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The reference is to the Palazzo Lion-Morosini, Cannaregio 5705, Nadali & Vianello (1999) Tav. 17, in the Campiello del Remer. Though Ruskin apparently does not list the house in either of the Housebooks or in the other small notebooks, his interest in it at Notebook M pp.80f, Notebook M p.123, Notebook M p.209, and in Sheet No. 61 and Sheet No. 107 is continued in published volumes of Stones of Venice. There is a woodcut at Works, 10.293.
Ruskin comments on it:
The woodcut on next page, Fig. 26, represents the door and two of the lateral windows of a house in the Corte del Remer, facing the Grand Canal, in the parish of the Apostoli. It is remarkable as having its great entrance on the first floor, attained by a bold flight of steps, sustained on pure pointed arches wrought in brick. I cannot tell if these arches are contemporary with the building, though it must always have had an access of this kind. The rest of its aspect is Byzantine, except only that the rich sculptures of its archivolt show in combats of animals, beneath the soffit, a beginning of the Gothic fire and energy. The moulding of its plinth is of a Gothic profile, and the windows are pointed, not with a reversed curve, but in a pure straight gable, very curiously contrasted with the delicate bending of the pieces of marble armour cut for the shoulders of each arch...(Works, 10.292)
Ruskin comments at Works, 9.305 on the animal carving, and at Works, 10.170 on the use of colour in the stonework.
At Works, 36.106 [n/a] there is a copy of letter dated April 22 1850 from Ruskin thanking Rawdon Brown, and Signor Vason (though ‘I do not recollect at this moment who Signor Vason is’), for their work on the Remer building. He suggests there that the apparent horseshoe arch was the result of ’mere presssure from above’ distorting the shape of a ‘common’ stilted arch. The second of two letters of this period from Ruskin to Rawdon Brown suggest that in September 1850 when Ruskin needed work doing by Signor Vason he was able to recollect his name.
For the pointed arches of the entrance stairway see:
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The horseshoe arch can be seen as a form of stilted arch in which the stilt moves out from the vertical. It is common in Arabic architecture and an example can be seen in the Grand Mosque at Cordoba:
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The Remer House in Venice has what is apparently a horseshoe arch which might have provided for Ruskin evidence of Arabic influence:
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However, as Ruskin points out at Notebook M p.82, it is difficult to interpret the evidence. It is possible, he says, that the apparent horseshoe shape of the arch is the result of later movement. The horseshoe form is, in any case, more marked in Ruskin’s image of it in Figure 26 at Works, 10.293 than in a modern photograph.
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