DECORATION XX. MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT 263

beneath a portal of thirteenth century Northern Gothic, associated as they are with manifestations of exquisite feeling and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges,¹ Amiens, Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon, may be noted as conspicuous in error: small models of feudal towers with diminutive windows and battlements, of cathedral spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed with temple pediments and nondescript edifices of every kind, are crowded together over the recess of the niche into a confused fool’s cap for the saint below. Italian Gothic is almost entirely free from the taint of this barbarism until the Renaissance period, when it becomes rampant in the cathedral of Como and Certosa of Pavia;² and at Venice we find the Renaissance churches

¹ [The porches of Bourges are criticised in the diary alike for the inappropriateness of their ornament and for the style of it:-

“Now, these porches are a perfect study for their elaborate failure. Everything that the Byzantines did is done; and almost all Verona and St. Mark’s is put together and worked with an intention to be more elaborate than ever work was before, and all kinds of ornaments are tried one after another-chains of studs and diamonds and bosses and roses, and early dentils-one single row and one four deep like a chequer; and leaf borders delicate and classical, and Gothic quatrefoils and Lombardic beasts and Byzantine birds and chequered pillars. And all in vain. Everything is overcrowded and misplaced-joyless and valueless. There is no real power of design, and it is in every part what one’s own idle compositions are, when one ornament is put after another, without meaning or purpose,-nay, even without felicity. I never saw anything that after the first surprise of its richness and antiquity was so painful-so like to the commonest accumulations of Renaissance.”

In a note appended to this entry, he continues:-

“The more I think of these porches, the more I am struck with the admirable system of ornamentation in St. Ambrogio and St. Michele; so quiet, masterly and manly in its lines, every touch telling and not a touch too much-while these vain struggles at effect are like Hans, our old needle and pin colourist-compared to Prout, all dot and spot and twist and double line and deep exaggerated shade....”

For “St. Ambrogio,” Milan, and “St. Michele,” Pavia, see above, ch. i. § 27, p. 40. The other porches were noted by Ruskin in his diary of 1849:-

“Amiens, Sept. 14 ... Each of the main shafts has its perfect capital and base, and attached to its shaft a figure with a niche and pedestal. All the niches and all the pedestals are of imitative architecture, some very graceful, some awkward in the usual way with round towers, slits and battlements; yet none of such bad taste as Notre Dame of Paris or Dijon.”]

² [The “corrupt” ornamentation of Como Cathedral is noted in the diary of 1846:-

“The northern door is altogether corrupt, its columns being like two handsome altar candlesticks. ... The two lancet windows of the front are surrounded by a cable moulding; then, in their deep wall thickness, with niches of Gothic nearly pure, but uninventive and cold in effect. The crockets

[Version 0.04: March 2008]