26 THE STONES OF VENICE

touching in our finding the sunshine thus freely admitted into a church built by men in sorrow. They did not need the darkness; they could not perhaps bear it. There was fear and depression upon them enough, without a material gloom. They sought for comfort in their religion, for tangible hopes and promises, not for threatenings or mysteries; and though the subjects chosen for the mosaics on the walls are of the most solemn character, there are no artificial shadows cast upon them, nor dark colours used in them: all is fair and bright, and intended evidently to be regarded in hopefulness, and not with terror.

§ 9. For observe this choice of subjects. It is indeed possible that the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may have been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series of subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not, however, find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am rather inclined to believe that at any rate the central division of the building was originally decorated, as it is now, simply by mosaics representing Christ, the Virgin, and the Apostles, at one extremity, and Christ coming to judgment at the other.¹ And if so, I repeat, observe the significance of his choice. Most other early churches are covered with imagery sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence, mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one should have thought

¹ [The central apse is covered with figures of the Apostles in mosaic; above are the Virgin and Child. These mosaics, Byzantine in style, are believed to be late seventh-century work. On the west wall is a restored series of mosaic compartments, representing the Crucifixion and the Last Judgment. This, “with its ingenuous realism and grim humour, is unrelated in style to anything in St. Mark’s, and is the analogue of many a sculptured Gothic west front in northern Europe” (T. Okey’s Venice, p. 319, where the mosaics of the west wall are attributed, in accordance with a view now commonly held, to the thirteenth century. For another reference to them see below, ch. vi. § 65). All the mosaics have been restored.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]