Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/168

Rh 150 VENICE [ART. porphyry of Mount Taygetus, red and grey Egyptian granites, the beautiful lapis Atracius (verde antico), Oriental alabaster from Nurnidia and Arabia, the Phrygian pavonazzetto with its purple mottlings, cipollino from Carystus, and, in great quantities, the alabaster-like Proconnesian marble with bluish and amber-coloured striations. 1 Till the 14th or 15th century the white marbles used in Venice were from Greek quarries Parian or Peiitelic being all (like the coloured marbles) stolen from older buildings, while in later times the native marble of Carrara was imported. Large quantities of red Verona marble were used to form moulded frames round panels of white sculptured marble. The greater part of these cottly marbles seems to have been imported in the form of columns, immense numbers of which were sawn up lengthways into long thin slabs for use as wall-facings. Other columns, usually those of the most precious marbles, were sawn across, and thus the roundels were produced which stud like jewels the facades of many c 1 the palaces (see fig. 6). Thin slices sawn from the same column were reversed and placed side by side, so that the natural mottlings formed a regular sort of pattern. Very rich and complicated designs were produced by placing four slabs together to form one large pattern, repeating from one centre. The whole interior of St Mark s is decorated in this magnificent way, very large areas being covered with the same pattern recurring again and again. Thus no attempt was made to disguise the fact that the marble was only a thin surface decoration of no constructional importance. The fact that many slabs had been cut from one block was frankly acknowledged by the formation of these &quot; cut and reversed &quot; patterns, nor is there any attempt to conceal the bronze clamps which hold the slabs in their places. Gold and The fa9ades of the chief palaces of Venice down to the end of colour the 15th century were wholly covered with these magnificently decora- coloured marbles. But that was not all ; a still greater splendour tion. of effect was given by the lavish use of gold and colour, especially the costly ultramarine blue. Very frequently the whole of the sculpture, whether on capitals, archivolts, or frieze-like bands, was thickly covered with, gold leaf, the flat grounds being coloured a deep ultramarine so as to throw the reliefs into brilliant prominence. The less magnificent palaces were decorated in a simpler way. The brick surfaces between the windows and other arches were covered with fine hard stucco, made, like that of the ancient Romans, of a mixture of lime and marble dust. The whole of this was then decorated with minute diapers or other geometrical ornament in two or three earth colours, especially red, yellow, and brown ochres. Very few examples of this form of decoration still remain, owing to the corrosive action of the sea air. One notable example, dating from the 14th or 15th century, has a rich pattern formed by a series of adjacent quatrefoils, with half-figures of cherubs in the intermedi ate spaces, covering the whole flat surface of the wall. A few faded patches are now all that is left. With the early years of the 16th century and the later develop ment of the Renaissance totally different methods of architectural decoration superseded the use of precious marbles and delicate repeated ornament in colour. The Pseudo- Classic buildings of Sansovino, Palladio, and their schools were either built of white stone or marble, quite unrelieved by colour, or else stuccoed facades Frescos, were treated simply as a ground on which to paint large frescos with figure subjects, not designed with any sense of the true prin ciples of architectural decoration. These frescos, which covered the otherwise unornamental facades of many of the 16th-century palaces, were often the work of the greatest painters, from Giorgione to Tintoretto ; but the pictures, though no doubt beautiful in themselves, were obviously quite out of place on the fagade of a house : the colossal groups dwarfed the building they were painted on, and were far inferior in decorative effect to the simpler patterns of earlier times. These, too, have mostly perished : on the fondaco- of the Germans, once covered with frescos painted jointty by Titian and Giorgione, only traces of two figures now remain. One of the best-preserved series of these exterior frescos is that inside the cloister of S. Stcfano, painted by Pordenone, which has naturally suffered less than the very exposed facades on the Grand Canal. St Church of St Mark. This church stands quite alone among the Mark s, buildings of the world in respect of its unequalled richness of material and decoration, and also from the fact that it has been constructed with the spoils of countless other buildings, and there fore forms a museum of sculpture of the most varied kind, nearly every century from the 4th down to the latest Renaissance being represented in some carved panel or capital, if not more largely. 