326 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

Piazzetta shafts. Fig. 15 is perhaps an earlier type; perhaps only one of more careless workmanship, from a Byzantine ruin in the Rio di Ca’ Foscari: and it is interesting to compare it with Fig. 14 from the cathedral of Vienne, in South France.¹ Fig. 17, from St. Mark’s, and 18, from the apse of Murano, are two very early examples, in which the future true Venetian dentil is already developed in method of execution, though the object is still only to imitate the classical one; and a rude imitation of the bead is joined with it in Fig. 17. No. 16 indicates two examples of experimental forms: the uppermost from the tomb of Mastino della Scala, at Verona; the lower from a door in Venice, I believe, of the thirteenth century: 19 is a more frequent arrangement, chiefly found in cast brick, and connecting the dentils with the dogteeth: 20 is a form introduced richly in the later Gothic, but of rare occurrence until the latter half of the thirteenth century. I shall call it the gabled dentil.² It is found in the greatest profusion in sepulchral Gothic, associated with several slight variations from the usual dentil type, of which No. 21, from the tomb of Pietro Cornaro,³ may serve as an example.

§ 15. All the forms given in Plate 9 are of not unfrequent occurrence: varying much in size and depth, according to the expression of the work in which they occur; generally increasing in size in late work (the earliest dentils are seldom more than an inch or an inch and a half long: the fully developed dentil of the later Gothic is often as much as four or five in length, by one and a half in breadth); but they are all somewhat rare, compared to the true or armour dentil, above described. On the other hand, there are one or two unique conditions, which will be noted in the buildings where

¹ [See above, p. 133; and below, pp. 336, 342, 432.]

² [With Fig. 20 cf. Plate 4 in Examples of Venetian Architecture.]

³ [This, and another reference below (ch. xxvii. § 28), are a slip on Ruskin’s part. The tomb is that of the Doge Marco Cornaro, in SS. Giovanni e Paolo (for which see Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. i. § 15, ch. ii. § 65). The remains of Pietro Cornaro are enclosed in a sepulchral urn in another chapel of the same church.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]