II. MEMORIAL STUDIES OF ST. MARK’S 419

Throughout the whole façade of St. Mark’s, the capitals have only here and there by casualty lost so much as a volute or an acanthus leaf, and whatever remains is perfect as on the day it was set in its place, mellowed and subdued only in colour by time, but white still, clearly white; and grey still, softly grey; its porphyry purple as an Orleans plum, and the serpentine as green as a greengage.

9. Note also, that in this throughout perfect decorated surface there is not a loose joint. The appearances of dislocation, which here and there look like yielding of masonry, are merely carelessness in the replacing or resetting of the marble armour at the different times when the front has been retouched-in several cases quite wilful freaks of arrangement. The slope of the porphyry shaft, for instance, on the angle at the left of my drawing, looks like dilapidation. Were it really so, the building would be a heap of ruins in twenty-four hours. These porches sustain no weight above,-their pillars carry merely an open gallery; and the inclination of the red marble pilasters at the angle is not yielding at all, but an originally capricious adjustment of the marble armour. It will be seen that the investing marbles between the arch and pilaster are cut to the intended inclination, which brings the latter nearly into contact with the upper archivolt; the appearance of actual contact being caused by the projection of the dripstone. There are, indeed, one or two leaning towers in Venice whose foundations have partly yielded; but if anything were in danger on St. Mark’s Place, it would be the campanile¹ -three hundred feet high,-and not the little shafts and galleries within reach-too easy reach-of the gaslighter’s ladder. And the only dilapidations I have myself seen on this porch, since I first drew it forty-six years ago, have

of the pillars fits the description here. In the Notes on Prout and Hunt, however, where, “No. 107” is also mentioned (Vol. XIV. p. 427), it is called “my old sketch,” and is said to show in their true colours “the marble walls and pavement.” There is another drawing of the subject at Oxford, Supplementary Cabinet, No. 174 (Vol. XXI. p. 306), but that, again, is in light and shade only, on a purple ground, resembling the one in the British Museum.]

¹ [A prophecy which was only too true: see Vol. IX. pp. 248-249 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]