I suppose the peacock's blue eyes to be very useless to him; not
dangerous indeed, as to their first master, but of small service,
yet I do not think there is a superfluous eye in all his tail; and
for lilies, though the great King of Israel was not " arrayed "
like one of them, can Mr. Garbett tell us which are their super-
fluous leaves ? Is there no Diogenes among lilies ? none to be
found content to drink dew, but out of silver ? The fact is, I
never met with the architect yet who did not think ornament
meant a thing to be bought in a shop and pinned on, or left off,
APPENDIX, 17. 405
at architectural toilets, as the fancy seized them, thinking little
more than many women do of the other kind of ornament— the
only true kind,— St. Peter's kind,—" Not that outward adorn-
ing, but the inner— of the heart." I do not mean that architects
cannot conceive this better ornament, but they do not understand
that it is the only ornament ; that all architectural ornament is
this, and nothing but this ; that a noble building never has any
extraneous or superfluous ornament ; that all its parts are neces-
sary to its loveliness, and that no single atom of them could be
removed without harm to its life. You do not build a temple
and then dress it. * You create it in its loveliness, and leave it,
as her Maker left Eve. Not unadorned, I believe, but so well
adorned as to need no feather crowns. And I use the words
ornament and beauty interchangeably, in order that architects
may understand this : I assume that their building is to be a per-
fect creature capable of nothing less than it has, and needing
nothing more. It may, indeed, receive additional decoration
afterwards, exactly as a woman may gracefully put a bracelet on
her arm, or set a flower in her hair: but that additional decora-
tion is not the architecture. It is of curtains, pictures, statues,
things that may be taken away from the building, and not hurt
it. What has the architect to do with these ? He has only to
do with what is part of the building itself, that is to say, its own
inherent beauty. And because Mr. Garbett does not understand
or acknowledge this, he is led on from error to error; for we
next find him endeavoring to define beauty as distinct from orna-
ment, and saying that "Positive beauty may be produced by a
studious collation of whatever will display design, order, and
congruity." (p. 14.) Is that so? There is a highly studious
collation of whatever will display design, order, and congruity,
in a skull, is there not ?— yet small beauty. The nose is a deco-
rative feature,— yet slightly necessary to beauty, it seems to me ;
now, at least, for I once thought I must be wrong in considering
,a skull disagreeable. I gave it fair trial : put one on my bed-
room chimney-piece, and looked at it by sunrise every morning,
*We have done so-theoretically ; just as one would reason on the
human form from the bones outwards: but the Architect of hunu
frames all at once— bone and flesh.
40(j APPENDIX, 17.
and by moonlight every night, and by all the best lights I could
think of, for a month, in vain. I found it a sugly at last as I
did at first. So, also, the hair is a decoration, and its natural
curl is of little use ; but can Mr. Garbett conceive a bald beauty ;
or does he prefer a wig, because that is a " studious collation"
of whatever will produce design, order, and congruity ? So the
flush of the cheek is a decoration, — God's painting of the temple
of his spirit, — and the redness of the lip ; and yet poor Viola
thought it beauty truly blent ; and I hold with her.
I have answered enough to this count.
The second point questioned is my assertion, " Ornament
cannot be overcharged if it is good, and is always overcharged
when it is bad." To which Mr. Garbett objects in these terms :
"I must contend, on the contrary, that the very best ornament
may be overcharged by being misplaced."
A short sentence with two mistakes in it.
First. Mr. Garbett cannot get rid of his unfortunate notion
that ornament is a thing to be manufactured separately, and fast-
ened on. He supposes that an ornament may be called good in
itself, in the stonemason's yard or in the ironmonger's shop:
Once for all, let him put this idea out of his head. We may say
of a thing, considered separately, that it is a pretty thing ; but
before we can say it is a good ornament, we must know what it
is to adorn, and how. As, for instance, a ring of gold is a pretty
thing ; it is a good ornament on a woman's finger ; not a good
ornament hung through her under lip. A hollyhock, seven feet
high, would be a good ornament for a cottage-garden ; not a good
ornament for a lady's head-dress. Might not Mr. Garbett have-
seen this without my showing ? and that, therefore, when I said
"good" ornament, I said "well-placed" ornament, in one word,
and that, also, when Mr. Garbett says "it may be overcharged
by being misplaced," he merely says it may be overcharged by
being bad.
Secondly. But, granted that ornament were independent of
its position, and might be pronounced good in a separate form,
as books are good, or men are good, — Suppose I had written to
a student in Oxford, " You cannot have too many books, if they
be good books ;" and he had answered me, "Yes, for if I have
many, I have no place to put them in but the coal-cellar."
APPENDIX, 17.
Would that in anywise affect the. general principle that he could
not have too many books ?
Or suppose he had written, " I must not have too many, they
confuse my head." I should have written back to him : " Don't
buy books to put in the coal-hole, nor read them if they confuse
your head ; you cannot have too many, if they be good : but if
you are too lazy to take care of them, or too dull to profit by
them, you are better without them."
Exactly in the same tone, I repeat to Mr. Garbett, "You
cannot have too much ornament, if it be good : but if you are
too indolent to arrange it, or too dull to take advantage of it,
assuredly you are better without it."
The other points bearing on this question have already been
stated in the close of the 21st chapter.
The third reference I have to answer, is to my repeated asser-
tion, that the evidence of manual labor is one of the chief sources
of value in ornament, (" Seven Lamps," p. 49, " Modern
Painters," § 1, Chap. III.,) to which objection is made in these
terms: "We must here warn the reader against a remarkable
error of Ruskin. The value of ornaments in architecture depends
not in the slightest degree on the manual labor they contain. If
it did, the finest ornaments ever executed would be the stone
chains that hang before certain Indian rock-temples." Is that
so ? Hear a parallel argument. " The value of the Cornish
mines depends not in the slightest degree on the quantity of cop-
per they contain. If it did, the most valuable things ever pro-
duced would be copper saucepans." It is hardly worth my while
to answer this; but, lest any of my readers should be confused
by the objection, and as I hold the fact to be of great importance,
I may re-state it for them with some explanation.
Observe, then, the appearance of labor, that is to say, the
evidence of the past industry of man, is always, in the abstract,
intensely delightful : man being meant to labor, it is delightful
to see that he lias labored, and to read the record of his active
and worthy existence.
The evidence of labor becomes painful only when it is a sign
of Evil greater, as Evil, than the labor is great, as Good. As,
for instance, if a man has labored for an hour at what might
have been done by another man in a moment, this evidence of
408 APPENDIX, 17.
his labor is also evidence of his weakness ; and this weakness is
greater in rank of evil, than his industry is great in rank of
good.
Again, if a man have labored at what was not worth accom-
plishing, the signs of his labor are the signs of his folly, and his
folly dishonors his industry ; we had rather he had been a wist'
man in rest than a f ooj in labor.
Again, if a man have labored without accomplishing anything,
the signs of his labor are the signs of his disappointment ; and
we have more sorrow in sympathy with his failure, than pleasure
in sympathy with his work.
