III

“THE MAGPIE’S NEST”

1. HAVING now some general idea of the course of Venetian mind, and the correspondent changes in Venetian life, let us arrange the existing remains of the city in the groups which properly belong to the periods we have distinguished. Then our study of these ordered groups will be consistent and progressive; and may often be simplified into the examination of one or two characteristic buildings of each epoch.

Of the first great epoch however, the seven hundred years of crystallization, as I have said,¹ no authentic monument remains, nor in human memory any authentic notion. Of Wooden Venice-scattered like a floating Swiss village among islanded meadows, with her seven churches, literally “ship shape,” flagships of the cottage fleet-the reader may form for himself such dreams as pleases him; with sagacious phantasy he may create for himself some useful image of the truth, but my own poor gift has always been of sight only, never of fancy, and I must leave him, for my part, to his guideless thought.

2. The Second Epoch, 1100 to 1300, that of the Fiery Cross, and unanimous, valorous, virtuous, spoiling of one’s Infidel neighbour’s goods, may be characterised, architecturally, as the time of the Magpie’s Nest. Beginning with the great shafts of the Piazzetta,² you may look upon all the pillars of St. Mark’s, and of Venice rising round it, as upon so many stolen sticks and straws, plundered from the harried nests of unbelieving Birds. St. Mark’s first enriched within and without, some pretty green and mossy sticks thrust in, anyhow, wherever there was a niche or a corner to spare; then, universal edification of a bright city of oriental arcades, snowy with Ionian alabaster, rich with Phśnician sculpture and Byzantine gold. Magpie’s, or unprincipled Phśnix’s nest, rising out of conflagration, with diligent embalming and crowning of the sacred dead; but no vestige yet of Venetain art or thought, except this of dainty constructive grouping of whatever, with acquisitive mind, they had fortunately snatched. Rudest imitations of Greek capitals occur, where real ones could not be had; towards the close of the epoch, living Venetian invention does indeed for itself develop a capital of a totally unadorned and practical type, much resembling a flower-pot, and, as we shall see, even scratch upon the tombs of its Doges figures which we perceive by

¹ [See above, p. 427.]

² [For the story of these shafts as spoils from the East, see above, § 11, p. 215.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]