138 THE STONES OF VENICE

and restored by the piety of a rich merchant, Turrin Toroni, “in ornatissima forma;” and that, for the greater beauty of the renewed church, it had added to it two façades of marble. With this information that of the Padre dell’ Oratorio agrees, only he gives the date of the earlier rebuilding of the church in 1175, and ascribes it to an architect of the name of Barbetta. But Quadri, in his usually accurate little guide,¹ tells us that this Barbetta rebuilt the church in the fourteenth century; and that of the two façades, so much admired by Corner, one is of the sixteenth century, and its architect unknown; and the rest of the church is of the seventeenth, “in the style of Sansovino.”

§ 6. There is no occasion to examine, or endeavour to reconcile, these conflicting accounts. All that it is necessary for the reader to know is, that every vestige of the church in which the ceremony took place was destroyed at least as early as 1689; and that the ceremony itself, having been abolished in the close of the fourteenth century, is only to be conceived as taking place in that more ancient church, resembling St. Mark’s, which, even according to Quadri, existed until that period. I would, therefore, endeavour to fix the reader’s mind, for a moment, on the contrast between the former and latter aspect of this plot of ground; the former, when it had its Byzantine church, and its yearly procession of the Doge and the Brides; and the latter, when it has its Renaissance church “in the style of Sansovino,” and its yearly honouring is done away.

§ 7. And, first, let us consider for a little the significance and nobleness of that early custom of the Venetians, which brought about the attack and the rescue of the year 943: that there should be but one marriage day for the nobles of the whole nation,* so that all might rejoice together; and that

* Or at least for its principal families.2 Vide Appendix 8: “Early Venetian Marriages” [p.263].

¹ [Otto Giorni a Venezia, by A. Quadri, 1824.]

² [In the “Travellers’ Edition” Ruskin added:

“; but the evidence is in favour of the totality.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]