I. EARLY RENAISSANCE 13

enable the reader to discern the Renaissance character better by comparison with the examples of curvature above them, taken from the manuscripts. And not content with this exuberance in the external ornaments of the arch, the finial interferes with its traceries. The increased intricacy of these, as such, being a natural process in the development of Gothic, would have been no evil; but they are corrupted by the enrichment of the finial at the point of the cusp,-corrupted, that is to say, in Venice: for at Verona the finial, in the form of a fleur-de-lis, appears long previously at the cusp point, with exquisite effect; and in our own best Northern Gothic it is often used beautifully in this place, as in the window from Salisbury, Plate 12 (Vol. II.) fig. 2. But in Venice, such a treatment of it was utterly contrary to the severe spirit of the ancient traceries; and the adoption of a leafy finial at the extremity of the cusps in the door of San Stefano,¹ as opposed to the simple ball which terminates those of the Ducal Palace, is an unmistakable indication of a tendency to decline.

In like manner, the enrichment and complication of the jamb mouldings, which, in other schools, might and did take place in the healthiest periods, are, at Venice, signs of decline, owing to the entire inconsistency of such mouldings with the ancient love of the single square jamb and archivolt. The process of enrichment in them is shown by the successive examples given in Plate 7, below. They are numbered, and explained in the Appendix [p. 270].

§ 15. The date² at which this corrupt form of Gothic first prevailed over the early simplicity of the Venetian types can be determined in an instant on the steps of the choir of the Church of St. John and Paul. On our left hand, as we enter, is the tomb of the Doge Marco Cornaro, who died in 1367.³ It is rich and fully developed Gothic, with crockets

¹ [See again Venetian Index, p. 433.]

² [Here the “Travellers’ Edition” resumes from the end of § 4, reading “The date at which corrupt forms of Gothic, etc.”]

³ [See below, ch. ii. § 65, p. 97, where this tomb is further described.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]