I. A LETTER TO COUNT ZORZI 409

analysis of the value of colours produced by age,¹ is new in art literature, and cannot possibly be better done. It may be interesting to you to know with reference to this subject that the Gothic palace at San Severo² next to the Renaissance Lombard palace (both, I think, belonging once to your own ancient family) was radiant with the same veined purple alabasters as St. Mark’s; I was then a youth, and, in my love of geology, I painted them literally vein for vein-and, fortunately, have preserved the drawing. That palace is now stripped into a defaced wall: I have the drawing now here from England, and by the time your book is published all those true Venetians who love their city may compare it with the existing ruin.

And if any question is made of your statement of the destruction of the colours of the south side of St. Mark’s, I can produce an exact coloured drawing of that also, in old time-but it belongs to the schools of Oxford,³ to which I presented it as the most beautiful example of Byzantine colours I could give; but I cannot obtain this without formalities which would lose time, nor do I like to risk the carriage of the drawing, now become invaluable to my pupils in keeping record not only of the effect of the former façade but also of the columns of Acre, beside the door of the Baptistery, as the ancient Venetians set them, without those two horrible plinths beneath-which are as if you gave the Greek Pallas high-heeled boots.⁴

8. I will not take upon me to add anything, here, to what you have said of the wanton and inconsiderate changes made in the mouldings which it was pretended to reproduce; but in the little history of Venice⁵ which I am now

¹ [See pp. 62, 65-66, 73 of Count Zorzi’s pamphlet.]

² [See the description of it in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. X. p. 308).]

³ [See the frontispiece to this volume. The drawing is No. 209 in the Educational Series.]

⁴ [Only one of the pillars, however, stands on any sort of plinth.]

⁵ [St. Mark’s Rest. The chapter here foreshadowed was, however, not written. Ruskin again referred to his intention in a note (1881) to the “Travellers’ Edition” of Stones of Venice: see Vol. XI. p. 18 n. For other references to the two restored porticoes, see Vol. X. p. 115 n.; and Fors Clavigera, Letter 78, § 8.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]