276 THE STONES OF VENICE

cortiles; the disposition of the interiors being now entirely changed, and their original condition untraceable.¹ The entrances to these early buildings are, for the most part, merely large circular arches, the central features of their continuous arcades: they do not present us with definitely separated windows and doors.

But a great change takes place in the Gothic period. These long arcades break, as it were, into pieces, and coagulate into central and lateral windows, and small arched doors, pierced in great surfaces of brick wall. The sea story of a Byzantine palace consists of seven, nine, or more arches in a continuous line; but the sea story of a Gothic palace consists of a door and one or two windows on each side, as in a modern house. The first story of a Byzantine palace consists of, perhaps, eighteen or twenty arches, reaching from one side of the house to the other; the first story of a Gothic palace consists of a window of four or five lights in the centre, and one or two single windows on each side. The germ, however, of the Gothic arrangement is already found in the Byzantine, where, as we have seen, the arcades, though continuous, are always composed of a central mass and two wings

in width, shrink in height also, draw up their feet, as it were, and instead of falling to the general foundation of the building, receive, as we have just seen, a narrow plinth or still for a foundation of their own. At the same time the great arch of the entrance sinks into a mere door; and the building, instead of the appearance of a great court or public place surrounded by arcades, assumes that of a very closely veiled private house, with door and windows of ordinary size.... [Reference to two typical figures, showing a Byzantine, and a Gothic palace. For the Byzantine type, the reader may here refer to Fig. 4 above, p. 147; for the Gothic, to Plate F, p. 299. ] It will be noticed that there remains to the last a trace of Byzantine feeling in the connected group of central windows of the upper story, or stories (for the Gothic palaces have many), and the transition is effected very gradually, and with more or less retention of the idea of an arcade and confusion of it with that of the window; while in the Ducal Palace both systems are represented and reconciled, the long arcade being used below, the windows above. It is only by keeping this derivation in mind that the grouping of the windows in later Venetian palaces is to be fully understood. The connected clusters of them, remnants of the Byzantine manner, lighted the great halls of audience, while the single windows belonged to the private apartments....”

Ruskin here notes in the MS. as a point for future consideration “of what change in the material mind this greater privacy of structure is significant,” and returns to the house in the Calle del Rimedio; the rest of the description, however, is hardly intelligible without the intended illustrations.]

¹ [See above, pp. 146, 155.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]