VII. GOTHIC PALACES 291

I shall call these the six orders* of Venetian windows, and when I speak of a window of the fourth, second, or sixth order, the reader will only have to refer to the numerals at the top of Plate 14.

Then the series below shows the principal forms found in each period, belonging to each several order; except, 1 b to 1 c, and the two lower series, numbered 6 a to 7 e,¹ which are types of Venetian doors.

§ 25. We shall now be able, without any difficulty, to follow the course of transition, beginning with the first order, 1 and 1 a, in the second row. The horse-shoe arch, 1 b, is the door-head commonly associated with it, and the other three in the same row occur in St. Mark’s exclusively; 1 c being used in the nave, in order to give a greater appearance of lightness to its great lateral arcades, which at first the spectator supposes to be round-arched, but he is struck by a peculiar grace and elasticity in the curves for which he is unable to account, until he ascends into the galleries whence the true form of the arch is discernible. The other two,-1 1 d, from the door of the southern transept, and 1 a, from that of the treasury,-sufficiently represent a group of fantastic forms derived from the Arabs, and of which the exquisite decoration is one of the most important features in St. Mark’s. Their form is indeed permitted merely to obtain

* I found it convenient in my own memoranda to express them simply as fourths, seconds, etc. But “order” is an excellent word for any known group of forms, whether of windows, capitals, bases, mouldings, or any other architectural feature, provided always that it be not understood in any wise to imply pre-eminence or isolation in these groups. Thus I may rationally speak of the six orders of Venetian windows, provided I am ready to allow a French architect to speak of the six or seven, or eight, or seventy or eighty, orders of Norman windows, if so many are distinguishable; and so also we may rationally speak, for the sake of intelligibility, of the five orders of Greek pillars, provided only we understand that there may be five millions of orders, as good or better, of pillars not Greek.2

¹ [Wrongly printed “7 to 16” in all previous editions (the figures in the Plate having been re-numbered and this corresponding alteration having been forgotten). Ruskin notes the error in his copy for revision.]

² [On the subject of architectural “orders,” see Vol. IX. pp. 34-35, 426.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]