V

NOTES ON VENETIAN PALACES

Palazzo Rezzonico. The stupidest of the Pesaro type; its foundations mere Newgate, with no variety of size or fine placing of stones; its pillars mere heaps of cheeses; the brackets of its main balcony blank stones, doubly vulgar by the equality of their intervals; the lions with their tongues out at the bottom, feather helmets of the main story, and heads cut off at the third, all equally stupid; and the ship’s cabin elliptical windows at the top as ugly in their mouldings as in their shape. It is the only building I know in Venice which is as bad as anything we do now.¹

Palazzo Balbi like the Turk one,² but much more common, especially in flourished shields. What little good is in it, entirely destroyed by Mr. Guggenheim’s advertisement.³

Contarini delle Figure (my old Renaissance front one), Giocondine, extremely pure and severe, quite special in the slenderness of its shafts, and the perky little corners of the abaci of its capitals. Very interesting in qualities of marble, white in solid blocks in the lower story, becoming black (why?), pure in centre, coloured at top. The door of this palace, with its modest, useful harbour-like steps, its severe mouldings and delicious little Cima capitals, is exquisitely Venetian, and of extreme interest to me. The two insane figures are modern.⁴

Palazzo Mocenigo, central of three, same side. With flourished scutcheons again and severe panelling, like Turkish. Note in it this abominable late design for central windows [sketch], as well as in the next, which has been fine, but is all defaced.

¹ [In The Stones of Venice Ruskin was less severe on this palace: see Vol. XI. p. 400.]

² [Formerly the palace of the Turkish Ambassador; separated from the Fondaco dei Turchi by the old granary; a sixteenth-century palace, built by Longhena. In a letter to Rawdon Brown, now in the British Museum, written in 1876-1877, Ruskin says:-

“I examined to-day, for the first time with care, the palace for the Turkish ambassadors by the Fondaco, with the Crescent all over it. Of the extremely late palaces, it is to me one of the most interesting, but I can find no notice of it whatever in Lazari or Murray. I hope to show you next week a light sketch from the foot of it, looking to Casa della Viola, which I think you will say comes pretty.”]

³ [The Palazzo Balbi (seventeenth century), now an old curiosity shop, with the name of its proprietor prominently over the door.]

⁴ [This palace is noticed in The Stones of Venice, vol. iii. (Vol. XI. p. 21).]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]