Now, therefore, in ornament, whenever labor replaces what
was better than labor, that is to say, skill and thought; wherever
it substitutes itself for these, or negatives these by its existence,
then it is positive evil. Copper is an evil when it alloys gold, or
poisons food : not an evil, as copper ; good in the form of pence,
seriously objectionable when it occupies the room of guineas.
Let Danae cast it out of her lap, when the gold comes from
heaven ; but let the poor man gather it up carefully from the
earth.
Farther, the evidence of labor is not only a good when added
to other good, but the utter absence of it destroys good in human
work. It is only good for God to create without toil ; that which
man can create without toil is worthless : machine ornaments
are no ornaments at all. Consider this carefully, reader : I could
illustrate it for you endlessly ; but you feel it yourself every hour
of your existence. And if you do not know that you feel it,
take up, for a little time, the trade which of all manual trades
has been most honored : be for once a carpenter. Make for
yourself a table or a chair, and see if you ever thought any table
or chair so delightful, and what strange beauty there will be in
their crooked limbs.
I have not noticed any other animadversions on the " Seven
Lamps" in Mr. Garbett's volume; but if there be more, I must
now leave it to his own consideration, whether he may not, as in
the above instances, have made them incautiously : I may, per-
haps, also be permitted to request other architects, who may
happen to glance at the preceding pages, not immediately to
condemn what may appear to them false in general principle. I
APPENDIX, 17.
most often be found deficient in technical knowledge- I r
often err m my statements respecting matters of pract L or S
special law. But I do not write thoughtlessly respec^ £*
ciples ; and my statements of these will generally be found worth
reconno^mg before attacking. Architects, no doubt, fan y
they have s rong grounds for supposing me wrong when they
seek to invalidate my assertions. Let me assure them, at least
[ mean to be their friend, although they may not imme-
diately recognise me as such. If I could obtain the public ear
and the principles I have advocated were carried into general
practice, porphyry and serpentine would be given to them in-
stead of limestone and brick; instead of tavern and shop-fronts
they would have to build goodly churches and noble dwelling-
liouses ; and for every stunted Grecism and stucco Romanism,
into which they are now forced to shape their palsied thoughts,
and to whose crumbling plagiarisms they must trust their doubt-
ful fame, they would be asked to raise whole streets of bold, and
rich, and living architecture, with the certainty in their hearts
of doing what was honorable to themselves, and good for all men.
Before I altogether leave the question of the influence of labor
on architectural effect, the reader may expect from me a word or
two respecting the subject which this year must be interesting to
all— the applicability, namely, of glass and iron to architecture
in general, as in some sort exemplified by the Crystal Palace.
It is thought by many that we shall forthwith have great part
of our architecture in glass and iron, and that new forms of
beauty will result from the studied employment of these mate-
rials.
It may be told in a few words how far this is possible; how
far eternally impossible.
There are two means of delight in all productions of art —
color and form.
The most vivid conditions of color attainable by human art
are those of works in glass and enamel, but not the most perfect.
The best and noblest coloring possible to art is that attained by
the touch of the human hand on an opaque surface, upon which
it can command any tint required, without subjection to altera-
tion by fire or other mechanical means. No color is so noble as
the color of a good painting on canvas or gesso.
410 APPENDIX, 17.
This kind of color being, however, impossible, for the most
part, in architecture, the next best is the scientific disposition of
the natural colors of stones, which are far nobler than any ab-
stract hues producible by human art.
The delight which we receive from glass painting is one alto-
gether inferior, and in which we should degrade ourselves by
over indulgence. Nevertheless, it is possible that we may raise
some palaces like Aladdin's with colored glass for jewels, which
shall be new in the annals of human splendor, and good in their
place; but not if they superseded nobler edifices.
Now, color is producible either on opaque or in transparent
bodies : but form is only expressible, in its perfection, on opaque
bodies, without lustre.
This law is imperative, universal, irrevocable. No perfect or
refined form can be expressed except in opaque and lustreless
matter. You cannot see the form of a jewel, nor, in any perfec-
tion, even of a cameo or bronze. You cannot perfectly see the
form of a humming-bird, on account of its burnishing ; but you
can see the form of a swan perfectly. No noble work in form can
ever, therefore, be produced in transparent or lustrous glass or
enamel. All noble architecture depends for its majesty on its
form : therefore you can never have any noble architecture in
transparent or lustrous glass or enamel. Iron is, however,
opaque; and both it and opaque enamel may, perhaps, be ren-
dered quite lustreless ; and, therefore, fit to receive noble form.
Let this be thoroughly done, and both the iron and enamel
made fine in paste or grain, and you may have an architecture
as noble as cast or struck architecture even can be: as noble,
therefore, as coins can be, or common cast bronzes, and such
other multiplicable things ; * — eternally separated from all
* Of course mere multiplicability, as of an engraving, does not diminish
the intrinsic value of the work ; and if the casts of sculpture could be as
sharp as the sculpture itself, they would hold to it the relation of value
which engravings hold to paintings. And, if we choose to have our churches
all alike, we might cast them all in bronze — we might actually coin churches,
and have mints of Cathedrals. It would be worthy of the spirit of the
century to put milled edges for mouldings, and have a popular currency of
religious subjects: a new cast of nativities every Christmas. I have not
heard this contemplated, however, and I speak, therefore, only of the re-
APPENDIX, 18. 411
good and great things by a gulph which not all the tubular
bridges nor engineering of ten thousand nineteenth centuries
cast into one great bronze-foreheaded century, will ever overpass
one inch of. All art which is worth its room in this world, all
art which is not a piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot
or two of earth which, if unencumbered by it, would have grown
corn or violets, or some better thing, is art which proceeds from
an individual mind, working through instruments which assist,
but do not supersede, the muscular action of the human hand,
upon the materials which most tenderly receive, and most securely
retain, the impressions of such human labor.
And the value of every work of art is exactly in the ratio of
the quantity of humanity which has been put into it, and legibly
expressed upon it for ever: —
First, of thought and moral purpose;
Secondly, of technical skill;
Thirdly, of bodily industry.
The quantity of bodily industry which that Crystal Palace ex-
presses is very great. So far it is good.
The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a single
and very admirable thought of Mr. Paxton's, probably not a bit
brighter than thousands of thoughts which pass through his
active and intelligent brain every hour,— that it might be possible
to build a greenhouse larger than ever greenhouse Avas built be-
fore. This thought, and some very ordinary algebra, are as
much as all that glass can represent of human intellect. " But
one poor half -pennyworth of bread to all this intolerable deal of
sack." Alas!
"The earth hath bubbles as the water hath:
And this is of them."
18. EARLY ENGLISH CAPITALS.
The depth of the cutting in some of the early English capi-
tals is, indeed, part of a general system of attempts at exagger-
ated force of effect, like the « Uack touches" of second-rate
suits which I believe are contemplated, as attainable by mere mechanical
applications of glass and iron.
412 APPENDIX, 19.
draughtsmen, which I have noticed as characteristic of nearly
all northern work, associated with the love of the grotesque: but
the main section of the capital is indeed a dripstone rolled round,
as above described; and dripstone sections are continually found
in northern work, where not only they cannot increase force of
effect, but are entirely invisible except on close examination; as,
for instance, under the uppermost range of stones of the founda-
tion of Whitehall, or under the slope of the restored base of All
Souls College, Oxford, under the level of the eye. I much doubt
if any of the Fellows be aware of its existence.
