22 THE STONES OF VENICE

the whole series tied under the chin of a little cherub at the top, who is nailed against the façade like a hawk on a barn door.

But chiefly let him notice, in the Casa Contarini delle Figure, one most strange incident, seeming to have been permitted, like the choice of the subjects at the three angles of the Ducal Palace, in order to teach us, by a single lesson, the true nature of the style in which it occurs. In the intervals of the windows of the first story, certain shields and torches are attached, in the form of trophies, to the stems of two trees whose boughs have been cut off, and only one or two of their faded leaves left, scarcely observable, but delicately sculptured here and there, beneath the insertions of the severed boughs.

It is as if the workman had intended to leave us an image of the expiring naturalism of the Gothic school. I had not seen this sculpture when I wrote the passage referring to its period, in the first volume of this work (Chap. XX. § 31):-“Autumn came,-the leaves were shed,-and the eye was directed to the extremities of the delicate branches. The Renaissance frosts came, and all perished!”

§ 24. And the hues of this autumn of the early Renaissance are the last which appear in architecture. The winter which succeeded was colourless as it was cold; and although the Venetian painters struggled long against its influence, the numbness of the architecture prevailed over them at last, and the exteriors of all the latter palaces were built only in barren stone. As at this point of our inquiry, therefore, we must bid farewell to colour, I have reserved for this place the continuation of the history of chromatic decoration, from the Byzantine period, when we left it in the fifth chapter of the second volume, down to its final close.¹

§ 25. It was above stated,² that the principal difference in general form and treatment between the Byzantine and

¹ [See Vol. X. p. 170.]

² [See Vol. X. pp. 275-276.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]