GEREMIA-GIORGIO 381

series of paintings by Vittor Carpaccio. (1877. See St. Mark’s Rest. First Supplement, “The Shrine of the Slaves.”¹)

GIORGIO IN ALGA (St. George in the seaweed), CHURCH OF ST. Unimportant in itself, but the most beautiful view of Venice at sunset is from a point at about two-thirds of the distance from the city to the island.²

(1877. From the island itself, now, the nearer view is spoiled by loath-some mud-castings and machines. But all is spoiled from what it was. The Campanile, good early Gothic, had its top knocked off to get space for an observatory in the siege.)

GIORGIO MAGGIORE, CHURCH OF ST. A building which owes its interesting effect chiefly to its isolated position, being seen over a great space of lagoon. The traveller should especially notice in its façade the manner in which the central Renaissance architects (of whose style this church is a renowned example) endeavoured to fit the laws they had established to the requirements of their age. Churches were required with aisles and clerestories, that is to say, with a high central nave and lower wings; and the question was, how to face this form with pillars of one proportion. The noble Romanesque architects built story above story, as at Pisa and Lucca; but the base Palladian architects dared not do this. They must needs retain some image of the Greek temple, but the Greek temple was all of one height, a low gable roof being borne on ranges of equal pillars. So the Palladian builders raised first a Greek temple with pilasters for shafts; and, through the middle of its roof, or horizontal beam, that is to say, of the cornice which externally represented this beam, they lifted another temple on pedestals, adding these barbarous appendages to the shafts, which otherwise would not have been high enough; fragments of the divided cornice or tie-beam being left between the shafts, and the great door of the church thrust in between the pedestals. It is impossible to conceive a design more gross, more barbarous, more childish in conception, more servile in plagiarism, more insipid in result, more contemptible under every point of rational regard.³

Observe, also, that when Palladio had got his pediment at the top of the church, he did not know what to do with it: he had no idea of decorating it except by a round hole in the middle. (The traveller should compare, both in construction and decoration, the Church of the Redentore with this of San Giorgio.) Now, a dark penetration is often a most precious assistance to a building dependent upon colour for its effect; for a cavity is the only means in the architect’s power of obtaining certain and vigorous shadow; and for this purpose, a circular penetration, surrounded by a deep russet marble moulding, is beautifully used in the centre of the white field on the side of the Portico of St. Mark’s. But Palladio had given up colour, and pierced his pediment with a circular cavity, merely because he had not wit enough to fill it with

¹ [Carpaccio, as already noted (Vol. IV. p. 356 n), was a comparatively late discovery of Ruskin’s. The note of 1877 above displaced the words “Otherwise of no interest” in eds. 1-3.]

² [See Vol. X. p. 4, and Plate A.]

³ [See also on this subject generally Vol. IX. ch. xii. § 4, and ch. xix.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]