244 THE STONES OF VENICE CONSTRUCTION

diameter. In the Ducal Palace of Venice the shortest shafts are always the thickest.*

§ 9. The second kind of superimposition, lightness on weight, is, in its most necessary uses, of stories of houses one upon another, where, of course, wall veil is required in the lower ones, and has to support wall veil above, aided by as much of shaft structure as is attainable within the given limits. The greatest, if not the only, merit of the Roman and Renaissance Venetian architects is their graceful management of this kind of superimposition; sometimes of complete courses of external arches and shafts one above the other; sometimes of apertures with intermediate cornices at the levels of the floors, and large shafts from top to bottom of the building; always observing that the upper stories shall be at once lighter and richer than the lower ones. The entire value of such buildings depends upon the perfect and easy expression of the relative strength of the stories, and the unity obtained by the varieties of their proportions, while yet the fact of superimposition and separation by floors is frankly told.

§ 10. In churches and other buildings in which there is no separation by floors, another kind of pure shaft superimposition is often used, in order to enable the builder to avail himself of short and slender shafts. It has been noted¹ that these are often easily attainable, and of precious materials, when shafts large enough and strong enough to do the work at once could not be obtained except at unjustifiable expense, and of coarse stone. The architect has then no choice but to arrange his work in successive stories; either frankly completing the arch work and cornice of each, and beginning a new story above it, which is the honester and nobler way; or else tying the stories together by supplementary shafts from floor to roof,-the general practice of the Northern Gothic, and one which, unless most gracefully managed, gives

* Appendix 20: “Shafts of the Ducal Palace” [p. 458].

¹ [See above, ch. viii. §§ 2, 8, pp. 114, 118.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]