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Archivolt in the Duomo of Murano. [f.p.58,r]
58 THE STONES OF VENICE
are, as we shall see in the fifth Chapter,1 constantly employed on the keystones of Byzantine arches.
§ 29. We must not pass without notice the grey and green pieces of marble inserted at the flanks of the arch. For, observe, there was a difficulty in getting the forms of the triangle into anything like reconciliation at this point, and a mediæval artist always delights in a difficulty; instead of concealing it, he boasts of it; and just as we saw above2 that he directed the eye to the difficulty of filling the expanded sides of the upper band by elongating his triangles, so here, having to put in a piece of stone of awkward shape, he makes that very stone the most conspicuous in the whole arch, on both sides, by using in one case a dark, cold grey; in the other a vigorous green, opposed to the warm red and purple and white of the stones above and beside it. The green and white piece on the right is of a marble, as far as I know, exceedingly rare. I at first thought the white fragments were inlaid, so sharply are they defined upon their ground. They are indeed inlaid, but I believe it is by nature; and that the stone is a calcareous breccia of great mineralogical interest.3 The white spots are of singular value in giving piquancy to the whole range of more delicate transitional hues above. The effect of the whole is, however, generally injured by the loss of the three large triangles above. I have no doubt they were purple, like those which remain, and that the whole arch was thus one zone of white, relieved on a purple ground, encircled by the scarlet cornices of brick, and the whole chord of colour contrasted by the two precious fragments of grey and green at either side.
§ 30. The two pieces of carved stone inserted at each side of the arch, as seen at the bottom of Plate 5, are of different workmanship from the rest; they do not match each other, and form part of the evidence which proves that portions of
1 [See below, p. 166.]
2 [See § 26.]
3 [And therefore of great interest to Ruskin. See his contributions to the Geological Magazine (1867-1870), reprinted in a later volume of this edition, “On Banded and Brecciated Concretions.”]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
