46 THE STONES OF VENICE

done by Claude and the Poussins is as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi, and Sansovino.¹ Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their works being purchased at high prices:² their real influence is very slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation. Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino, Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons are concerned with painting, and of those few the larger number regard it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with architecture, and have at some time of their lives serious business with it.³ It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which we have to regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of modern times-over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one destroying the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our schools and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass through them.

Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most corrupt, of European states; and as she was

¹ [Palladio of Vicenza (1518-1580); for a criticism of his most admired building in Venice, the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, see under that title in Venetian Index, Stones of Venice, vol. iii. Scamozzi of Vicenza (1552-1616), architect and architectural writer, completed the Procuratie Nuove at Venice, designed by Sansovino. Sansovino (1477-1570), architect and historian (see above, p. 20 n.), built at Venice the public library, the mint, the Scuola della Misericordia, the loggia at the foot of the the Campanile, and many palaces.]

² [The MS. adds: “They are merely another form of bank note, a part of the currency.”]

³ [See above, Preface, § 8, p. 9.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]