PLATE 8

BYZANTINE RUIN

In Rio di Ca’ Foscari¹

THE wreck of the one of the most ancient and interesting palaces in Venice has been abandoned to utter neglect, and hitherto unnoticed even by the native antiquary, much more by the careless traveller. Fortunately, enough of the ruins remained in the year 1849 to enable me to reconstruct the ground-, or, as I shall always call it, in Venice, the waterstory², with very slight chance of error. The existing fragments are given in this Plate; the intermediate spaces being filled up with modern wall, and various windows opened in different places, which I have not drawn, in order that the reader may at once apprehend the relations of the ancient portions. The whole are drawn carefully to scale³, and there are some remarkable points about the dimensions, noticed in the explanation of Plate 10.

¹ [See Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. v. § 10 (Vol. X. p. 151) for the dimensions of the arches of this house, and ibid., Appendix 11 (5), p. 454, for some general remarks on it.]

² [See Vol. X. p. xliv.]

³ [The plate is here reduced from 17½ x 12¼ to 6¼ x 4³/8.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]