206 THE STONES OF VENICE CONSTRUCTION

with pinnacles, which, however, are, I believe, in all the buildings in which they become very prominent, merely decorative: they are of some use, indeed, by their weight; but if this were all for which they were put there, a few cubic feet of lead would much more securely answer the purpose, without any danger from exposure to wind. If the reader likes to ask any Gothic architect with whom he may happen to be acquainted, to substitute a lump of lead for his pinnacles, he will see by the expression of the face how far he considers the pinnacles decorative members. In the work which seems to me the great type of simple and masculine buttress structure, the apse of Beauvais,¹ the pinnacles are altogether insignificant, and are evidently added just as exclusively to entertain the eye and lighten the aspect of the buttress, as the slight shafts which are set on its angles; while² in other very noble Gothic buildings the pinnacles are introduced as niches for statues, without any reference to construction at all; and sometimes even, as in the tomb of Can Signorio at Verona,³ on small piers detached from the main building.

§ 8. I believe, therefore, that the development of the pinnacle is merely a part of the general erectness and picturesqueness of northern work above alluded to;⁴ and that, if there had been no other place for the pinnacles, the Gothic builders would have put them on the tops of their arches (they often did on the tops of gables and pediments), rather than not have had them; but the natural position of the pinnacle is, of course, where it adds to, rather than diminishes, the stability of the building; that is to say, on its main wall-piers and the vertical piers of the buttresses. And thus the edifice is surrounded at last by a complete company of

¹ [See Seven Lamps, ch. ii. § 7 (Vol. VIII. p. 62) for another reference to the construction of this apse as an “achievement of the bolder Gothic.”]

² [The MS. here is longer:-

“; while in the buildings in which the pinnacle attains its greatest height and richest decoration, as in Milan, the buttress structure is surrendered, and the Italian system adopted in the walls: and in other very noble buildings the pinnacles are introduced...”]

³ [Drawings by Ruskin of this tomb are given as illustrations to Verona and its Rivers in a later volume of this edition.]

⁴ [Ch. xiii. § 9 above, p. 187.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]