Stones of Venice | Page 9

very
centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the
opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck,
is VENICE.
The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly
equal proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central
building of the world.
SECTION XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something
of the importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes,
within the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest
between the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each
architecture expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous
condition, yet necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected
by them.
SECTION XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work,
to mark the various modes in which the northern and southern
architectures were developed from the Roman: here I must pause only
to name the distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The
Christian Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and
well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman;
mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered
with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of
sacred symbols.
The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the
Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab
rapidly introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the
shafts and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch
and writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal
imagery, and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque)
to replace it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he
concentrates it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with
horizontal lines of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He
retains the dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite
refinement.
SECTION XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more
curious still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its
decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of

that of the northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first, an
imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas.
Without staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader
will easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two aisles,
the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was separated from
the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces of
flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the upper part of
the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a gabled wooden roof.
These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the
wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of
horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave
pillars, which were themselves also of wood. [Footnote: Appendix 9,
"Wooden Churches of the North."] Now, these uprights were
necessarily thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical
square pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and
civilization increased, these wooden structures were changed into stone;
but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had been
made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above the
nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the great
distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft. In that
form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century, and it
remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of Pavia.
SECTION XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the
clerestory walls, additional members were added for its support to the
nave piers. Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar,
gave the first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the
arrangement of the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the
superimposition of the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding
grouping of minor shafts in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus,
the whole body of the Northern architecture, represented by that of the
Lombards, may be described as rough but majestic work, round-arched,
with grouped shafts, added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of
active life and fantastic superstitions.
SECTION XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the
following one of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they
had flowed; but without influencing, I think, the Southern nations
beyond the sphere of their own presence. But the lava stream of the

Arab, even after it ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern
air; and the history of Gothic architecture is