Many readers will be surprised and displeased by the dispar-
agement of the early English capital. That capital has, indeed,
one character of considerable value; namely, the boldness with
which it stops the mouldings which fall upon it, and severs them
from the shaft, contrasting itself with the multiplicity of their
vertical lines. Sparingly used, or seldom seen, it is thus, in its
place, not unpleasing; and we English love it from association,
it being always found in connection with our purest and loveliest
Gothic arches, and never in multitudes large enough to satiate
the eye with its form. The reader who sits in the Temple church
every Sunday, and sees no architecture during the week but that
of Chancery Lane, may most justifiably quarrel with me for what
I have said of it. But if every house in Elect Street or Chancery
Lane were Gothic, and all had early English capitals, I would
answer for his making peace with me in a fortnight.
19. TOMBS NEAK ST. ANASTASIA.
Whose they are, is of little consequence to the reader or to
me, and I have taken no pains to discover; their value being not
in any evidence they bear respecting dates, but in their intrinsic
merit as examples of composition. Two of them are within the
gate, one on the top of it, and this latter is on the whole the best,
though all are beautiful; uniting the intense northern energy in
their figure sculpture with the most serene classical restraint in
their outlines, and unaffected, but masculine simplicity of con-
struction.
I have not put letters to the diagram of the lateral arch at page
154, in order not to interfere with the clearness of the curves, but
APPENDIX, 20. 413
I shall always express the same points by the same letters, whenever
I have to give measures of arches of this simple kind, so that the
reader need never have the diagrams lettered at all. The base
or span of the centre arch will always be a b; its vertex will al-
ways be V; the points of the cusps will be c c; p p will be the
bases of perpendiculars let fall from V and c on a I; and d the
base of a perpendicular from the point of the cusp to the arch
line. Then a b will always be a span of the arch, V p its per-
pendicular height, V a the chord of its side arcs, d c the depth of
its cusps, c c the horizontal interval between the cusps, a c the
length 'of the chord of the lower arc of the cusp, V c the length
of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp, (whether continuous
or not,) and c p the length of a perpendicular from the point of
the cusp on a ~b.
Of course we do not want all these measures for a single arch,
but it often happens that some of them are attainable more easily
than others; some are often unattainable altogether, and it is
necessary therefore to have expressions for whichever we may be
able to determine.
V p or V a, a b, and d c are always essential; then either a c
and V c or c c and c p: when I have my choice, I always take a b,
V p, d c, c c, and cp, but cp is not to be generally obtained so
accurately as the cusp arcs.
The measures of the present arch are:
Ft. In.
a b, 3 ,, 8
Vc, 2,,4i
ac, 2 „ 0£
d c, 0 „ 3i
20. SHAFTS OF DUCAL PALACE.
The shortness of the thicker ones at the angles is induced by
the greater depth of the enlarged capitals: thus the 36th shaft
10 ft. 4i in. in circumference at its base, and 10 „ 0|* :
* I sliall often have occasion to write measures in the current text, there-
fore the reader will kindly understand that whenever they are thus written,
2 „ 2, with double commas between, the first figures stand for English fe
the second for English inches.
414 APPENDIX, 20.
cnmference under the fillet of its capital; but.it is only 6 ,, If
high, while the minor intermediate shafts, of which the thickest
is 7 ,, 8 round at the base, and 7 ,, 4 under capital, are yet on the
average 7 ,, 7 high. The angle shaft towards the sea (the 18th)
is nearly of the proportions of the 36th, and there are three
others, the 15th, 24th, and 26th, which are thicker than the
rest, though not so thick as the angle ones. The 24th and 26th
have both party walls to bear, and I imagine the 15th must in
old time have carried another, reaching across what is now the
Sala del Gran Consiglio.
They measure respectively round at the base,
The 15th, 8 „ 2
24th, 9 ,, 6|
26th, 8 „ 0£
The other pillars towards the sea, and those to the 27th inclu-
sive of the Piazzetta, are all seven feet round at the base, and then
there is a most curious and delicate crescendo of circumference
to the 36th, thus:
The 28th, 7 „ 3 The 33rd, 7 „ 6
29th, 7 „ 4 34th, 7 „ 8
30th, 7 „ 6 35th, 7 „ 8
31st, 7 „ 7 36th, 10,, 4£
32nd 7 „ 5
The shafts of the upper arcade, which are above these thicker
columns, are also thicker than their companions, measuring on the
average, 4 ,, 8^ in circumference, while those of the sea fagade,
except the 29th, average 4 ,, 7^ in circumference. The 29th,
which is of course above the 15th of the lower story, is 5 ,, 5 in
circumference, which little piece of evidence will be of no small
value to us by-and-by. The 35th carries the angle of the palace,
and is 6 ,, 0 round. The 47th, which comes above the 24th and
carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, is strength-
ened by a pilaster; and the 51st, which comes over the 26th, is
5 „ 4£ round, or nearly the same as the 29th; it carries the party
A all of the Sala del Scrutinio; a small room containing part of
APPENDIX, 20.
415
St. Mark's library, coming between the two saloons; a room
which, in remembrance of the help I have received in all my in-
quiries from the kindness and intelligence of its usual occupant,
I shall never easily distinguish otherwise than as "Mr. Loren-
zi s.
I may as well connect with these notes respecting the arcades
of the Ducal Palace, those which refer to Plate XIV. , which
represents one of its spandrils. Every spandril of the lower
arcade was intended to have been occupied by an ornament re-
sembling the one given in that plate. The mass of the building
being of Istrian stone, a depth of about two inches is left within
the mouldings of the arches, rough hewn, to receive the slabs of
fine marble composing the patterns. I cannot say whether the
design was ever completed, or the marbles have been since re-
moved, but there are now only two spandrils retaining their fill-
ings, and vestiges of them in a third. The two complete span-
drils are on the sea facade, above the 3rd and 10th capitals (vide
method of numbering, Chap. I., page 30); that is to say, con-
necting the 2nd arch with the 3rd, and the 9th with the 10th.
The latter is the one given in Plate XIV. The white portions
of it are all white marble, the dental band surrounding the circle
is in coarse sugary marble, which I believe to be Greek, and never
found in Venice to my recollection, except in work at least an-
terior to the fifteenth century. The shaded fields charged with
the three white triangles are of red Verona marble; the inner
disc is green serpentine, and the dark pieces of the radiating
leaves are grey marble. The three triangles are equilateral. The
two uppermost are 1 ,, 5 each side, and the lower 1 „ 2.
The extreme diameter of the circle is 3 ,, 10| ; its field is
slightly raised above the red marbles, as shown in the section at
A, on the left. A a is part of the red marble field; a b the sec-
tion of the dentil moulding let into it; b c the entire breadth
of the rayed zone, represented on the other side of the spandril
by the line C /; c d is the white marble band let in, with the
* I cannot suffer this volume to close without also thanking my kind
friend, Mr. Rawdon Brown, for help given me in a thousand ways during
my stay in Venice: but chiefly for his direction to passages elucidatory of
my subject in the MSS. of St. Mark's library.
