PLATE 9

STILTED ARCHIVOLTS

From a Ruin in the Rio di Ca’ Foscari

IN the last Plate the ancient portions of this ruin were given in their relative positions, but without the modern features connecting them. That the reader may have some idea of these, I have drawn the central arch on a larger scale in this Plate¹, exactly as it appeared in 1849. It was a beautifully picturesque fragment; the archivolt sculptures being executed in marble, which seemed, in some parts, rather to have gained than lost in whiteness by its age, and set off by the dark and delicate leaves of the Erba della Madonna², the only pure piece of modern addition to the old design, all else being foul plaster and withering wood³. There is a curious instance, however, in

¹ [Here reduced from 19½ x 10 to 7½ x 3¾; as to the title, see above, p. xxxiv.]

² [For this plant (Linaria Cymbalaria), the “ivy-leaved toadflax” of English gardens, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. ix. § 18, and Queen of the Air, § 87.]

³ [Among the loose sheets of MS. there is a fuller description of the ruin:-

“Entering the Rio di Ca’ Foscari from the Grand Canal we should in general run the risk of passing without notice a building on the left-hand side, a few hundred yards beyond the entrance to the cortile of the Casa Foscari. It is now a ruin, barely habitable by the lowest classes, but the masonry which is built into the broken walls is of the highest interest-a fossil palace of the twelfth century, of which the greatest part has indeed been entirely swept away, and what is left grievously injured and overwhelmed in the modern brickwork; but, with a few exceptional cases of dislocation, the limbs retain their primitive position and enable us to understand the plan of the first story of the original edifice.”

Then follow various detailed observations which need not be given, as the result of them is shown in Ruskin’s a reconstruction (Plate 10). “I look upon this building,” he continues, “as one of the most genuine fragments of the twelfth century in Venice;” and then, with regard to the arch shown in Plate 9, he adds:-

“What treatment it has been subjected to by the Venetians may be seen in the 9th Plate, which represents the central arch exactly as it appeared in the winter of 1849. There is a rude door of plank below, through which entrance is gained to a dark stair and labyrinth of miserable rooms: one of these is feebly lighted by the window seen in the centre of the Plate; and while I was taking the measurements of the archivolts from this window, and old woman was supping yellow rice and water out of an iron saucepan, and muttering fitful complaints of the destitution in which the poor were left in Venice.”]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]