VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 347

§ 20. 3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE. I must go back a step or two, in order to be certain that the reader understands clearly the state of the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately symmetry, and to contrast the works of sculpture and painting with which it was decorated,-full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the fourteenth century,-with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the New Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as the “Palazzo Nuovo;” and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the “Palazzo Vecchio.”* That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it towards the sea; but there was not then the wide quay in front, the Riva dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Façade as important as that to the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the water; and the old palace of Ziani still faced the

* Baseggio (Pareri, p. 127) is called the Proto¹ of the New Palace. Farther notes will be found in Appendix 1, Vol. III.

Greek or Byzantine period, the Transitional period, and the Gothic period, the last mainly represented by the Ducal Palace. Now I said at page 4 [now p. 20] of vol. i. that the second period of the career of Venice opened with 120 years-the central struggle of her life beginning in 1300, finishing in 1418, or, in the next sentence, five years later, i.e., 1423. Now I knew when I wrote this that the Ducal Palace was fourteenth-century work, but I did not know what I know now, that the first stone of it was laid in 1301, the last in 1423! ... I am especially delighted to find my third, or Gothic period, limited to the very years which in the first chapter I gave for the central struggle of Venetian life.

“I think this will interest you and make you happy, so I don’t mind writing it on Sunday.”

For Ruskin’s strict observance of Sunday, see Præterita, ii. ch. vi. § 111, where he says it was not till 1858 that he ever made a sketch on that day.]

¹ [i.e., Prototajapiera, chief mason. For Baseggio, see in the next volume, Appendix 1, “Architect of the Ducal Palace,” and cf. Vol. IX. p. 65.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]