PLATE 10

PALACE IN RIO DI CA’ FOSCARI

Conjectural Restoration

BY referring to Plate 8 the reader may partly see what authority I have for this restoration, though the full evidence can only be given in the second volume of the text, with the sections and minor details of the mouldings.¹ It will at once, however, be seen in Plate 8 that the bases of the shafts are left all along the foundation, and that two of their capitals are left above (compare Plate 9), and a fragment of the inner moulding of the archivolts remains also in the arch seen on the left in Plate 9. This is enough to establish the original condition of at least one wing of the building; and from the arrangements of other and more perfect palaces of the same period, it may be assumed almost with certainty that the great archivolt was originally in its centre, and that the entire water-story was composed of nine arches, arranged as in Plate 10. The shafts were in all probability of white marble, the archivolts richly gilded, perhaps in the hollows of the carving touched with blue; the bands of red marble intended to relieve the whole yet remain, and are seen in Plate 8. The whole is evidently of the twelfth century; and in the arrangement of the arches there is one of those subtle and half-concealed varieties in proportion which I showed, both in the Seven Lamps and elsewhere, to be highly characteristic of

¹ [The references to the second volume (Vol. X.) have already been given (p.334). Probably Ruskin intended at this time that his notice of the house should be more detailed (see note 3 on p. 336). For the masonry of the archivolt, see figure 1 in Plate 8 of Stones of Venice, vol. iii. above, p. 279.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]