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APPENDIX, 20 459

in circumference. The 29th, which is of course above the 15th of the lower story, is 5 ,, 5 in circumference, which little piece of evidence will be of no small value to us by-and-by. The 35th carries the angle of the palace, and is 6 ,, 0 round. The 47th, which comes above the 24th, and carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, is strengthened by a pilaster; and the 51st, which comes over the 26th, is 5 ,, 4½ round, or nearly the same as the 29th; it carries the party wall of the Sala del Scrutinio; a small room containing part of St. Mark’s library, coming between the two saloons; a room which, in remembrance of the help I have received in all my inquiries from the kindness and intelligence of its usual occupant, I shall never easily distinguish otherwise than as “Mr. Lorenzi’s.”*

I may as well connect with these notes respecting the arcades of the Ducal Palace, those which refer to Plate 14, which represents one of its spandrils. Every spandril of the lower arcade was intended to have been occupied by an ornament resembling the one given in that Plate. The mass of the building being of Istrian stone, a depth of about two inches is left within the mouldings of the arches, rough hewn, to receive the slabs of fine marble composing the patterns. I cannot say whether the design was never completed, or the marbles have been since removed, but there are now only two spandrils retaining their fillings, and vestiges of them in a third.1 The two complete spandrils are on the sea façade, above the 3rd and 10th capitals (vide method of numbering, Chap I., page 54); that is to say, connecting the 2nd arch with the 3rd, and the 9th with the 10th. The latter is the one given in Plate 14. The white portions of it are all white marble, the dentil band surrounding the circle is in coarse sugary marble, which I believe to be Greek, and never found in Venice, to my recollection, except in work at least anterior to the fifteenth century. The shaded fields charged with the three white triangles are of red Verona marble; the inner disc is green serpentine, and the dark pieces of the radiating leaves are grey marble. The three triangles are equilateral. The two uppermost are 1 ,, 5 each side, and the lower one 1 ,, 2.

The extreme diameter of the circle is 3 ,, 10½; its field is slightly raised above the red marbles, as shown in the section at A, on the left. A a is part of the red marble field; a b the section of the dentil moulding led into it; b c the entire breadth of the rayed zone, represented on the other side of the spandril by the line C f; c d is the white marble band let in, with the dog-tooth on the face of it; b c is 7¾ inches across; c d 3¾; and at B are given two joints of the dentil (mentioned above, in the chapter on dentils,2 as unique in Venice), of their actual size. At C is given one of the inlaid leaves: its measure being (in inches) C f 7¾; C h ¾; f g ¾; f e 4¾, the base

* I cannot suffer this volume to close without also thanking my kind friend Mr. Rawdon Brown,3 for help given me in a thousand ways during my stay in Venice: but chiefly for his direction to passages elucidatory of my subject in the MSS. of St. Mark’s library.


1 [See above, p. 352. Between the third and fourth arch of the Piazzetta façade-that is, over capital No. 21-the stone is prepared for decoration, two deep circular grooves being cut in it. The design cannot ever have been carried out; for, if it had been, the other spandrils would show similar grooves.]

2 [See above, p. 323.]

3 [See above, p. 420 n.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]