324 THE STONES OF VENICE

new-built house, changeless for miles together, from which, to each inhabitant, we allot his proper quantity of windows, and a Doric portico. The Venetian carried out his theory very simply. In the centre of the archivolt we find almost invariably, in the older work, the hand between the sun and moon in the attitude of blessing, expressing the general power and presence of God, the source of light. On the tympanum is the shield of the family. Venetian heraldry requires no beasts for supporters, but usually prefers angels, neither the supporters nor crests forming any necessary part of Venetian bearings.¹ Sometimes, however, human figures, or grotesques, are substituted; but, in that case, an angel is almost always introduced above the shield, bearing a globe in his left hand, and therefore clearly intended for the ‘Angel of the Lord,’ or, as it is expressed elsewhere, the ‘Angel of His Presence.’ Where elaborate sculpture of this kind is inadmissible, the shield is merely represented as suspended by a leather thong; and a cross is introduced above the archivolt. The Renaissance architects perceived the irrationality of all this, cut away both crosses and angels, and substituted heads of satyrs, which were the proper presiding deities of Venice in the Renaissance periods, and which, in our own domestic institutions, we have ever since, with much piety and sagacity, retained.”

§ 57. The habit of employing some religious symbol, or writing some religious legend, over the door of the house, does not entirely disappear until far into the period of the Renaissance. The words “Peace be to this house” occur on one side of a Veronese gateway, with the appropriate and veracious inscription S. P. Q. R.,² on a Roman standard,

¹ [Ruskin at this time had not paid, he tells us (Vol. VIII. p. 147 n.), the attention to heraldry which he afterwards gave. What he here says about “neither supporters nor crests forming any necessary part of bearings” is not peculiar to Venetian heraldry. Thus, see the distinction that he draws in The Eagle’s Nest (§ 228) between the crest as “the indication of personality” and the bearings which “indicate race.” Similarly, the use of supporters was at first restricted to a few ranks or otherwise privileged persons; in Scotland, for instance, they are properly used only by heads of houses.]

² [The familiar Roman inscription, Senatus Populus Que Romanus. The two Bible references are 1 Samuel xxv. 6 (also Luke x. 5) and Matthew xxi. 9.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]