AUTHOR’S APPENDIX

1. [VOL. X. P. 345.] ARCHITECT OF THE DUCAL PALACE

POPULAR tradition, and a large number of the chroniclers, ascribe the building of the Ducal Palace to that Filippo Calendario¹ who suffered death for his share in the conspiracy of Faliero. He was certainly one of the leading architects of the time, and had for several years the superintendence of the works of the Palace; but it appears, from the documents collected by the Abbé Cadorin, that the first designer of the Palace, the man to whom we owe the adaptation of the Frari traceries to civil architecture, was Pietro Baseggio, who is spoken of expressly as “formerly the Chief Master of our New Palace,”* in the decree of 1361, quoted by Cadorin, and who, at his death, left Calendario his executor. Other documents collected by Zanotto,² in his work on Venezia e le sue Lagune, show that Calendario was for a long time at sea, under the commands of the Signory, returning to Venice only three or four years before his death; and that therefore the entire management of the works of the Palace, in the most important period, must have been entrusted to Baseggio.

It is quite impossible, however, in the present state of the Palace, to distinguish one architect’s work from another in the older parts; and I have not in the text embarrassed the reader by any attempt at close definition of epochs before the great junction of the Piazzetta Façade with the older palace in the fifteenth century. Here, however, it is necessary that I should briefly state the observations I was able to make on the relative dates of the earlier portions.

In the description of the Fig-tree angle, given in the eighth chapter of Vol. II., I said that it seemed to me somewhat earlier than that of the Vine,³ and the reader might be surprised at the apparent opposition of this

* “Olim magistri prothi palatii nostri novi.”-Cadorin, p. 127.

¹ [See further on this subject letterpress to Plate 12 in the Examples, below, p. 342. Filippo Calendario was a relation of the Doge Marin Faliero, and he appears as a conspirator in Byron’s tragedy. A person of that name did unquestionably take an active share in the plot, and was hanged with a gag in his mouth from the red pillars (referred to by Ruskin below) of the balcony of the palace from which the Doge was wont to view the shows in the Piazzetta. His identity with the architect is, however, very doubtful; it appears that Filippo, the architect, died in the year preceding the other Filippo’s execution, whilst peaceably employed upon his work.]

² [The work here mentioned was published at Venice in 1847 by a committee of which Count Giovanni Correr was President, Zanotto being one of several contributors. The reference is to vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 343.]

³ [See Vol. X. p. 360.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]