Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/167

Rh ART.] VENICE tury in Ravenna, and are probably of the same date, though used to decorate buildings not earlier than the 12th century. The church of St Mark, especially, is a rich storehouse of these examples of early sculpture. Others of exactly similar style, which exist in the churches of Thessalonica and other Eastern cities, bear witness to the unity of early By/antine art and its wide geographical range until the downfall of the Eastern empire. One striking feature in Venetian architecture of all dates down to the loth century is the constant use of the dentil moulding. This consists of a simple series of notchings, at once the easiest and the most effective way of enriching the thin facing-slabs when their edges were allowed to appear, as, for example, in those which lined the soffits of arches. Moslem. The influence of Moslem art is seen in the occasional use of the horse-shoe arch, in the very common ogee form which was almost universal in Venice from the 13th to the loth century, and still more clearly in the fantastic rows of battlements, formed of thin pointed slabs of marble set on edge, which crowned the walls of nearly all the chief palaces of Venice in the 14th and the loth century. Gothic. The 13th century was the time of transition from the round arched Byzantine style to the pointed arch with tracery, which in some cases was derived directly from the Gothic of northern countries. This is seen especially in the two great churches of the Dominican and Franciscan friars, SS. Giovanni e Paolo and S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. These two stately churches resemble those built by the friars in other places in Italy, 1 and have little of the dis tinctively Venetian character of the contemporary domestic build ings. In the 14th and 15th centuries one peculiarity of Venetian Gothic is the way in which tracery is used to fill rectangular and not arched openings. The result of this is that the tracery itself has to support the mass of wall above it, whereas in the Gothic of other countries the tracery is merely, as it were, a pierced screen filling in_a constructional arch, which carries the whole weight of the superimposed wall and roof. Hence the Venetian tracery, of which that in the upper story of the ducal palace is a typical ex ample, is much thicker and heavier in construction. In the latter part of the loth century Venetian architecture be^an Ilenass- to lose its distinctively local character, though very beautiful cx- sance. amplcs of Early Renaissance were built by the Lombardi family and other architects, largely under the influence of Fra Giocondo (see VERONA). Classic. In the 16th century, under the later development of the Renais sance, the Pseudo-Classic style was paramount in Venice, and Sanso- vino, Palladio, and others designed many costly buildings which had nothing specially Venetian in their style. This magnificent but dull and scholastic form of architecture reached its highest development in Venice, where it was later in degenerating into tasteless decadence than was generally the case elsewhere. Even in the 17th century good models of the Revived Classic style were built, especially by Longhena (see p. 155 below). After that the degradation of architecture and sculpture took place with &quot;reat rapidity. The periods of these styles may be roughly tabulated thus : (i.) Byzantine, 7th to end of 13th century ; (ii.) Gothic, middle of 13th to c. 1460 ; (iii.) Early Renaissance, c. 1450-1520 ; (iv.) Classic, c, 1520-1620 ; (v.) Extreme Decadence, c. 1600 downwards, ounda- Materials and Methods of Construction. In spite of its position turns, on a number of small sandy islands in the lagoons, Venice was built upon firm and solid foundations, so that very few houses have suffered seriously from settlement. At a depth of 10 to 16 feet there is a firm bed of very stiff clay, and below this a bed of sand and gravel, and then a thin layer of peat. Recent borings for Artesian wells to a depth of about 1500 feet have shown a regular succession of these beds clay, gravel, and peat repeated again and again as far down as the borings have reached. The process implied in this geological formation seems still very slowly to be going on, and the present level of the square of St Mark has been raised artificially about 20 inches above the old brick pavin shown in Gentile Bellini s picture of 1496. A good example of the old method of forming foundations is shown in that of the great cam panile of St Mark, c. 900 (see fig. 1). Here the builders dug down to the bed of stiff clay, and over the whole area of the footings of the tower drove in piles of white poplar, 10 to 11 inches in diameter, nearly touching one another. On the top of these a level platform was formed by two layers of oak trees (Quercus robur), each roughly squared, the upper layer being laid crosswise upon the lower one. The oak and poplar both grew along the shores close to Venice ; in later times, when the Venetian territory was extended, the red larch (Pinus Larix) of Cadore and the Euganean Hills was largely used, as, for example, in the foundations of the ducal palace. In 1835 the foundations of the campanile were examined, and both the oak and the poplar were found to be perfectly sound. 