322 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

the angular incision being a mere limiting line, like that described in § 9 of the last chapter. But hence the farther steps to every condition of Norman ornament are self-evident. I do not say that all of them arose from development of the dogtooth in this manner, many being quite independent inventions and uses of zigzag lines;¹ still, they may all be referred to this simple type as their root and representative, that is to say, the mere hack of the Venetian gunwale, with a limiting line following the resultant zigzag.

§ 9. Fig. 11 is a singular and much more artificial condition, cast in brick, from the church of the Frari, and given here only for future reference.² Fig. 12, resulting from a fillet with the cuts on each of its edges interrupted by a bar, is a frequent Venetian moulding, and of great value; but the plain or leaved dogteeth have been the favourites, and that to such a degree, that even the Renaissance architects took them up; and the best bit of Renaissance design in Venice, the side of the Ducal Palace next the Bridge of Sighs,³ owes great part of its splendour to its foundation, faced with large flat dogteeth, each about a foot wide in the base, with their points truncated, and alternating with cavities, which are their own negatives or casts.

§ 10. One other form of the dogtooth is of great importance in Northern architecture, that produced by oblique cuts slightly curved, as in the margin, Fig. 56. It is susceptible of the most fantastic and endless decoration; each of the resulting leaves being, in the early porches of Rouen and Lisieux, hollowed out and worked into branching tracery: and

¹ [Here, it will be seen, Ruskin traces back the Norman zigzag to the angular notches with which the blow of an axe can most easily vary the solid edge of a square fillet (see § 3 above). He notices previously a symbolic theory with regard to the use of this ornament by the Normans, namely, Sir Charles Newton’s idea of radiation (ch. xx. § 26, p. 274, and ch. xxviii. § 14, p. 395), which he rejects. At a later time Ruskin inclined to another theory of the kind, namely, the derivation of the Norman zigzag from the Greek, with further reference to its symbolic use by the Egyptians to represent water (cf. above, ch. xx. § 25, p. 272): see on this subject The Pleasures of England, § 87, where he compares the Norman arch of Iffley, near Oxford, with the Athena of Ægina.]

² [No such reference seems to have been made.]

³ [See further Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. i. § 38, and appendix 5.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]