VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 339

§ 11. In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by fire,* but repaired before 1116, when it received another emperor, Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honoured by imperial praise.† Between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. Sansovino says that this Doge not only repaired it, but “enlarged it in every direction;”‡ and, after this enlargement, the palace seems to have remained untouched for a hundred years, until, in the commencement of the fourteenth century, the works of the Gothic Palace were begun. As, therefore, the old Byzantine building was, at the time when those works first interfered with it, in the form given to it by Ziani, I shall hereafter always speak of it as the Ziani Palace;¹ and this the rather, because the only chronicler whose words are perfectly clear respecting the existence of part of this palace so late as the year 1422, speaks of it as built by Ziani. The old “Palace, of which half remains to this day, was built, as we now see it, by Sebastian Ziani.”§

So far, then, of the Byzantine Palace.

§ 12. 2nd. THE GOTHIC PALACE. The reader, doubtless, recollects that the important change in the Venetian government which gave stability to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297,|| under the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, a man thus characterised by Sansovino:-“A prompt and prudent man, of unconquerable determination and great

* “L’anno 1106, uscito fuoco, d’ una casa privata, arse parte del palazzo.”-Sansovino. Of the beneficial effect of these fires, vide Cadorin, pp. 121, 123.

† “Urbis situm, ædificiorum decorem, et regiminis æquitatem multipliciter commendavit.”-Cronaca Dandolo, quoted by Cadorin.

‡ “Non solamente rinovò il palazzo, ma lo aggrandì per ogni verso.”- Sansovino. Zanotto quotes the Altinat Chronicle for account of these repairs.

§ “El palazzo che anco di mezzo se vede vecchio, per M. Sebastian Ziani fu fatto compir, come el se vede.”-Chronicle of Pietro Dolfino, Cod. Ven., p. 47. This Chronicle is spoken of by Sansovino as “molto particolare e distinta.”-Sansovino, Venezia descritta, p. 593. It terminates in the year 1422

|| See Vol. I. Appendix 3 [Vol. IX. p. 418].

¹ [Compare Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. p. 130 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]