Ruskin Venetian Notebooks Notes

baluster, balustrade

See Works, 10.287 for Ruskin's definition of ‘balustrade’ and ‘baluster’. The balustrade is a ‘horizontal bar or hand-rail, sustained upon short shafts or balusters’. It is a ‘necessary protection for galleries, edges of roofs etc.’

Balustrades are discussed and illustrated at Works, 10.284 and following. Domestic examples from Venice that he cites are the Contarini Fasan and Foscari houses; his ecclesiastical examples of the ‘ancient forms’ are Torcello, Murano, and St. Mark’s.

The displacement of the variety of Byzantine and Gothic balustrades by the ‘common, vulgar, renaissance baluster’ was a ‘grievous loss’. This was one aspect of what Ruskin saw the domination of the mechanical forms of the ‘central architecture of the Renaissance schools’ (Works, 11.14). However, there are ‘exquisite examples for grace and variety of outline’ of the classical baluster in the backgrounds of Veronese (Works, 10.289).

There are references to balustrades and balusters in:

Notebook M p.5L and Notebook M p.187 Palazzo Contarini ‘Porta di Ferro’

Notebook M p.23 Scala Monuments Verona

Notebook M pp.29-35 the Ducal Palace upper arcade

Notebook M p.50 St Mark’s

Notebook M p.58L - a florid balustrade, bricked up when seen by Ruskin, on the second house along from Danieli’s.

Notebook M p.92L (and see Sheet No. 102) Palazzo Cavalli - this is the house at San Marco 2847, rebuilt by Baron Franchetti, not the Cavalli, next to the Post Office.

Notebook M p.110 House 55

Notebook M p.195 Palazzo Priuli. A San Severo - balustrade of balcony

Notebook M2 p.6 House 8

Notebook M2 p.46

Notebook M2 p.27back