6 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

substance modelled on the perished crystals of another. The church of St. Mark itself, harmonious as its structure may at first sight appear, is an epitome of the changes of Venetian architecture from the tenth to the nineteenth century.¹ Its crypt, and the line of low arches which support the screen, are apparently the earliest portions; the lower stories of the main fabric are of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with later Gothic interpolations; the pinnacles are of the earliest fully developed Venetian Gothic (fourteenth century); but one of them, that on the projection at the eastern extremity of the Piazzetta dei Leoni,² is of far finer, and probably earlier workmanship than all the rest. The southern range of pinnacles is again inferior to the northern and western, and visibly of later date. Then the screen, which most writers have described as part of the original fabric, bears its date inscribed on its architrave, 1394, and with it are associated a multitude of small screens, balustrades, decorations of the interior building, and probably the rose window of the south transept. Then come the interpolated traceries of the front and sides; then the crocketings of the upper arches, extravagances of the incipient Renaissance; and, finally, the figures which carry the waterspouts on the north side-utterly barbarous seventeenth or eighteenth century work -connect the whole with the plastered restorations of the years 1844 and 1845.³ Most of the palaces in Venice have sustained interpolations hardly less numerous; and those of the Ducal Palace are so intricate, that a year’s labour would probably be insufficient altogether to disentangle and define them.⁴ I therefore gave up all thoughts of obtaining a perfectly clear chronological view of the early architecture; but the dates necessary to the main purposes of the book the reader will find well established; and of the evidence brought forward for those of less importance, he is himself to judge. Doubtful estimates are never made grounds of

¹ [See Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. iv. §§ 5, 6, 8.]

² [The small open space on the north side of the church is so-called from its two red marble lions.]

³ [For Ruskin’s notice of these restorations, see Vol. IV. p. 41.]

⁴ [See Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. §§ 9-29.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]