2 On the wooden platform massive footings are laid, consisting of five courses 149 of largo blocks of trachyte and other granitic or porphyritic rocks from the Enganean Hills. Above thfse are six courses of simil stone arranged in step-like offsets, forming a base or plinth to the !y : .V: :.t& J.I-X.K Fio. 1. T&amp;gt;o methods of forming foundations, one with piles, the other with wider footings and no piles, as exemplified in the campanile and the ducal !&amp;gt; a i? Ce A 10 - lnch P lles of wllit e poplar, close driven into the stiff clay J3,B. Double layers of oak planks, the same in both. C. Rough footings of campanile, made of trachyte and other volcanic stones. D. Similar footings under pillars of ducal palace. E. Stylobate of three steps, under lower log&amp;lt;*t a Of palace, now hidden by raised level of modern pavement. F. One of The Istrian stone pillars of the palace. G. Paving of loggia, now flush with that outside. 1 Comp. 8. Maria Novella and S. Croce in Florence and 8. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Giacomo Boni in the Archivio Veneto, ser. ii., vol. xxix., pt. ii., 1885. tower ; owing to the raising of the pavement level only two and a half of these offsets are now visible. Another way of forming foundations, which was used in rather later times, was to omit the piles altogether and build footings with a wider spread. Fig. 1, which also shows the foundations of the ducal palace, dating from the 14th century, is a typical example of this second method, in which the oak platform is laid immediately on the stiff clay. The use of trachyte for foundations was soon superseded by that of Istrian limestone, a very beautiful cream-coloured stone, extremely fine and close in texture and capable of receiving a very high polish. Though not crystalline in grain, and, technically speakfng, not a true marble, this Istrian stone has for most architectural purposes all the beauty of the finest white marble, and receives from age a beautiful golden -russet patina, very much like that assumed by Pentelic marble. From the llth century onwards it was used very largely for plinths, angle quoins, string-courses, window tracery, and other decorative purposes. It occurs, for example, in all the magnificent series of arcades in the ducal palace. Its extreme fine ness of grain allows it to be worked with an ivory-like delicacy and minuteness of detail. Throughout the Middle Ages the main Availing of Venetian build- Main ings was always of fine brick, usually a rich red in colour, made and walls, fired in the kilns of Murano. In spite of its beautiful colour the brick-work was seldom left visible, the- whole wall-surface being lined with thin slabs of marble in the more magnificent buildings^ or else coated with stucco, on which diapers and other decorative patterns were painted. Before 1405 the mortar used in Venice was made of the white Mortar, lime from the Istrian limestone, which possessed no hydraulic qualities, and was consequently very perishable. But after that year, when the Venetians conquered Padua, they were able to get supplies of a strong hydraulic dark lime from Albettone, which formed a very durable cement or mortar, able to resist salt water and the destructive sea air. One of the chief glories of Venice depends on its extensive use of Marbles, the most beautiful and costly marbles and porphyries, which give a wealth of magnificent colour such as is to be seen in no other city in the world. In early times none of these seem to have been obtained direct from the quarries, but from older buildings, either of Roman or early Byzantine date. 3 Immense quantities of rich marbles were brought from the ruined cities of Hcraclea, Ravenna, Altinum, and especially Aquileia. Under the Roman empire Aquileia contained great numbers of magnificent buildings, deco rated with marbles and porphyries from Greece, Numidia, Egypt, and Arabia. The gorgeous churches and palaces of the Byzantine emperors, enriched with rare marbles stolen from Greek and Roman buildings of classic times, were in their turn stripped of their costly columns and wall-linings by the victorious Venetians. Thus Venice became a magnificent storehouse in which were heaped the rich treasures accumulated throughout many previous centuries by various peoples. The principal varieties used in the palaces of Venice are the red porphyry of Egypt and the green 3 Early in the 15th century the Venetians began to work the rich quarries of red marble near Verona ; but with this exception the decorative marbles seem to have been taken from older buildings elsewhere.
 * An interesting account of this and other foundations in Venice is given by