416 APPENDIX, 20.
dog-tooth on the face of it; b c is 7f inches across; c d 3f ; and at
B are given two joints of the dentil (mentioned above,, in the
chapter on dentils, as unique in Venice) of their actual size. At
C is given one of the inlaid leaves; its measure being (in inches)
C/7f; C li f;/# f;/e 4f, the base of the smaller leaves being
of course f e — /# = 4. The pattern which occupies the other
spandril is similar, except that the field b c, instead of the inter-
secting arcs, has only triangles of grey marble, arranged like
rays, with their bases towards the centre. There being twenty
round the circle, the reader can of course draw them for him-
self; they being isosceles, touching the dentil with their points,
and being in contact at their bases: it has lost its central boss.
The marbles are, in both, covered with a rusty coating, thro ugh
which it is excessively difficult to distinguish the colors (another
proof of the age of the ornament). But the white marbles are
certainly, in places (except only the sugary dentil), veined with
purple, and the grey seem warmed with green.
A trace of another of these ornaments may be seen over the
21st capital; but I doubt if the marbles have ever been inserted
in the other spandrils, and their want of ornament occasions the
slight meagreness in the effect of the lower story, which is al-
most the only fault of the building.
This decoration by discs, or shield-like ornaments, is a mark-
ed characteristic of Venetian architecture in its earlier ages, and
is carried into later times by the Byzantine Renaissance, already
distinguished from the more corrupt forms of Renaissance, in
Appendix 6. Of the disc decoration, so borrowed, we have al-
ready an example in Plate I. In Plate VII. we have an earlier
condition of it, one of the discs being there sculptured, the
others surrounded by sculptured bands : here we have, 011 the
Ducal Palace, the most characteristic of all, because likest to
the shield, which was probably the origin of the same ornament
among the Arabs, and assuredly among the Greeks. In Mr.
Donaldson's restoration of the gate of the treasury of Atreus,
this ornament is conjecturally employed, and it occurs constantly
on the Arabian buildings of Cairo,
APPENDIX, 21. 417
21. ANCIENT KEPRESENTATIONS OF WATER.
I have long been desirous of devoting some time to an en-
quiry into the effect of natural scenery upon the pagan, and
especially the Greek, mind, and knowing that my friend, Mr. C.
Newton, had devoted much thought to the elucidation of the
figurative and symbolic language of ancient art, I asked him to
draw up for me a few notes of the facts which he considered
most interesting, as illustrative of its methods of representing
nature. I suggested to him, for an initiative subject, the repre-
sentation of water; because this is one of the natural objects
whose portraiture may most easily be made a test of treatment,
for it is one of universal interest, and of more closely si mi hi r
aspect in all parts of the world than any other. Waves, cur-
rents, and eddies are much liker each other, everywhere, than
either land or vegetation. Rivers and lakes, indeed, differ
widely from the sea, and the clear Pacific from the angry North-
ern ocean; but the Nile is liker the Danube than a knot of Nu-
bian palms is to a glade of the Black Forest; and the Mediterra-
nean is liker the Atlantic than the Campo Felice is like Solway
moss.
Mr. Newton has accordingly most kindly furnished me with
the following data. One or two of the types which he describes
have been already noticed in the main text; but it is well that
the reader should again contemplate them in the position which
they here occupy in a general system. I recommend his special
attention to Mr. Newton's definitions of the terms " figurative"
and " symbolic," as applied to art, in the beginning of the paper.
IN ancient art, that is to say, in the art of the Egyptian,
Assyrian, Greek, and Roman races, water is, for the most part,
represented conventionally rather than naturally.
By natural representation is here meant as just and perfect
an imitation of nature as the technical means of art will allow:
on the other hand, representation is said to be conventional,
either when a confessedly inadequate imitation is accepted in de-
fault of a better, or when imitation is not attempted at all, and
418 APPENDIX, 21.
it is agreed that other modes of representation, those by figures
or by symbols, shall be its substitute and equivalent.
In figurative representation there is always impersonation;
the sensible form, borrowed by the artist from organic life, is
conceived to be actuated by a will, and invested with such men-
tal attributes as constitute personality.
The sensible symbol, whether borrowed from organic or from
inorganic nature, is not a personification at all, but the conven-
tional sign or equivalent of some object or notion, to which it
may perhaps bear no visible resemblance, but with which the
intellect or the imagination has in some way associated it.
For instance, a city may be figuratively represented as a
woman crowned with towers ; here the artist has selected for the
expression of his idea a human form animated with a will and
motives of action analogous to those of humanity generally. Or,
again, as in Greek art, a bull may be a figurative representation
of a river, and, in the conception of the artist, this animal form
may contain, and be ennobled by, a human mind.
This is still impersonation; the form only in which personality
is embodied is changed.
Again, a dolphin may be used as a symbol of the sea; a man
ploughing with two oxen is a well-known symbol of a Roman
colony. In neither of these instances is there impersonation.
The dolphin is not invested, like the figure of Neptune, with
any of the attributes of the human mind ; it has animal instincts,
but no will ; it represents to us its native element, only as a part
may be taken for a whole.
Again, the man ploughing does not, like the turreted female
figure, personify, but rather typifies the town, standing as the
visible representation of a real event, its first foundation. To
our mental perceptions, as to our bodily senses, this figure seems
no more than man; there is no blending of his personal nature
with the impersonal nature of the colony, no transfer of attributes
from the one to the other.
Though the conventionally imitative, the figurative, and the
symbolic, are three distinct kinds of representation, they are
constantly combined in one composition, as we shall see in the
following examples, cited from the art of successive races in
chronological order.
APPENDIX, 21. 419
In Egyptian art the general representation of water is the
conventionally imitative. In the British Museum are two fres-
coes from tombs at Thebes, Nos. 177 and 170: the subject of the
first of these is an oblong pond, ground-plan and elevation being
strangely confused in the design. In this pond water is repre-
sented by parallel zigzag lines, in which fish are swimming about.
On the surface are birds and lotos flowers ; the herbage at the
edge of the pond is represented by a border of symmetrical fan-
shaped flowers ; the field beyond by rows of trees, arranged round
the sides of the pond at right angles to each other, and in defiance
of all laws of perspective.
In the fresco, No. 170, we have the representation of a river
with papyrus on its bank. Here the water is rendered by zigzag
lines arranged vertically and in parallel lines, so
as to resemble herring-bone masonry, thus.
There are fish in this fresco as in the preceding, ~
und in both each fish is drawn very distinctly,
not as it would appear to the eye viewed through
water. The mode of representing this element
in Egyptian painting is further abbreviated in their hieroglyphic
writing, where the sign of water is a zigzag, line; this line is, so
to speak, a picture of water written in short hand. In (lie
Egyptian Pantheon there was but one aquatic deity, the god of
the Nile; his type is, therefore, the only figurative representation
of water in Egyptian art. (Birch, " Gallery of British Museum
Antiquities," PL 13.) In Assyrian sculpture we have very curi-
ous conventionally imitative representations of water. On
several of the friezes from Nimroud and Khorsabad, men HIV
seen crossing a river in boats, or in skins, accompanied by horses
swimming (see Layard, ii. p. 381). In these scenes water is rep-
resented by masses of wavy lines somewhat resembling tresses
of hair, and terminating in curls or volutes ; these wavy lines
express the general character of a deep and rapid current, like
that of the Tigris. Eish are but sparingly introduced, the idea
of surface being sufficiently expressed by the floating figures and
boats. In the representation of these there is the same want of
perspective as in the Egyptian fresco which we have just cited.
