CONSTRUCTION XIX. SUPERIMPOSITION 249

§ 15. The one beside it is one of those of the lately built college at Edinburgh.¹ I have not taken it as worse than many others (just as I have not taken the St. Mark’s tower as better than many others); but it happens to compress our British system of tower building into small space. The Venetian tower rises 350 feet,* and has no buttresses, though built of brick; the British tower rises 121 feet, and is built

* I have taken Professor Willis’s estimate; there being a discrepancy among various statements. I did not take the trouble to measure the height

more evident during the night. The crack started at the north-east corner at the top of the Loggia Sansovino, went diagonally across the main corner buttress of the tower, and then perpendicularly for about 8 feet. A few moments before the disaster happened, I saw some dust coming from the crack. Then suddenly one of the columns of the bell chamber at the top fell, followed by the golden angel at the summit, and in another moment the whole stone top of the Campanile came crashing to the ground, crushing the Loggia Sansovino. There was a pause, and then the whole edifice sank with a moan almost gently to the ground. That portion of the tower which was nearest to the Palazzo Reale, and which had been rendered more solid by the recent pointing of the bricks, fell in greater masses, and striking the corner of the palace, destroyed some six yards of the frontage. ... Not a stone of St. Mark’s or the Doge’s Palace is injured. Masses of bricks and stones lie in heaps, and the golden angel of the Campanile fell and lies shattered in the central porch of the Church, on the very spot, so dear to the proud Venetians of old, where Frederick Barbarossa made his submission to the Pope. ... The attitude of the public is most pathetic. Women are weeping in the street, and as hour passes hour and the Campanile bells are silent a void is felt which those who knew Venetian life can appreciate” (Times, July 15, 1902). It appears that “twenty years since, the Venetian authorities were warned by an American engineer that the Campanile would fall; and ten years ago, Vendrasco, an old builder, who had had a life’s experience of the bricks and stones of Venice, and who had been employed in repairs in Sansovino’s Loggia and on the summit of the tower itself, declared that the Campanile would collapse if the necessary repairs, such as repainting and strengthening with iron bands, were not undertaken. ... Now that the tower has gone, one realises how important it was to the beauty and dignity of the Piazza. The highly decorated buildings round it, which are somewhat low in elevation, required the simple, grand old tower as a contrast to their ornate magnificence” (ibid., July 18). The Campanile was begun in 902, but was not carried up to the belfry until the time of Domenico Morosini (1148-1155). The belfry and pyramid were added in 1510. The Loggia at the foot was built by Sansovino in 1540. The Campanile is to be reconstructed, under the superintendence of Signor Boni (the Director of National Monuments in Italy), who was at once ordered to proceed to Venice and examine the stability of other famous buildings there.]

¹ [The building is the Free Church College (now the United Free Church College of Scotland), which stands at the top of “The Mound.” The foundation stone was laid by Dr. Chalmers in 1846, and it was opened in November 1850. There is a drawing of the College Tower on a blank page of Ruskin’s Venetian Diary of 1850, where he notes:-

“Now, how meaningless this is, as well as ugly. For who can possibly live in the square room at top, lighted by a single slit, fit neither for bells nor anything else; and the pinnacles have not so much as wreath corbels on them-mere finials. No string-courses.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]