VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 431

traveller ought to observe them all carefully, until he comes to the great pilaster or complicated pier which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say, the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the upper arcade; the first new lion’s head with smooth ears,¹ cut in the time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the fourteenth and the other of the fifteenth century.

§ 130. The reader who is not able to examine the building on the spot may be surprised at the definiteness with which the point of junction is ascertainable; but a glance at the lowest range of leaves in the opposite Plate (20) will enable him to judge of the grounds on which the above statement is made. Fig. 12 is a cluster of leaves from the capital of the Four Winds; early work of the finest time. Fig. 13 is a leaf from the great Renaissance capital at the Judgment angle, worked in imitation of the older leafage. Fig. 14 is a leaf from one of the Renaissance capitals of the upper arcade, which are all worked in the natural manner of the

the upright leaf, is on the actual angle of the palace. But the notable point about it is the magnificence of its style, its perfect, pure, unlaboured naturalism; the freshness, elasticity, and softness of its leafage, united with the most perfect symmetry and severe reserve-no running to waste, no loose or experimental lines, no extravagance, but no weakness. The whole design is sternly architectural; there is none of the wildness or redundance of natural vegetation, but there is all the strength, life, and tossing flow of the free leaves that have been rippled, as they grew, by the summer winds, as the sands are by the sea.”

It will be observed that the last 8 lines correspond, with a few verbal alterations, to the last 11 lines of § 131 in the text, the characteristics being there given as applicable to the Ducal Palace sculpture generally. A portion of the intended illustration from the Jean d’Acre column (for which see Vol. IX. p. 105) is Fig. 4 in Plate 20; Figs. 12 and 13 are examples of Gothic leafage from the Ducal Palace. Plate 20 is again referred to in the next volume, ch. i. §§ 11 seq., and its various figures are explained in the Final Appendix (“iii.-Capitals”) to the next volume: see also p. 232 n. above. The quotation “freaks of jet” is from Milton’s Lycidas (line 144: “The pansy freaked with jet”).]

¹ [See above, p. 409.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]