In the Assyrian Pantheon one aquatic deity has been dis-
covered, the god Dagon, whose human form terminates in a fish's
420 APPENDIX, 21.
tail. Of the character and attributes of this deity we know but
little.
The more abbreviated mode of representing water, the zigzag
line, occurs on the large silver coins with the type of a city or a
war galley (see Layard, ii. p. 386). These coins were probably
struck in Assyria, not long after the conquest of it by the Per-
sians.
In Greek art the modes of representing water are far more
varied. Two conventional imitations, the wave moulding and
the Masander, are well known. Both are probably of the most
remote antiquity; both have been largely employed as an archi-
tectural ornament, and subordinately as a decoration of vases,
costume, furniture and implements. In the wave moulding we
have a conventional representation of the small crisping waves
which break upon the shore of the Mediterranean, the sea of the
Greeks.
Their regular succession, and equality of force and volume,
are generalised in this moulding, while the minuter varieties
which distinguish one wave from another are merged in the
general type. The character of ocean waves is to be "for ever
changing, yet the same for ever ;" it is this eternity of recurrence
which the early artist has expressed in this hieroglyphic.
With this profile representation of water may be compared
the sculptured waves out of which the head and arms of Hype-
rion are rising in the pediment of the Parthenon (Elgin Room,
No. (65) 91, Museum Marbles, vi. pi. 1). Phidias has repre-
sented these waves like a mass of overlapping tiles, thus general-
ising their rippling movement. In the Mseander pattern the
graceful ciirves of nature are represented by angles, as in the
Egyptian hieroglyphic of water: so again the earliest representa-
tion of the labyrinth on the coins of the Cnossus is rectangular ;
on later coins we find the curvilinear form introduced.
In the language of Greek mythography, the wave pattern and
the Maeander are sometimes used singly for the idea of water,
but more frequently combined with figurative representation.
The number of aquatic deities in the Greek Pantheon led to the
invention of a great variety of beautiful types. Some of these
are very well known. Everybody is familiar with the general
form of Poseidon (Neptune), the Nereids, the Nymphs and River
APPENDIX, 21. 421
Gods ; but the modes in which these types were combined with
conventional imitation and with accessory symbols deserve careful
study, if we would appreciate the surpassing richness and beauty
of the language of art formed out of these elements.
This class of representations may be divided into two princi-
pal groups, those relating to the sea, and those relating to fresh
water.
The power of the ocean and the great features of marine
scenery are embodied in such types as Poseidon, Nereus and the
Nereids, that is to say, in human forms moving through the
liquid element in chariots, or on the back of dolphins, or who
combine the human form with that of the fish-like Tritons. The
sea-monsters who draw these chariots are called Hippocamps, be-
ing composed of the tail of a fish and the fore-part of a horse,
the legs terminating in web-feet : this union seems to express
speed and power under perfect control, such as would characterise
the movements of sea deities. A few examples have been here
selected to show how these types were combined with symbols
and conventional imitation.
In the British Museum is a vase, No. 1257, engraved (Lenor-
•mant et De Witte, Mon. Ceram., i. pi. 27), of which the subject
is, Europa crossing the sea on the back of the bull. In this design
the sea is represented by a variety of expedients. First, the
swimming action of the bull suggests the idea of the liquid
medium through which he moves. Behind him stands Nereus,
his staff held perpendicularly in his hand ; the top of his staff
comes nearly to the level of the bull's back, and is probably
meant as the measure of the whole depth of the sea. Towards
the surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising ; in the middle
depth is another dolphin ; below a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and
the bottom is indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are
two echini.
On a mosaic found at Oudnah in Algeria (Revue Archeol., iii.
pi. 50), we have a representation of the sea, remarkable for the
fulness of details with which it is made out.
This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in
feeling, that it may be cited as an example of the class of my-
thography now under consideration. The mosaic lines the floor
and sides of a bath, and, as was commonly the case in the baths
422 APPENDIX, 21.
of the ancients, serves as a figurative representation of the water
it contained.
On the sides are hippocamps, figures riding on dolphins, and
islands on which fishermen stand ; on the floor are fish, crabs,
and shrimps.
These, as in the vase with Europa, indicate the bottom of the
sea : the same symbols of the submarine world appear on many
other ancient designs. Thus in vase pictures, when Poseidon
upheaves the island of Cos to overwhelm the Giant Poly dotes,
the island is represented as an immense mass of rock ; the parts
which have been under water are indicated by a dolphin, a
shrimp, and a sepia, the parts above the water by a goat and a
serpent (Lenormant et De Witte, i., tav. 5).
Sometimes these symbols occur singly in Greek art, as the
types, for instance, of coins. In such cases they cannot be in-
terpreted without being viewed in relation to the whole context
of mythography to which they belong. If we find, for example,
on one coin of Tarentum a shell, on another a dolphin, on a
third a figure of Tarus, the mythic founder of the town, riding
on a dolphin in the midst of the waves, and this latter group
expresses the idea of the town itself and its position on the
coast, then we know the two former types to be but portions of
the greater design, having been detached from it, as we may de-
tach words from sentences.
The study of the fuller and clearer examples, such as we have
cited above, enables us to explain many more compendious forms
of expression. We have, for instance, on coins several represen-
tations of ancient harbors.
Of these, the earliest occurs on the coins of Zancle, the modern
Messina in Sicily. The ancients likened the form of this harbor
to a sickle, and on the coins of the town we find a curved object,
within the area of which is a dolphin. On this curve are four
square elevations placed at equal distances. It has been conjec-
tured that these projections are either towers or the large stones
to which galleys were moored still to be seen in ancient harbors
(see Burgon, Numismatic Chronicle, iii. p. 40). With this
archaic representation of a harbor may be compared some exam-
ples of the Eoman period. On a coin of Sept. Severus struck at
Corinth (Millingen, Sylloge of Uned. Coins, 1837, p. 57, PL IL
APPENDIX, 21.
423
No. 30) we have a female figure standing on a rock between two
recumbent male figures holding rudders. From an arch at the
foot of the rock a stream is flowing : this is a representation of
the rock of the Acropolis of Corinth; the female figure is a
statue of Aphrodite, whose temple surmounted the rock. The
stream is the fountain Pirene. The two recumbent figures are
impersonations of the two harbors, Lechreum and Cenchrcia.
between which Corinth was situated. Philostratus (Icon, ii., c!
16) describes a similar picture of the Isthmus between the two
harbors, one of which was in the form of a youth, the other of
a nymph.
