166 THE STONES OF VENICE

sustain, details are given in the Appendix¹ and in the notice of Venetian doors in Chapter VII.² In the private palaces, the ranges of archivolt are for the most part very simple, with dentilled mouldings; and all the ornamental effect is entrusted to pieces of sculpture set in the wall above or between the arches, in the manner shown in Plate 15 below, Chapter VII. These pieces of sculpture are either crosses, upright oblongs, or circles: of all the three forms an example is given in Plate 11 opposite. The cross was apparently an invariable ornament, placed either in the centre of the archivolt of the doorway, or in the centre of the first story above the windows; on each side of it the circular and oblong ornaments were used in various alternation. In too many instances the wall marbles have been torn away from the earliest Byzantine palaces, so that the crosses are left on their archivolts only. The best examples of the cross set above the windows are found in houses of the transitional period: one in the Campo St^a M. Formosa; another, in which a cross is placed between every window, is still well preserved in the Campo St^a Maria Mater Domini;³ another, on the Grand Canal, in the parish of the Apostoli, has two crosses, one on each side of the first story, and a bas-relief of Christ enthroned in the centre; and finally, that from which the larger cross in the Plate was taken is the house once belonging to Marco Polo, at San Giovanni Grisostomo.⁴

§ 26. This cross, though graceful and rich, and given because it happens to be one of the best preserved, is uncharacteristic in one respect; for, instead of the central rose at the meeting of the arms, we usually find a hand raised in the attitude of blessing, between the sun and moon, as in the two smaller crosses seen in the Plate. In nearly all representations of the Crucifixion, over the whole of Europe, at the period in question, the sun and moon are introduced, one on each side of the cross,-the sun generally, in paintings, as a red star; but I

¹ [That is, Appendix 10 (iv.) in the next volume.]

² [See §§ 25-30, pp. 291-295.]

³ [See further, Stones of Venice, vol. iii. (Venetian Index, s. “Mater Domini”).]

⁴ [Ibid. (Venetian Index, s. “Polo, Palazzo”).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]