1 The splendid columns of St Mark s, which Mr Rnskin in the Stones of Venice speaks of as being of alabaster, really are of Proconnesian marble, and are so described by various early Byzantine writers. According to Vitruvius (ii. 8), the magnificent palaces of Croesus of Lydia and Mausolus of Halicarnassus were chiefly adorned with Proconnesian marble. 2 The word fnnrlac.n, of Arab provenance, from the Greek TravSox^ov, applied to several of the largest Venetian palaces, denotes the mercantile head quarters of a foreign trading nation. The fondachi of the Turks and of the Germans still exist, though much modernized. An analogous establishment was the hellenium of the trading Greeks at Naucratis in the Egyptian delta, remains of which have recently been discovered by Mr Flinders Petrie(see Pro ceedings of the Egypt. Explor. Soc., 18S6). During the early years of Venetian history the site of the present Site. church and square of St Mark was a large grassy field, with rows of trees, divided by a canal (which no longer exists), and containing two churches. One of these, dedicated to St Theodore, the old patron saint of Venice, stood on the site of the present church of St Mark. The other, that of S. Geniiniano, was a little to the north west of the great campanile. Fig. 3 (below) shows its position, and also the site on which it was rebuilt by Sebastiano Ziani (1173-79), when he pulled down the original church in order to extend the square westwards. In the 16th century it was again rebuilt by Cristoforo del Legname and Sansovino, and was destroyed in 1805 by Napoleon I., to make room for a new block to unite the two palaces of the procurators. The grassy campo where these churches stood was the property of the abbey of S. Zaccaria. At its eastern extremity a small palace was built for the doge about 810, when Venice first became the chief ducal place of residence under Angelo Partecipazio. According to the chief early chronicles, the body of St Mark was Original secretly brought away from Alexandria and carried to Venice in chapel. 828, the church where he was buried having been pulled down by the Moslems in order to build with its materials a palace at &quot;Babylon,&quot; as old Cairo was then called. After the arrival &quot;of his relics, St Mark became the patron saint of Venice in place of St Theodore, and his bones were laid in the &quot;confessio&quot; of the small private chapel of the ducal palace. 3 This chapel, however, soon lost its private character and became the chief church of Venice, though not the cathedral church of the patriarch. The small ducal Older chapel of St Mark was burnt in 976, together with the rest of the church, palace, during the insurrection against Doge Candiano IV. : it was rebuilt on a larger scale by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, and the Fio. 2. Plan of St Mark s ; the black shows its older form, the shading its later development. 1. High altar, containing body of St Mark. 2. North apsidal chapel of St Peter. 3. South chapel of St Clement. 4. 15th-century sacristy. 5. Rood-screen. 6. North ambo and patriarch s throne. 7. South ambo. 8. Altar of S. Maria dei Mascoli. 9. Altar of St Leonard. 10. Chapel of S. Isidore, added in 1353-55. 11. Chapel of St John the Evangelist. 12. Ante-room to treasury. 13. Treasury, formerly a tower of ducal palace. 14. Baptistery. 15. Chapel of Cardinal Zeno. 10. Western atrium. IT. North ern atrium. 18. North door. 10. Altar against a pier of the nave. 20. Porta della Carta. 21. Loggia of ducal palace. 22. Doge s ante-room. 23. Grand staircase of palace. 24. 10th-century part of ducal palace. 25. Canal, Rio del Palazzo. following doges, the work being carried on for about a century. An inscription now lost recorded its completion in 1071, but it was not consecrated till 1085, in the reign of Vitale Faliero (1084- 1096), when it was dedicated &quot; to God, the glorious Virgin Annun- 3 There is much analogy between the relationship of the church of St Mark to the ducal palace and that of the abbey church to the royal palace at West minster: both were originally built in connexion with royal palaces and both possessed special privileges as &quot;royal peculiars.&quot;