On another coin of Corinth we have one of the harbors in a
semicircular form, the whole arc being marked with small equal
divisions, to denote the archways under which the ancient gal-
leys were drawn, subducta; at the either horn or extremity of
the harbor is a temple ; in the centre of the mouth, a statue of
Neptune. (Millingen, Medailles Ined., PI. II., No. 19. Com-
pare also Milligen, Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings, 1831, pp.
50—01, PI. IV., No. 15; Mionnet, Suppl. vii. p. 79, No. 246;
and the harbor of Ostium, on the large brass coins of Nero, in
which there is a representation of the Eoman fleet and a reclin-
ing figure of Neptune. )
"In vase pictures we have occasionally an attempt to represent
water naturally. On a vase in the British Museum (No. 785),
of which the subject is Ulysses and the Sirens, the Sea is ren-
dered by wavy lines drawn in black on a red ground, and some-
thing like the effect of light playing on the surface of the water
is given. On each side of the ship are shapeless masses of rock
on which the Sirens stand.
One of the most beautiful of the figurative representations of
the sea is the well-known type of Scylla. She has a beautiful
body, terminating in two barking dogs and two serpent tails.
Sometimes drowning men, the rari nantes in gurgite vasto, ap-
pear caught up in the coils of these tails. Below are dolphins.
Scylla generally brandishes a rudder to show the manner in
which she twist's the course of ships. For varieties of her type
see Monum. dell' Inst. Archeol. Rom., iii. Taw. 52—3.
The representations of fresh water may be arranged under the
following heads— rivers, lakes, fountains.
424 APPENDIX, 21.
There are several figurative modes of representing rivers very
frequently employed in ancient mythography.
In the type which occurs earliest we have the human form
combined with that of the bull in several ways. On an archaic
coin of Metapontum in Lucania, (see frontispiece to Millingen,
Ancient Coins of Greek Cities and Kings,) the river Achelousis
represented with the figure of a man with a shaggy beard and
bull's horns and ears. On a vase of the best period of Greek
art (Brit. Mus. No. 789 ; Birch, Trans. Roy. Soc. of Lit., New
Series, Lond. 1843, i. p. 100) the same river is represented with
a satyr's head and long bull's horns on the forehead ; his form,
human to the waist, terminates in a fish's tail ; his hair falls down
his back ; his beard is long and shaggy. In this type we see a
combination of the three forms separately enumerated by Sopho-
cles, in the commencement of the Trachiniae.
rpi6lv /j,op(pai<5iv
dpanaov eXiKToS, #A/lor' avdpsiGo
fiovitpcppoS, kn de datiniov
npovvoi SiEppaivovTo Kpwvaiov rtorov.
In a third variety of this type the human-headed body is
united at the waist with the shoulders of a bull's body, in which
it terminates. This occurs on an early vase. (Brit. Mus., No.
452. ) On the coins of (Eniadse in Acarnia, and on those of Am-
bracia, all of the period after Alexander the Great, the Achelous
has a bull's body, and head with a human face. In this variety
of the type the human element is almost absorbed, as in the first
variety cited above, the coin of Metapontum, the bull portion of
the type is only indicated by the addition of the horns and ears
to the human head. On the analogy between these varieties in
the type of the Achelous and those under which the metamor-
phoses of the marine goddess Thetis are represented, see
Gerhard, Auserl Vasenb. ii. pp. 106 — 113. It is probable that,
in the type of Thetis, of Proteus, and also of the Achelous, the
singular combinations and transformations are intended to ex-
press the changeful nature of the element water.
Numerous other examples may be cited, where rivers are
APPENDIX, 21. 425
represented by this combination of the bull and human form,
which may be called, for convenience, the Androtauric type. On
the coins of Sicily, of the archaic and also of the finest period
of art, rivers are most usually represented by a youthful male
figure, with small budding horns; the hair has the lank and
matted form which characterises aquatic deities in Greek my-
thography. The name of the river is often inscribed round the
head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is always
represented standing, never reclining.
The type of the bull on the coins of Sybaris and Thurium,
in Magna Grsecia, has been considered, with great probability,
a representation of this kind. On the coins of Sybaris, which
are of a very early period, the head of the bull is turned round;
on those of Thurium, he stoops his head, butting : the first of
these actions has been thought to symbolise the winding course
of the river, the second, its headlong current. On the coins of
Thurium, the idea of water is further suggested by the adjunct
of dolphins and other fish in the exergue of the coin. The
ground on which the bull stands is indicated by herbage or peb-
bles. This probably represents the river bank. Two bulls' head
occur on the coins of Sardis, and it has been ingeniously conjec-
tured by Mr. Burgon that the two rivers of the place are ex-
pressed under this type.
The representation of river-gods as human figures in a reclin-
ing position, though probably not so much employed in earlier
Greek art as the Androtauric type, is very much more familiar
to us, from its subsequent adoption in Koman mythography.
The earliest example we have of a reclining river-god is in the
figure in the Elgin Boom commonly called the Ilissus. but more
probably the Cephissus. This occupied one angle in the western
pediment of the Parthenon ; the other Athenian river, the
Ilissus, and the fountain Callirrhoe being represented by a male
and female figure in the opposite angle ; this group, now de-
stroyed, is visible in the drawing made by Carrey in 1678.
It is probable that the necessities of pedimental composition
first led the artist to place the river-god in a reclining position.
The head of the Ilissus being broken off, we are not sure whether
he had bull's horns, like the Sicilian figures already described.
His form is youthful, in the folds of the drapery behind him
426 APPENDIX, 21.
there is a flow like that of waves, but the idea of water is not
suggested by any other symbol. "When we compare this figure
with that of the Nile (Visconti, Mus. Pio Clem., i., PI. 38), and
the figure of the Tiber in the Louvre, both of which are of the
Koman period, we see how in these later types the artist multi-
plied symbols and accessories, ingrafting them on the original
simple type of the river-god, as it was conceived by Phidias in
the figure of the Ilissus. The Nile is represented as a colossal
bearded figure reclining. At his side is a cornucopia, full of the
vegetable produce of the Egyptian soil. Round his body are
sixteen naked boys, who represent the sixteen cubits, the height
to which the river rose in a favorable year. The statue is
placed on a basement divided into three compartments, one above
another. In the uppermost of these, waves are flowing over in
one great sheet from the side of the river-god. In the other two
compartments are the animals and plants of the river ; the bas-
reliefs on this basement are, in fact, a kind of abbreviated sym-
bolic panorama of the Nile.
The Tiber is represented in a very similar manner. On the-
base are, in two compartments, scenes taken from the early
Roman myths ; flocks, herds, and other objects on the banks of
the river. (Visconti, Mus. P. Cll i., PL 39; Millin, Galerie My-
thol., i. p. 77, PL 74, Nos. 304, 308.)
In the types of the Greek coins of Camarina, we find two in-
teresting representations of Lakes. On the obverse of one of these
we have, within a circle of the wave pattern, a male head, full
face, with dishevelled hair, and with a dolphin on either side ; on
the reverse a female figure sailing on a swan, below which a wave
moulding, and above, a dolphin.
On another coin the swan type of the reverse is associated with
the youthful head of a river-god, inscribed " Hipparis " on the
obverse. On some smaller coins we have the swan flying over
the rippling waves, which are represented by the wave moulding.
