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For photographs of the Basilica, outside and inside, and an overview of its architecture and history see its website, entered here.
In addition to his own detailed observations of the building Ruskin used as evidence Gentile Bellini (1429 - 1507) Procession in Piazza San Marco (Miracles of the True Cross), 1496, Tempera and oil on canvas, 367 x 745 cm Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice. Kugler (1842) p.146 draws attention to it in the ‘Venetian Academy’, where it was available to Ruskin. Kugler, however, was interested in the faces and does not mention the architecture. See Works, 3.210 [n/a] for Ruskin’s account of it as ‘the best Church of St. Mark’s that has ever been painted’. The image is available here, and compare the photograph here.
See Works, 10.316 and compare St M[arks] Book p.71 and St M[arks] Book p.72L on the gilding on the great central entrance.
There are two strands to Ruskin’s account of St. Mark’s in the notebooks.
First it provides the type of ‘Byzantine Romanesque’, the style which marked the starting point for the development of Venetian Gothic. At Works, 10.253 St. Mark’s is the most perfect form of Byzantine Romanesque, as Pisa cathedral is the most perfect form of Lombardic Romanesque. The glory of both is that they gave rise to Gothic.
Works, 10.95 begins an examination of the ‘laws and customs of its architectural chivalry’, which however unreliable as an account of the qualities of Byzantine architecture, serves to define Ruskin’s understanding of it. At Works, 10.41 the crypt of St. Mark’s is representative of the earliest architecture of Venice and shows slight Byzantine influence.
Secondly St Mark’s niches of the north side provide of the best of Gothic, and the other niches, along with the crockets of the upper story and the great screen of St. Mark’s, illustrate the degradation of Gothic. At Works, 9.44 the ‘insipid confusion’ of the Porta della Carta and the ‘wild crockets’ of St. Marks are cited as prime examples of the corruption of Gothic throughout Europe by the ‘degradation of the Romanist superstition’.
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However at Works, 10.78 later parts are so dexterously accommodated to the original fabric that the effect is still that of a Byzantine building.
See Works, 10.74 on the Gothic additions, Works, 10.124 on the distinction between Gothic and Byzantine treatment of surfaces. On this compare Notebook M pp.211-215; St M[arks] Book p.9L; St M[arks] Book pp.60-64 on the Gothic niches of St. Mark’s and the transition to Gothic, and Notebook M p.199 on the great screen of St. Mark’s.
Works, 8.206: Ruskin had referred to Woods opinions on the ugliness of St. Mark’s and the Ducal Palace. At Works, 9.55 Ruskin argues that such judgments, by Woods and those who agreed with him in their reviews of Seven Lamps of Architecture, are the result of distortions caused by the Renaissance. At Works, 10.97 Ruskin suggests that the views of Woods on St. Mark’s are the result of his lack of perception of, or delight in, colour: see also Works, 10.170 and Works, 10.449.
It seems that Ruskin originally intended St. Mark’s Book for observations of St. Mark’s and Palace Book for observations of Ducal Palace. However both are also used by Ruskin for other notes. There are descriptions of carved animal and human figures at St M[arks] Book p.44, St M[arks] Book pp.65aL and 65a, but most of the observation and analysis of St.Marks in the notebooks is concerned with details of structure and ornament.
Ruskin made three indexes to the notebooks: what appears to be a first draft of an index to M in St. Mark’s Book; an expanded version of that draft in M; and an index to M2 and the small notebooks in M2. In each of these indexes there are specific references to St. Mark’s. St M[arks] Book p.10 gives references only to M. Notebook M p.222 is largely unchanged from the version at St M[arks] Book p.10, though there is one reference to M2. Apart from one reference to M2 the index to M2 cites only the small notebooks in its specific references to St. Mark’s. There are also three separate sheets which Ruskin uses to organise his observations into a coherent sequence. These sheets and the indexes provide useful information about the ways in which Ruskin was beginning to categorise and collate his observations.
References to St. Mark’s in M are indexed by Ruskin at M.p222, with what seems a preliminary draft at St M.p10.
Most of the entries referring to St. Mark’s in the index to M2 relate to the small notebooks.
Separate sheets kept at the beginning of M are used to organise detailed observations and notes into a sequence which might produce a coherent account of St. Marks. They draw on material up to and including Notebook M p.215 as well as St. Mark’s Book and Bit Book. Unrau (1984) p.30 comments that Ruskin made remarkably little use of his detailed observations of St. Mark’s in Volune II of Stones of Venice. These notes perhaps give some indication of what Ruskin might have produced. They draw on the whole of M, and St. Mark’s Book.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]