12 THE STONES OF VENICE

Gothic of Venice, there are one or two features which, under other circumstances, would not have been signs of decline: but, in the particular manner of their occurrence here, indicate the fatal weariness of decay. Of all these features the most distinctive are its crockets and finials.¹

§ 14. There is not to be found a single crocket or finial upon any part of the Ducal Palace built during the fourteenth century; and although they occur on contemporary, and on some much earlier, buildings, they either indicate detached examples of schools not properly Venetian, or are signs of incipient decline.

The reason of this is, that the finial is properly the ornament of gabled architecture; it is the compliance, in the minor features of the building, with the spirit of its towers, ridged roof, and spires. Venetian building is not gabled, but horizontal in its roofs and general masses; therefore the finial is a feature contradictory to its spirit, and adopted only in that search for morbid excitement which is the infallible indication of decline. When it occurs earlier, it is on fragments of true gabled architecture; as, for instance, on the porch of the Carmini.²

In proportion to the unjustifiableness of its introduction was the extravagance of the form it assumed; becoming, sometimes, a tuft at the top of the ogee windows, half as high as the arch itself, and consisting, in the richest examples, of a human figure, half emergent out of a cup of leafage; as, for instance, in the small archway of the Campo San Zaccaria: while the crockets, as being at the side of the arch, and not so strictly connected with its balance and symmetry, appear to consider themselves at greater liberty even than the finials, and fling themselves hither and thither in the wildest contortions. Fig. 4, in Plate 1, is the outline of one, carved in stone, from the later Gothic of St. Mark’s; fig. 3 a crocket from the fine Veronese Gothic; in order to

¹ [On this subject, see Vol. IX. p. 404.]

² [For other details of this building, see below, Venetian Index, p. 365.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]