When we examine the chart of Sicily, made by the Admiralty
survey, we find marked down at Camarina, a lake through which
the river Hipparis flows.
We can hardly doubt that the inhabitants of Camarina repre-
sented both their river and their lakes on their coins. The swan
flying over the waves would represent a lake; the figure associated
APPENDIX, 21. 427
with it being no doubt the Aphrodite worshipped at that place:
the head, in a circle of wave pattern, may express that part of
the river which flows through the lake.
Fountains are usually represented by a stream of water issu-
ing from a lion's head in the rock: see a vase (Gerhard, Auserl.
Vasenb., taf. cxxxiv,), where Hercules stands, receiving a
shower-bath from a hot spring at Thermae in Sicily. On the
coins of Syracuse the fountain Aretlmsa is represented by a
female head seen to the front; the flowing lines of her dishevelled
hair suggest, though they do not directly imitate, the bubbling
action of the fresh-water spring; the sea in which it rises is
symbolized by the dolphins round the head. This type presents
a striking analogy with that of the Camarina head in the circle
of wave pattern described above.
These are the principal modes of representing water in Greek
mythography. In the art of the Koman period, the same kind
of figurative and symbolic language is employed, but there is a
constant tendency to multiply accessories and details, as we have
shown in the later representations of harbors and river-gods cited
above. In these crowded compositions the eye is fatigued and
distracted by the quantity it has to examine; the language of art
becomes more copious but less terse and emphatic, and addresses
itself to minds far less intelligent than the refined critics who
were the contemporaries of Phidias.
Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining
male figures, generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in
their hands, and leaning on urns from which water is flowing.
On the coins of many Syrian cities, struck in imperial times, the
city is represented by a turreted female figure seated on rocks,
and resting her feet on the shoulder of a youthful male figure,
who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms, and who is
sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Miiller (Denkmaler
d. A. Kunst, i. , taf. 49, No. 220) for a group of this kind in
the Vatican, and several similar designs on coins.
On the column of Trajan there occur many rude representa-
tions of the Danube, and other rivers crossed by the Romans in
their military expeditions. The water is imitated by sculptured
wavy lines, in which boats are placed. In one scene (Bartoli,
Colonna Trajana, Tav. 4) this rude conventional imitation is
428 APPENDIX, 21.
combined with a figure. In a recess in the river bank is a reclin-
ing river-god, terminating at the waist. This is either meant
for a statue which was really placed on the bank of the river,
and which therefore marks some particular locality, or we have
here figurative representation blended with conventional imita-
tion.
On the column of Antoninus (Bartoli, Colon. Anton., Tav.
15) a storm of rain is represented by the head of Jupiter Pluvius,
who has a vast outspread beard flowing in long tresses. In the
Townley collection, in the British Museum, is a Koman helmet
found at Ribchester in Lancashire, with a mask or vizor attached.
The helmet is richly embossed with figures in a battle scene;
round the brow is a row of turrets; the hair in the forehead is so
treated as to give the idea of waves washing the base of the
turrets. This head is perhaps a figurative representation of a
town girt with fortifications and a moat, near which some great
battle was fought. It is engraved (Vetusta Monum. of Soc. Ant.
London, iv., PL 1-4).
In the Galeria at Florence is a group in alto relievo (Gori,
Inscript. Ant. Flor. 1727, p. 76, Tab. 14) of three female
figures, one of whom is certainly Demeter Kourotrophos, or the
earth; another, Thetis, or the sea; the centre of the three seems
to represent Aphrodite associated, as on the coins of Camarina,
with the element of fresh water.
This figure is seated on a swan, and holds over her head an
arched veil. Her hair is bound with reeds; above her veil grows
a tall water plant, and below the swan other water plants, and a
stork seated on a hydria, or pitcher, from which water is flowing.
The swan, the stork, the water plants, and the hydria must all
be regarded as symbols of fresh water, the latter emblem being
introduced to show that the element is fit for the use of man.
Fountains in Roman art are generally personified as figures
of nymphs reclining with urns, or standing holding before them
a large shell.
One of the latest representations of water in ancient art is
the mosaic of Palestrina (Barthelemy, in Bartoli, Peint. An-
tiques) which may be described as a kind of rude . panorama of
some district of Upper Wgypt, a bird's-eye view, half man, half
picture, in which the details are neither adjusted to a scale, nor
APPENDIX, 22, 23.
but crowded
22. ARABIAN ORNAMENTATION.
of tldira0h rr wh,at ! have here said °f the ve p°™-
the Arab to be understood as in the least applying to the de-
testaole ornamentation of the Alhambra.* The IlhLbra is no
more charactensbc of Arab work, than Milan Cathedral is of
Go hie: it is a late bmlding, a work of the Spanish dynasty in
its last decline, and its ornamentation is fit for nothing but to
be transferred to patterns of carpets or bindings of books, to-
gether with their marbling, and mottling, and other mechanical
recommendations. The Alhambra ornament has of late been
largely used in shop-fronts, to the no small detriment of Regent
Street arid Oxford Street.
23. VARIETIES OF CHAMFER.
Let BAG, Fig. LXXIL, be the original angle of the wall.
Inscribe within it a circle, p Q N p, of the size of the bead
required, touching A B, A C, mp, p; join p, p, and draw B C
parallel to it, touching the circle.
Then the lines B C, pp are the limits of the possible chanv
fers constructed with curves struck either from centre A, as the
line Q q, N d, r u, g c, &c., or from any other point chosen as a
centre in the direction Q A produced: and also of all chamfers
in straight lines, as .a b, e f. There are, of course, an infinite
number of chamfers to be struck between B C and p p, from
every point in Q A produced to infinity; thus we have infinity
multiplied into infinity to express the number of possible cham-
fers of this species, which are peculiarly Italian chamfers ; to-
gether with another singly infinite group of the straight cham-
fers, a b, e f, &c., of which the one formed by the line a b,
passing through the centre of the circle, is the universal early
Gothic chamfer of Venice.
* I have not seen the building itself, but Mr. Owen Jones's work may,
I suppose, be considered as sufficiently representing it for all purposes of
criticism.
430
APPENDIX, 23.
Again. Either on the line A C, or on any other lines A I or
A m, radiating from A, any number of centres may be taken,
from which, with any radii not greater than the distance be-
tween such points and Q, an infinite number of curves may be
struck, such as t u, r s, N n (all which are here struck from
centres on the line AC). These lines represent the great class
of the northern chamfers, of which the number is infinity
raised to its fourth power, but of which the curve N n (for
northern) represents the average condition ; the shallower cham-
Fig. LXXH.
fers of the same group, r s, t u, &c., occurring often in Italy.
The lines r u, t u, and a b may be taken approximating to the
most frequent conditions of the southern chamfer.
It is evident that the chords of any of these curves will give
a relative group of rectilinear chamfers, occurring both in the
North and South ; but the rectilinear chamfers, I think, invari-
ably fall within the line Q C, and are either parallel with it, or
inclined to A C at an angle greater than A C Q, and often per-
APPENDIX, 24. 431
pendicular to it ; but never inclined to it at an angle less than
ACQ.
