CHAPTER III

GROTESQUE RENAISSANCE¹

§ 1. IN the close of the last chapter it was noted that the phases of transition in the moral temper of the falling Venetians, during their fall, were from pride to infidelity, and from infidelity to the unscrupulous pursuit of pleasure. During the last years of the existence of the state, the minds both of the nobility and the people seem to have been set simply upon the attainment of the means of self-indulgence. There was not strength enough in them to be proud, nor forethought enough to be ambitious. One by one the possessions of the state were abandoned to its enemies; one by one the channels of its trade were forsaken by its own languor, or occupied and closed against it by its more energetic rivals; and the time, the resources, and the thoughts of the nation were exclusively occupied in the invention of such fantastic and costly pleasures as might best amuse their apathy, lull their remorse, or disguise their ruin.

§ 2. The architecture raised at Venice during this period is among the worst and basest ever built by the hands of men, being especially distinguished by a spirit of brutal mockery and insolent jest, which, exhausting itself in deformed and monstrous sculpture, can sometimes be hardly otherwise defined than as the perpetuation in stone of the ribaldries of drunkenness. On such a period, and on such work, it is painful to dwell, and I had not originally intended to do so; but I found that the entire spirit of the Renaissance could not be

¹ [Of this chapter the “Travellers’ Edition” reprints (a) §§ 1-22, 39, and 76 as chapter v. of vol. ii., headed “Mene,” and beginning “In the course of the last two chapters we have seen that the phases...”; (b) §§ 52-67 as Appendix i., headed “Grotesque Renaissance.” With the chapter, compare Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. viii.; and vol. iv. Appendix 1.]

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