VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 335

interior of the chamber, and suffered the external appearance to take care of itself. And I believe the whole pile rather gains than loses in effect by the variation thus obtained in the spaces of wall above and below the windows.

§ 8. On the party wall, between the second and third windows, which faces the eastern extremity of the Great Council Chamber, is painted the Paradise of Tintoret;¹ and this wall will therefore be hereafter called the “Wall of the Paradise.”

In nearly the centre of the Sea Façade, and between the first and second windows of the Great Council Chamber, is a large window to the ground, opening on a balcony, which is one of the chief ornaments of the palace, and will be called in future the “Sea Balcony.”

The façade which looks on the Piazzetta is very nearly like this to the Sea, but the greater part of it was built in the fifteenth century, when people had become studious of their symmetries. Its side windows are all on the same level. Two light the west end of the Great Council Chamber, one lights a small room anciently called the Quarantia Civile Nuova; the other three, and the central one, with a balcony like that to the Sea, light another large chamber, called Sala del Scrutinio, or “Hall of Inquiry,” which extends to the extremity of the palace above the Porta della Carta.

§ 9. The reader is now well enough acquainted with the topography of the existing building, to be able to follow the accounts of its history.²

¹ [See below, pp. 345, 355.]

² [With regard to the chronology of the Ducal Palace, fully discussed in §§ 9-29 of this chapter, and again in Appendix i, in the next volume, it should be stated that all Ruskin’s conclusions are not universally accepted. A case against them on one point was first stated in a review (above referred to, p. xlv.) in The National Miscellany for November 1853. This was probably written by J. H. Parker, the Oxford antiquary, as the illustrations given in the review appear again in that author’s Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture (pp. 296-297). One of these is a woodcut from a MS. of 1360 (MS. Bodl. 264, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford), giving a view of St. Mark’s and the Ducal Palace. The reader, by referring to the woodcut and considering the representation of St. Mark’s there given, will judge how far the drawing can be accepted as good evidence in the case of the Ducal Palace. (For a remark by Ruskin on the inaccuracy of early prints, see his note in Appendix i. in the next volume.) Parker accepts the evidence as conclusive; and the drawing shows the upper stories set back

[Version 0.04: March 2008]