24. RENAISSANCE BASES.
The following extract from my note-book refers also to some
features of late decoration of shafts.
"The Scuola di San Rocco is one of the most interesting
examples of Renaissance work in Venice. Its fluted pillars arc
surrounded each by a wreath, one of vine, another of laurel,
another of oak, not indeed arranged with the fantasticism of
early Gothic ; but, especially the laurel, reminding one strongly
of the laurel sprays, powerful as well as beautiful, of Veronese
and Tintoret. Their stems are curiously and richly interlaced
— the last vestige of the Byzantine wreathed work — and the
vine-leaves are ribbed on the surfaces, I think, nearly as finely as
those of the Noah,* though more injured by time. The capitals
are far the richest Renaissance in Venice, less corrupt and more
masculine in plan, than any other, and truly suggestive of sup-
port, though of course showing the tendency to error in this
respect ; and finally, at the angles of the pure Attic bases, on
the square plinth, are set couchant animals ; one, an elephant
four inches high, very curiously and cleverly cut, and all these
details worked with a spirit, finish, fancy, and affection quite
worthy of the middle ages. But they have all the marked fault
of being utterly detached from the architecture. The wreaths
round the columns look as if they would drop off the next
moment, and the animals at the bases produce exactly the effect
of mice who had got there by accident: one feels them ridicu-
lously diminutive, and utterly useless. "
The effect of diminutiveness is, I think, chiefly owing to
there being no other groups of figures near them, to accustom
the eye to the proportion, and to the needless choice of the
largest animals, elephants, bears, and lions, to occupy a position
so completely insignificant, and to be expressed on so contempti-
ble a scale, — not in a bas-relief or pictorial piece of sculpture,
but as independent figures. The whole building is a most
* The sculpture of the Drunkenness of Noah on the Ducal Palace, of
which we shall have much to say hereafter.
432 APPENDIX, 25.
curious illustration of the appointed fate of the Renaissance
architects, — to caricature whatever they imitated, and misapply
whatever they learned.
25. ROMANIST DECORATION OF BASES.
I have spoken above (Appendix 12) of the way in which the
Roman Catholic priests everywhere suffer their churches to be
desecrated. But the worst instances I ever saw of sacrilege and
brutality, daily permitted in the face of all men, were the uses
to which the noble base of St. Mark's was put, when I was last
in Venice. Portions of nearly all cathedrals may be found
abandoned to neglect; but this base of St. Mark's is in no
obscure position. Full fronting the western sun — crossing the
whole breadth of St. Mark's Place — the termination of the most
noble square in the world — the centre of the most noble city —
its purple marbles were, in the winter of 1849, the customary
gambling tables of the idle children of Venice; and the parts
which flank the Great Entrance, that very entrance where
" Barbarossa flung his mantle off," were the counters of a com-
mon bazaar for children's toys, carts, dolls, and small pewter
spoons and dishes, German caricatures and books of the Opera,
mixed with those of the offices of religion; the caricatures being
fastened with twine round the porphyry shafts of the church.
One Sunday, the 24th of February, 1850, the book-stall being
somewhat more richly laid out than usual, I noted down the
titles of a few of the books in the order in which they lay, and I
give them below. The irony conveyed by the juxtaposition of
the three in Italics appears too shrewd to be accidental; but the
fact was actually so.
Along the edge of the white plinth were a row of two kinds
of books,
Officium Beatae Virg. M. ; and Officium Hebdomadae
sanctae, juxta Formam Missalis et Breviarii Romani
sub Urbano VIII. correct!.
Behind these lay, side by side, the following:
Don Desiderio. Dramma Giocoso per Musica.
Breve Esposizione della Carattere di vera Religione.
On the top of this latter, keeping its leaves open,
APPENDIX, 25. 433
La Figlia del Reggimento. Melodramma comica.
Carteggio di Madama la Marcliesa di Pompadour, ossia
raccolta di Lettere scritte della Medesima.
Istruzioni di morale Condotta per le Figlie.
Francesca di Rimini. Dramma per Musica.
Then, a little farther on, after a mass of plays:—
Orazioni a Gesu Nazareno e a Maria addolorata.
Semiramide; Melodramma tragico da rappresentarsi nel
Gran Teatro il Fenice.
Modo di orare per 1'Acquisto del S. Giubileo, conceduto
a tutto il Mondo Cattolico da S. S. Gregorio XVI.
Le due illustre Rivali, Melodramma in Tre Atti, da rap-
present arsi nel nuovo Gran Teatro il Fenice.
II Cristiano secondo il Cuore di Gesu, per la Pratica delle,
sue Virtu.
Traduzione del' Idioma Italiana.
La cliiava Chinese; Commedia del Sig. Abate Pietro
Chiari.
La Pelarina; Intermezzo de Tre Parti per Musica.
II Cavaliero e la Dama; Commedia in Tre Atti in Prosa.
I leave these facts without comment. But this being the
last piece of Appendix I have to add to the present volume, I
would desire to close its pages with a question to my readers —
a statistical question, which, I doubt not, is being accurately
determined for us all elsewhere, and which, therefore, it seems
to me, our time would not be wasted in determining for our-
selves.
There has now been peace between England and the conti-
nental powers about thirty-five years, and during that period the
English have visited the continent at the rate of many thousands
a year, staying there, I suppose, on the average, each two or
three months; nor these an inferior kind of English, but the
kind which ought to be the best — the noblest born, the best
taught, the richest in time and money, having more leisure,
knowledge, and power than any other portion of the nation.
These, we might suppose, beholding, as they travelled, the con-
dition of the states in which the Papal religion is professed, and
being, at the same time, the most enlightened section of a great
Protestant nation, would have been animated with some desire
434 APPENDIX, 25.
to dissipate the Romanist errors, and to communicate to others
the better knowledge which they possessed themselves. I doubt
not but that He who gave peace upon the earth, and gave it by
the hand of England, expected this much of her, and has
watched every one of the millions of her travellers as they crossed
the sea, and kept count for him of his travelling expenses, and
of their distribution, in a manner of which neither the traveller
nor his courier were at all informed. I doubt not, I say, but
that such accounts have been literally kept for all of us, and
that a day will come when they will be made clearly legible to
us, and when we shall see added together, on one side of the
account book, a great sum, the certain portion, whatever it may
be, of this thirty-five years' spendings of the rich English,
accounted for in this manner: —
To wooden spoons, nut-crackers, and jewellery, bought at
Geneva, and elsewhere among the Alps, so much; to shell
cameos and bits of mosaic bought at Rome, so much; to coral
horns and lava brooches bought at Naples, so much; to glass
beads at Venice, and gold filigree at Genoa, so much; to pictures,
and statues, and ornaments, everywhere, so much; to avant-
couriers and extra post-horses, for show and magnificence, so
much; to great entertainments and good places for seeing sights,
so much; to ball-dresses and general vanities, so much. This, I
say, will be the sum on one side of the book; and on the other
will be written,
To the struggling Protestant Churches of France, Switzer-
land, and Piedmont, so much.
Had we not better do this piece of statistics for ourselves, in
time?
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