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408 ST. MARK’S, VENICE
look of a peacock’s feather that has been dipped in white paint. I cannot guess where the sandy or muddy brown stone has been brought from (the commonest kinds of Verona marble being brighter), nor can I understand how the Venetian people can bear to look at such colour, while the pictures of Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini show the beautiful warm red which, as you so rightly observe,1 was everywhere used on house fronts in those days of perfect art, giving the name of “Venetian” red to that colour, all over Europe.
6. What changes have been made in the other stones, or what damage done to the surfaces of those which remain, I do not know: but this I know, that in old time I looked every day at this side of St. Mark’s, wondering whether I ever should be able to paint anything so lovely; and that now, not only would any good colourist refuse to paint it as a principal subject, but he would feel that he could not introduce that portion of the building into any picture without spoiling it. It would not, indeed, have been possible, unless with Aladdin’s lamp, to make a new St. Mark’s as beautiful as the old, for the like of the old marbles cannot, I believe, be obtained from any now known quarry. So that last year, lecturing in my schools at Oxford on the geology of architecture, I took these very marbles of St. Mark’s for principal illustration,2 and, to my bitter sorrow, was able to hold in my hand, and show to my scholars, pieces of the white and purple veined alabasters, more than a foot square, bought here in Venice out of the wrecks of restoration.
7. I cannot enough thank you for the admirable care and completeness with which you have exposed the folly of thus throwing away the priceless marbles of the original structure, and explained to your readers every point relating to the beauty and durability of such materials. Your
1 [See p. 174 of Count Zorzi’s pamphlet.]
2 [Not at Oxford, but at the London Institution: see Deucalion, i. (“The Iris of the Earth”), and compare below, p. 420.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
