Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/423

 Bk. IV. Ch. VI. PALACE AT MASHITA. 391 central part itself. As on the towers, the ornamentation consists of a series of triano-les filled with incised decorations and with rosettes in their centres ; while, as will be observed in Woodcut No. 265, the decoVation in each panel is varied, and all are unfinished. The cornice only exists at one angle, and the mortice stones never were inserted that were meant to keep it in its place. Enough however remains to enable us to see that, as a surface decoration, it is nearly unrivalled in beauty and a])propriateness. As an external form I know nothing like it. It is only matched by that between the arches of the inte- rior of Sta. Sophia at Constantinople, which is so near it in age that they may be considered as belonging to the same school of art. Notwithstanding the incomplete state in which this facade was left there does not seem much difficulty in restoring it within very narrow limits of certainty. The elevation cannot have differed greatly from that shown in Woodcut No. 266, on the following page. In the first place there must have been a great arch over the entrance doorway — this is de riguetir in Sassanian art, and this must have been stilted, or horse-shoed, as without that it could not be made to fit on to the cornice in the towers, and all the arches in the interior take, as I am informed, that shape. Besides this there is at Takt-i-Gero i a Sassanian arch of nearly the same age and equally classical in design, which is, like this one, horse-shoed to the extent of one-tenth of its diameter, and at Urgub, in Asia Minor, all the rock-cut excavations which are of this or an earlier age have this peculiarity in a marked degree.^ Above this, the third story is a repetition of the lowest, on half its scale — as in the Tak Kesra, — but with this difference, that here the angular form admits of its being carried constructively over the great arch, so that it becomes a facsimile of an arch at Murano near Venice,^ which is adorned with the spoils of some desecrated building of the same age, probably of Antioch or some city of Syria destroyed by the Saracens. Above this the elevation is more open to conjecture, but it is evident that the wliole fayade could not have been less than 90 ft. in lieight, from the fact that the mouldings at the base (Woodcut No. 265) are the mouldings of a Corinthian column of that height, and no archi- tect with a knowledge of the style would have used such mouldings, four and a half feet in height, unless he intended his building to be of a height equal at least to that pro])ortion. The domes are those of Serbistan or of Amrith (Woodcut No. 120) ; but such domes are fre- quent in Syria before this age, and became more so afterwards. The great defect of the palace of Mashita as an illustration of Sas- sanian art arises from the fact tlmt, as a matter of course, Chosroes • Flandin and Coste, vol. iv. pis. 214, 215. 2 Texier and Pullan, " ByzaLtine Ar- chitecture." 4to. 1864. PI. iv. p. 40 et seq. 3 Piuskin, "Stones of Venice," vol. ii. pis. 3, 4, and 5.