34 THE STONES OF VENICE

the eye, that, though presenting no bold features, or striking masses of any kind, there are few things in Italy more impressive than the vision of it overhead, as the gondola glides from beneath the Bridge of Sighs. And lastly (unless we are to blame these buildings for some pieces of very childish

of which the bases and capitals are formed merely by the continuation of the mouldings below and above that course. Two discs of porphyry occupy its spandrils, and above it, occupying the height of the third course of panelling, is a delicately sculptured tablet bearing the arms of a Doge, three leopards on a cross bar, with six Turk’s beards on the shield. There is a great deal of remarkable in this tablet, as an example of Renaissance sculpture. The shield itself is of an affectedly graceful form-an herald’s shield, not a soldier’s-with a curl at its edges as if it were of paper; and it is supported by two creatures whom I cannot venture-without the reader’s concurrence, and after they have been specifically described-to characterize as angels. They appear to be youths of 12 or 15 years old, with flowing hair, wearing very light lines tunics in full folds which are fastened by a girdle at the waist, but thence descend only to their middles, the limbs of both being entirely bare, very well shaped, but rather too muscular, the sculptor having been particularly desirous that it should be seen how well he understood the anatomy of the groin and knee, and not a little vain also of his management of the drapery, which flutters into all manner of small wrinkling folds at its lower edge, as if it had been blown up to the middles of the figures by the Levante. Their arms are also bare from just below the shoulder, and each of the figures, sustaining the shield with one hand, carries a torch with the other, taller than himself, towards the flame of which, putting his head on one side, he looks up in a semi-melancholy manner. They have both of them pigeon’s wings, very delicately cut; and the chiselmanship of the whole is excellent, full of spirit, and touched with fine feeling of the ornamental power of the lines.

“The lower portions of this door have suffered much. In time a wooden porch was erected over it, carried on brackets; deep holes were cut in the marble for the supports of these, which are now left, the brackets having been removed; and the junction of the wooden roof with the stone-work is still traceable by an unsightly ledge of plaster-like a piece of swallow’s work-running across the red circles of the spandrils, and across the pilasters, as far as the windows on each side of the door. The pilaster heads and angles are all broken and worn away, and the mouldings of the foundation drilled full of holes where there were once rings to fasten the gondolas to.

“This door is therefore indication of two stages of degradation. The first that of the Renaissance, when the loss of all high feeling in design was nevertheless compatible with great artistical refinement and skill in composition. The second that of regardless destruction of art of every kind, for the sake of personal convenience.

“We next come to the four arches of the main entrance. These are four Renaissance arches of the worst kind; that is to say, round arches clumsily decorated with large roses in circles under the soffits, carried on square pillars, divided into panels by bead mouldings, and richly sculptured with arabesque on the sides. The kind of design is that now commonly adopted at Parisian cafés, but it is delicate and rich, and the doorways are not without some value as a contrast to the more manly parts of the design. But even these four arches cannot be described in general terms; the two

[Version 0.04: March 2008]