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The passage beginning at Notebook M2 p.137 raises two questions: what is the ‘old plan’; and when did Ruskin write Notebook M2 pp.137ff? In the manuscript this passage is contained within three complete pages. It is immediately after the entry for Genoa on the return journey, and immediately before the entry for Avignon, dated 31st March.
It is not clear though when it was written, in Genoa, on the journey, or on some earlier occasion, perhaps when Ruskin was still in Venice. There are many references back to Venice in the notes on the return journey, but none of them with detailed observations of the kind found here. Ruskin's M2 index refers to Bit Book p.45 and Bit Book p.72L but the fragments there seem insufficient as a basis for this note.
The tense of ‘I though it not worth while to examine’ on Notebook M2 p.139 would be consistent with Ruskin having written it after he left Venice, but not pointing with any certainty to that conclusion. There is some slight compression on the material on Genoa at the bottom of Notebook M2 p.136 - with 25 lines on the page as against the more common 23. That might be taken to support the notion that the notes on Genoa came up against an already written note on the Cortile of the Ducal Palace. An analogy might be the way in which it appears that the architectural note continues directly and in mid sentence from Notebook M2 p.153 to Notebook M2 p.161 when it met what was presumably an already written piece on baptism and the Gorham judgement.
On the ‘old plan’ the obvious solution is that Ruskin is referring to the 16th Century plan he bought and described at Notebook M2 p.18. The only problem is that the index to M2 cites Notebook M2 p.37 as the only reference under ‘Ducal Palace - Old Plan’. There is immediately below the words ‘Old Plan’ in the index what might be a ditto mark. However it might equally well be a small blot, and there is in any case no page reference attached. There is no explicit reference to an ‘old plan’ at Notebook M2 p.37, unless perhaps in the sense of a former scheme for organising the description of the Ducal Palace. However, Notebook M2 p.137 does refer explicitly to an old plan, but clearly in the sense of a physical ground plan of the building.
For Ruskin’s 1841 drawing of the cortile see here.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]