20 THE STONES OF VENICE

§ 23. This is especially the case with that second branch of the Renaissance which, as above noticed,¹ was engrafted at Venice on the Byzantine types. So soon as the classical enthusiasm required the banishment of Gothic forms, it was natural that the Venetian mind should turn back with affection to the Byzantine models in which the round arches and simple shafts, necessitated by recent law, were presented under a form consecrated by the usage of their ancestors. And, accordingly, the first distinct school of architecture* which arose under the new dynasty was one in which the method of inlaying marble, and the general forms of shaft and arch, were adopted from the buildings of the twelfth century, and applied with the utmost possible refinements of modern skill. Both at Verona and Venice the resulting architecture is exceedingly beautiful. At Verona it is, indeed, less Byzantine, but possesses a character of richness and tenderness almost peculiar to that city.† At Venice it is more severe, but yet adorned with sculpture which, for sharpness of touch and delicacy of minute form, cannot be rivalled, and rendered especially brilliant and beautiful by the introduction of those inlaid circles of coloured marble, serpentine, and porphyry, by which Phillippe de Commynes was so much struck on his first entrance into the city.² The two most refined buildings in this style in

* Appendix 4: “Date of Palaces of Byzantine Renaissance” [p. 255].

† Alas, the noblest example of it, Fra Giocondo’s exquisite loggia, has been daubed and damned by the modern restorer, into a caricature worse than a Christmas clown’s. The exquisite colour of the Renaissance fresco, pure as rose-leaves and dark laurel-the modern Italian decorator thinks “sporco,” and replaces by buff-colour oil-cloth and Prussian green-spluttering his gold about wherever the devil prompts him, to enrich the whole. [1881.]³

¹ [See above, pp. 5-6.]

[See Vol. IX. p. 32.]

³ [Compare the Guide to the Academy at Venice, where, in relation to Carpaccio’s pictures, Ruskin describes the Venetian architecture of the Early Renaissance as “Giocondine,” from the name of its greatest designer. He there selects as a typical instance of Giocondine architecture the courtyard of the School of St. John (see below, Venetian Index, p. 388). Fra Giocondo (circ. 1445-1525) was eminent alike as scholar (he discovered the letters of Pliny, and produced the first correct edition of Vitruvius), engraver, and architect. His Loggia at Verona, being considered “dirty,” was restored and repainted in 1874.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]