280 ST. MARK’S REST

the molecules, and plasm, and general mess of the making of you, to feel for an instant what that cry once meant, upon the lips of men?

Viva, Italia! you may still hear that cry sometimes, though she lies dead enough. Viva, Vittor-Pisani!-perhaps also that cry, yet again.

But the answer,-“Not Pisani, but St. Mark,”¹ when will you hear that again, nowadays? Yet when those bronze horses were won by the Bosphorus, it was St. Mark’s standard, not Henry Dandolo’s, that was first planted on the tower of Byzantium,-and men believed-by his own hand.² While yet his body lay here at rest: and this, its requiem on the golden scroll, was then already written over it-in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.³

In Hebrew, by the words of the prophets of Israel.

In Greek, by every effort of the building labourer’s hand, and vision to his eyes.

In Latin, with the rhythmic verse which Virgil had taught,-calm as the flowing of Mincio.

But if you will read it, you must understand now, once for all, the method of utterance in Greek art,-here, and in Greece, and in Ionia, and the isles, from its first days to this very hour.

92. I gave you the bas-relief of the twelve sheep and little caprioling lamb for a general type of all Byzantine art,⁴ to fix in your mind at once, respecting it, that its intense first character is symbolism. The thing represented means more than itself,-is a sign, or letter, more than an image.

And this is true, not of Byzantine art only, but of all

¹ [The reference is to Vettor Pisani, one of the heroes of the Chioggian war. After his defeat, through no fault of his own, at Pola in 1379, he had been cast into prison. The subsequent fall of Chioggia brought the danger near to Venice, and the people called for Pisani to take the command. The Senate gave way, and Pisani, on his release from prison, was escorted by an enthusiastic multitude. “Viva Messer Vettor Pisani,” they shouted. “Viva San Marco,” he bade them say (see Romanin, vol. iii. p. 178).]

² [July 17, 1203. See the contemporary account by Villehardouin; cited in F. C. Hodgson’s Early History of Venice, p. 378.]

³ [See John xix. 20.]

⁴ [See above, Fig. 3, p. 242.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]