Page:Ruskin - The Seven Lamps of Architecture.djvu/139

Rh as we have said, the Italian architects, not being embarrassed for decoration of wall surface, and not being obliged, like the Northmen, to multiply their pentrationspenetrations [sic], held to the system for some time longer; and while they increased the refinement of the ornament, kept the purity of the plan. That refinement of ornament was their weak point however, and opened the way for the renaissance attack. They fell, like the old Romans, by their luxury, except in the separate instance of the magnificent school of Venice. That architecture began with the luxuriance in which all others expired: it founded itself on the Byzantine mosaic and fretwork; and laving aside its ornaments, one by one, while it fixed its forms by laws more and more severe, stood forth, at last, a model of domestic Gothic, so grand, so complete, so nobly systematized, that, to my mind, there never existed an architecture with so stern a claim to our reverence. I do not except even the Greek Doric: the Doric had cast nothing away; the fourteenth century Venetian had cast away, one by one, for a succession of centuries, every splendour that art and wealth could give it. It had laid down its crown and its jewels, its gold and its colour, like a king disrobing; it had resigned its exertion, like an athlete reposing; once capricious and fantastic, it had bound itself by laws inviolable and serene as those of Nature herself. It retained nothing but its beauty and its power; both the highest, but both restrained. The Doric flutings were of irregular number—the Venetian mouldings were unchangeable. The Doric manner of ornament admitted no temptation; it was the fasting of an anchorite—the Venetian ornament embraced, while it governed, all vegetable and animal forms; it was the temperance of a man, the command of Adam over creation. I do not know so magnificent a marking of human authority as the iron grasp of the Venetian over his own exuberance of imagination; the calm and solemn restraint