17th Capital of the Ducal Palace Lower Arcade

This, in Ruskin’s final system, adopted from Selvatico (1847) p.128, and starting from the Ponte della Paglia, is the seventeenth of the capitals of the Ducal Palace. Series of Capitals of Lower Arcade.

• Number in Ruskin’s final system: 17
• Alternative number starting from Porta della Carta: 20
• Number, using Ruskin’s final system, of related capital, earlier model or later copy: n/a
• Subject matter: Sciences / Trivium / Quadrivium
• Leafage 2ndA Order: Notebook M2 p.98, and compare the division into rows in Plate XX at Works, 10.431. See Works, 11.276 for a list of the buildings from which the images at Plate XX are taken, and Works, 11.276-278 for a discussion of the development of the leafage of capitals.
• Date: c. 1350
• Notebook references: Notebook M pp.174L and 174; Notebook M2 p.98; Palace Book p.35; Palace Book p.47
• Library Edition references: Works, 10.411 (Compare this with Ruskin’s better informed account of the trivium and quadrivium in his discussion of the fresco he attributes to ‘Simone Memmi’ in the‘Spanish Chapel’ at Santa Maria Novella, Florence at Works, 23.386ff [n/a])

Detail of 1870s copy of 17th capital in its current state 8th side, left, noted by Ruskin as destroyed; Solomon, 1st side, centre; Priscian the Grammarian, 2nd side, right

[Version 0.05: May 2008]