IV. ST. MARK’S 137

in white apparel who appeared at the moment of the Ascension, above whom, as uttered by them, are inscribed the words, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This Christ, the Son of God, as He is taken from you, shall so come, the arbiter of the earth, trusted to do judgment and justice.”¹

§ 69. Beneath the circle of the apostles, between the windows of the cupola, are represented the Christian virtues, as sequent upon the crucifixion of the flesh, and the spiritual ascension together with Christ. Beneath them, on the vaults which support the angles of the cupola, are placed the four Evangelists, because on their evidence our assurance of the

pillars, the golden field of the vaults. In order to fit them for this architectural service, the branches are lopped off all up the trunks, and the foliage is only represented in the clustering heads. There may, perhaps, be a meaning in this, some allusion to the cutting away of the old branches from the Jewish olive tree and the grafting in of the new, but the procedure would have involved a painful stiffness in the stems if the growth and life had not been faithfully represented by golden lines drawn within the dark ground of the stems. In the last stage of Venetian architecture we shall again meet with trees whose boughs have been lopped away, but without any revivifying powers. I have therefore given at the side of the page one of these Byzantine stems, and beside it the portion of the stem of a real tree with its bark removed, in order that the reader may judge for himself of the degree of perception of the essential and vital power of the thing represented which is so remarkably characteristic of this early art.

“Another remarkable point is the interruption of the general aspect of the circle by the figure of the Madonna. A modern architect required to decorate a dome would assuredly have made it with the figures in all its compartments as nearly alike as might be; but in this case the twelve figures of the Apostles are arranged in unbroken series, with drapery in finely divided folds and of light colours; then come the two angels in white, with their wings bedropped with gold, and between these, that is to say, in the whitest part of the whole circle, is placed the Madonna, in a solid mass of dark blue drapery nearly black, and relieved only by three small golden crosses, one on each shoulder, and one on the part of the dress which falls over the forehead; this figure fronts the west door of the church, and its darkness gives light and brilliancy to all the rest of the dome. This exquisite decorative arrangement has been fancied by later Catholic writers to be merely a piece of Mariolatry, and the writer of the account of St. Mark’s, above quoted, not recollecting that St. Luke [Acts i. 10] tells us that “two men stood by them in white apparel,” supposes them to have been introduced merely to increase the Virgin’s importance, and describes this part of the mosaic as the Madonna accompanied by two angels.”

The “writer above quoted” (i.e. in the MS., not in the text as it stands) is the author of the Italian work referred to in the Introduction, above, p. li.; the passage cited is at vol. ii. p. 33. For some further remarks on the artistic quality of these mosaics, see St. Mark’s Rest, § 108.]

¹ [Acts i. 11; Jeremiah xxiii. 5. For another translation of this inscription, see St. Mark’s Rest, §§ 107, 131.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]