164 THE STONES OF VENICE

tracery of the higher clouds, is owing to it, not less than that which we receive from the fine meshes of the robe, the braiding of the hair, and the various glittering of the linked net or wreathed chain. Byzantine ornamentation, like that of almost all nations in a state of progress, is full of this kind of work: but it occurs most conspicuously, though most simply, in the minute traceries which surround their most solid capitals; sometimes merely in a reticulated veil, as in the tenth figure in the Plate, sometimes resembling a basket, on the edges of which are perched birds and other animals.¹ The diamonded ornament in the eleventh figure is substituted for it in the Casa Loredan, and marks a somewhat later time and a tendency to the ordinary Gothic chequer; but the capitals which show it most definitely are those already so often spoken of as the lily capitals of St. Mark’s,² of which the northern one is carefully drawn in Plate 9, facing p. 163.

§ 24. These capitals, called barbarous by our architects, are without exception the most subtle pieces of composition in broad contour which I have ever met with in architecture. Their profile is given in the opposite Plate 10,³ fig. 3 b; the inner line in the figure being that of the stone behind the lily, the outer, that of the external network, taken through the side of the capital; while fig. 3 c is the outer profile at its angle: and the reader will easily understand that the passing of the one of these lines into the other is productive of the most exquisite and wonderful series of curvatures possible within such compass, no two views of the capital giving the same contour. Upon these profoundly studied outlines, as remarkable for their grace and complexity as the general mass of the capital is for solid strength and proportion to its necessary service, the braided work is wrought with more than usual care; perhaps, as suggested by the Marchese Selvatico,⁴

¹ [See Proserpina, i. ch. v., for some further remarks on the basket-work capitals.]

² [See Vol. IX. p. 386, and above, § 19, p. 160.]

³ [For further particulars with regard to this Plate, see in the next volume, Appendix 10 (iii.). Fig. 4, from the Fondaco de’ Turchi, is shown larger in Plate 12 (at the bottom) in the next volume.]

⁴ [See Vol. IX. p. 386, where the passage is more fully referred to.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]