300 ST. MARK’S REST

of which though much was gone, yet, when I was last in Venice, much was left, wholly lovely and mighty. The principal figure of the Throned Christ was indeed for ever destroyed by the restorer; but the surrounding Prophets, and the Virgin in prayer, at least retained so much of their ancient colour and expression as to be entirely noble,-if only one had nobility enough in one’s own thoughts to forgive the failure of any other human soul to speak clearly what it had felt of most divine.

My notes have got confused, and many lost; and now I have no time to mend the thread of them: I am not sure even if I have the list of the Prophets complete;¹ but these following at least you will find, and (perhaps with others between) in this order-chosen, each, for his message concerning Christ, which is written on the scroll he bears.

119.

I. On the Madonna’s left hand, Isaiah. “Behold, a virgin shall conceive.” (Written as far as “Immanuel.”²)

II. Jeremiah. “Hic est inquit Dominus Noster.”³

III. Daniel. “Cum venerit” as far as to “cessabit unctio.”⁴

IV. Obadiah. “Ascendit sanctus in Monte Syon.”⁵

V. Habakkuk. “God shall come from the South, and the Holy One from Mount Paran.”⁶

¹ [The list was correctly given by Ruskin; but in his day the dome was so blackened by age and from candles that the inscriptions were barely legible. In the inscription to “Jeremiah,” Ruskin misread “... in quo Deus ...” for “inquit Dominus.” In following notes the inscriptions are given, with reference to the passages in the Vulgate from which they are quoted or adapted.]

² [The inscription is “Ecce virgo concipiet, et pariet filium, et vocabitur Emmanuel” (Isaiah vii. 14). A drawing of the figures of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel is No. 98 in the Reference Series at Oxford (Vol. XXI. p. 37).]

³ [The inscription continues, “et non æsti [mabitur alius adversus eum].” The mosaicists put into Jeremiah’s mouth words adapted from the Book of Baruch (iii. 35): “Hic est Deus noster et ...” (“This is our God, and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison of him”).]

⁴ [“Cum venerit Sanctus Sanctorum cessabit unctio” (a summary of Daniel iv. 24-27).]

⁵ [The inscription is “Ascendit Salvator in montem Syon et erit regnum Domino” (Obadiah i. 21).]

⁶ [“Deus ab austro veniet, et Sanctus de monte Pharan” (Habakkuk iii. 3).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]