CHAPTER VIII¹

THE DUCAL PALACE

§1. IT was stated in the commencement of the preceding chapter that the Gothic art of Venice was separated by the building of the Ducal Palace into two distinct periods; and that in all the domestic edifices which were raised for half a century after its completion, their characteristic and chiefly effective portions were more or less directly copied from it. The fact is, that the Ducal Palace was the great work of Venice at this period, itself the principal effort of her imagination, employing her best architects in its masonry, and her best painters in its decoration, for a long series of years; and we must receive it as a remarkable testimony to the influence which it possessed over the minds of those who saw it in its progress, that, while in the other cities of Italy every palace and church was rising in some original and daily more daring form, the majesty of this single building was able to give pause to the Gothic imagination in its full career; stayed the restlessness of innovation in an instant, and forbade the powers which had created it thenceforth to exert themselves in new directions, or endeavour to summon an image more attractive.

§ 2. The reader will hardly believe that while the architectural invention of the Venetians was thus lost, Narcissuslike, in self-contemplation, the various accounts of the progress of the building thus admired and beloved are so confused as frequently to leave it doubtful to what portion of the palace they refer;² and that there is actually, at the time being, a dispute between the best Venetian antiquaries,

¹ [Chapter V. in vol. i. of the “Travellers’ Edition”: see below, p. 463.]

² [See on this point the author’s preface to the book, Vol. IX. p. 3.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]