APPENDIX, 6 425

6. P. 33.-RENAISSANCE ORNAMENTS

There having been three principal styles of architecture in Venice,-the Greek or Byzantine, the Gothic, and the Renaissance, it will be shown, in the sequel, that the Renaissance itself is divided into three correspondent families:¹ Renaissance engrafted on Byzantine, which is earliest and best; Renaissance engrafted on Gothic, which is second, and second best; Renaissance on Renaissance, which is double darkness, and worst of all. The palaces in which Renaissance is engrafted on Byzantine are those noticed by Commynes: they are characterised by an ornamentation very closely resembling, and in some cases identical with, early Byzantine work; namely, groups of coloured marble circles inclosed in interlacing bands. I have put opposite one of these ornaments, from the Ca’ Trevisan, in which a most curious and delicate piece of inlaid design is introduced into a band which is almost exactly copied from the church of Theotocos at Constantinople,² and correspondent with others in St. Mark’s. There is also much Byzantine feeling in the treatment of the animals, especially in the two birds of the lower compartment, while the peculiar curves of the cinque cento leafage are visible in the leaves above. The dove, alighted, with the olive-branch plucked off, is opposed to the raven with restless expanded wings. Beneath are evidently the two sacrifices “of every clean fowl and of every clean beast.”³ The colour is given with green and white marble, the dove relieved on a ground of greyish green, and all is exquisitely finished.

In Plate 1, [facing] p. 33, the upper figure is from the same palace (Ca’ Trevisan), and it is very interesting in its proportions. If we take five circles in geometrical proportion, each diameter being two-thirds of the diameter next above it, and arrange the circles so proportioned, in contact with each other, in the manner shown in the plate, we shall find that an increase quite imperceptible in the diameter of the circles in the angles, will enable us to inscribe the whole in a square. The lines so described will then run in the centre of the white bands. I cannot be certain that this is the actual construction of the Trevisan design, because it is on a high wall surface, where I could not get at its measurements; but I found this construction exactly coincide with the lines of my eye-sketch. The lower figure in Plate 1 is from the front of the Ca’ Dario, and probably struck the eye of Commynes⁴ in its first brightness. Selvatico, indeed, considers both the Ca’ Trevisan (which once belonged to Bianca Cappello) and the Ca’ Dario, as

¹ [See Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. i. § 3.]

² [This is the church of S. Theodore Tyrone (Kilisse Mesjidi), erroneously designated in several works upon art as that of Theotokos. The present structure probably dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century, but it stands upon the site, and includes many of the materials, of a church as old as the sixth century. It is, says Fergusson, “the most complete and elegant church of its class now known to exist in or near the capital, and many of its details are of great beauty and perfection.” (History of Architecture, ii. 327). Views of it are given in Salzenberg’s Altchristliche Baudenkmale von Konstantinopel.]

³ [Genesis viii. 20.]

⁴ [See above, p. 32.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]