VII. GOTHIC PALACES 287

of superiority to that of Abbeville, that it proclaims itself more definitely to be stone. The other has rather the look of lace.

The intermediate figure is a panel of the main balcony of the Ducal Palace,¹ and is introduced here as being an exactly transitional condition between the Northern and Venetian types. It was built when the German Gothic workmen were exercising considerable influence over those in Venice, and there was some chance of the Northern parapet introducing itself. It actually did so, as above shown, in the Casa Contarini Fasan, but was for the most part stoutly resisted and kept at bay by the Byzantine form, the lowest in the last figure, until that form itself was displaced by the common, vulgar, Renaissance baluster; a grievous loss, for the severe pierced type was capable of a variety as endless as the fantasticism of our own Anglo-Saxon manuscript ornamentation.

§ 19. (3) The Baluster Parapet. Long before the idea of tracery had suggested itself to the minds either of Venetian or any other architects, it had, of course, been necessary to provide protection for galleries, edges of roofs, etc.: and the most natural form in which such protection could be obtained was that of a horizontal bar or hand-rail, sustained upon short shafts or balusters, as in Fig. 24, p. 285. This form was above all others likely to be adopted where variations of Greek or Roman pillared architecture were universal in the larger masses of the building; the parapet became itself a small series of columns, with capitals and architraves; and whether the crossbar laid upon them should be simply horizontal, and in contact with their capitals, or sustained by mimic arches, round or pointed, depended entirely on the system adopted in the rest of the work. Where the large arches were round, the small balustrade arches would be so likewise; where those were pointed, these would become so in sympathy with them.

¹ [Engraved on a larger scale, and with detailed sections, etc., in Plates 5 and 6 of the Examples: see next volume.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]