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248 ST. MARK’S REST
throned St. George, the artist never meant to say that twelve sheep ever stood in two such rows, and were the twelve apostles; nor that St. George ever sat in that manner in a splendid chair. But he entirely believed in the facts of the lives of the apostles and saints, symbolized by such figuring.
But the fifteenth-century sculptor does, partly, mean to assert that St. George did in that manner kill a dragon: does not clearly know whether he did or not; does not care very much whether he did or not;-thinks it will be very nice if, at any rate, people believe that he did;-but is more bent, in the heart of him, on making a pretty bas-relief than on anything else.
Half-way to infidelity, the fine gentleman is, with all his dainty chiselling. We will see, on those terms, what, in another century, this fine chiselling comes to.
So now walk on, down the Merceria di San Salvador. Presently, if it is morning, and the sky clear, you will see, at the end of the narrow little street, the brick apse of St. Saviour’s, warm against the blue; and, if you stand close to the right, a solemn piece of old Venetian wall and window on the opposite side of the calle, which you might pass under twenty times without seeing, if set on the study of shops only. Then you must turn to the right; perforce,-to the left again; and now to the left, once more; and you are in the little piazza of St. Salvador, with a building in front of you, now occupied as a furniture store, which you will please look at with attention.1
52. It reminds you of many things at home, I suppose?-has a respectable, old-fashioned, city-of-London look about it;-something of Greenwich Hospital, of Temple Bar, of St. Paul’s, of Charles the Second and the Constitution, and the Lord Mayor and Mr. Bumble? Truly English, in
1 [The history of this building-formerly the School of St. Theodore-is given in Tassini’s Curiosità Veneziane, pp. 621-622. It was erected after 1648; on the suppression of the Confraternity in 1810, it was for a time used to store the State archives.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
