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NOTES ON VENETIAN PALACES 441
Tiepoletto, nearly opposite, Giocondine, of Veronese type, with crisp beaded and ... [sketch] mouldings like crimped skate, round arched, with imposed finials and ears, fairly on way to School of St. Mark. Frescoed between, its frescoes very vulgar, but quite bright when I painted an oval from it in 1845. Now quite indecipherable, and not likely to stay much longer.1
Grimani a San Polo. My old lovely bird capital one.2 Giocondine, best style, extremely fine in sweeping curves of the window plinths, the bird capitals, and general precision and fine work everywhere. Low pediments to windows of lower story, circular arches above, with imposed finials, but not ears. Pendant tablets inlaid in red marble, as at the Contarini.
Corner Spinelli, opposite the Grimani.3 On the whole, the finest Renaissance palace in Venice. Giocondine, but late, with Newgate lower story, but very fine in the irregular insertion of its six windows, obtaining an entresol; note how poor it would be in comparison if the entresol windows were not put quite out of traceable relation to the balconies above. There, the lateral circular ones, unique, as also the window traceries and the projecting stair for landing, useful in the effect of this palace, but a bad innovation. The sudden band of fine foliage along the foundation is also vulgar. But if these three-Mocenigo, Grimani, and Spinelli-were together!
1 [The “Tiepoletto” is a small palace, near S. Tomŕ. Traces of frescoes are still visible (1906), especially on the piano nobile, but, with the exception of a female figure near a boat, the subjects are indecipherable.]
2 [For this palace, see Vol. XI. p. 399; one of its capitals is Fig. 12 on Plate II. in that volume (p. 12).]
3 [i.e., opposite the Palazzo Grimani, on the Grand Canal. It is noticed in Vol. XI. p. 369.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
