466 APPENDIX, 15

It was the conviction of the authorities after the restorations above described that the Ducal Palace would “stand in good condition as long as it has stood.” But the fall of the Campanile in 1902 (see Vol. IX. p. 248 n.) naturally compelled attention once more to the state of the Palace. Considerable danger was seen to be possible at the south-east corner, where the books of the Bibliotera Mariana were placed. These have now been removed, for “behind the bookcases serious diagonal lesions are visible in the walls, and the spectator feels as though the brickwork were slowly tumbling outwards towards the canaletto crossed by the Bridge of Sighs.” The cause of this movement was soon discovered, and it illustrates the way in which carelessness too often provides the necessity for subsequent restoration. A lift was required to convey books from one floor of the library to another. The builder who had charge of the works “did not scruple to cut through one of the chief internal walls that run parallel to the façade. Not only did he make an aperture fully twenty feet high and nearly three feet wide in this eighteen-inch wall, but he cut through a massive iron bar by which the wall had previously been braced together. Consequently the whole of the semi-detached portion of the wall between the aperture and the canaletto tends to topple outwards” (Times, October 7, 1902). Signor Boni is devising means to stop this movement. Other lesions were discovered in the wall of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio which sustained Tintoret’s “Paradise.” The canvas has been removed and is itself being restored (1903), and the wall strengthened.

It is interesting to know that Ruskin himself, when writing his description of the Ducal Palace, had doubts of the stability of the building:-

“I don’t think,” he wrote to his father (January 8, 1852), “the Ducal Palace will stand 50 years more; its capitals are so rent and worn. I am having some of its sculpture cast-there is a poor sculptor here whom it is a charity to employ, and for a few shillings I can get the most accurate facsimiles of pieces of sculpture which will soon be lost for ever, and their freight home will be very little.”

These casts were used by Ruskin for reference when completing his book at home:-

“I am packing up to-day,” he writes again to his father (January 16), “21 pieces of Ducal Palace capitals, etc., whcih are both invaluable in themselves, if I can get them sent safe home, and have saved me for the present some laborious drawing; as I can work out what refinements I want better from these than from the original pieces, which are so high as to be out of convenient sight.”

In a further letter Ruskin encloses a list of a first consignment of the casts, with remarks upon some of them:-

“(March 1.)-... Among the pieces sent home I should think you would be interested by the very ancient symbolical Greek sculpture of six sheep under a palm tree-part of a tablet of which I have cast the centre also, which will come in next box. The centre is a throne, with a cross and a lamb, inscribed o amnox, ‘the Lamb’; on each side there are six sheep and a palm tree, inscribed oi agioi apostogoi,’the holy Apostles.’

“The Byzantine cross, with the doves at its feet, is a beautiful example of quaint and early architectural sculpture; so also the peacock in the circle. The three groups of small figures are signs of the Zodiac from Ducal Palace capitals; observe the man holding the ‘Pisces,’ and Sagittarius beside him, small, preparing to draw the bow, which is one another piece of leafage. There are four of the great lions’ heads cut for distant effect, from Ducal Palace; and two pieces of its magnificent flat foliage at the angles, which I cannot enough admire or praise.”

Of the pieces here mentioned, “the Lamb” with the sheep is described in St. Mark’s Rest, §§ 43, 44; the Byzantine cross, etc., may have been used in the preparation of Plate 11 (facing p. 166, above); the Zodiac is capital No. 18, described above (pp. 412-415); the lions are on Capitals 13 and 50, see p. 431; and the pieces of foliage were doubtless among those engraved in Plate 20 (facing p. 431, above).

[Version 0.04: March 2008]