256 APPENDIX, 5

date of 1484 he is stated to have returned to Venice, having quarrelled with the Venetian bailiff at Constantinople: the annalist adds, that ‘Giovanni Dario was a native of Candia, and that the Republic was so well satisfied with him for having concluded peace with Bajazet, that he received, as a gift from his country, an estate at Noventa, in the Paduan territory, worth 1500 ducats, and 600 ducats in cash for the dower of one of his daughters.’ These largesses probably enabled him to build his house about the year 1486, and are doubtless hinted at in the inscription, which I restored A.D. 1837; it had no date, and ran thus, URBIS. GENIO. JOANNES. DARIVS. In the Venetian history of Paolo Morosini, page 594, it is also mentioned that Giovanni Dario was, moreover, the Secretary who concluded the peace between Mahomet, the conqueror of Constantinople, and Venice, A.D. 1478: but, unless he built his house by proxy, that date has nothing to do with it; and, in my mind, the fact of the present, and the inscription, warrant one’s dating it 1486, and not 1450.

“The Trevisan-Cappello House, in Canonica, was once the property (A.D. 1578) of a Venetian dame fond of cray-fish, according to a letter of hers in the archives, whereby she thanks one of her lovers for some which he had sent her from Treviso to Florence, of which she was then Grand Duchess. Her name has perhaps found its way into the English annuals. Did you ever hear of Bianca Cappello?¹ She bought that house of the Trevisana family, by whom Selva (in Cicognara) and Fontana (following Selva) say it was ordered of the Lombardi, at the commencement of the sixteenth century: but the inscription on its façade, thus,

reminding one both of the Dario House, and of the words NON NOBIS DOMINE inscribed on the façade of the Loredano Vendramin Palace at S. Marcuola (now the property of the Duchess of Berri²), of which Selva found proof in the Vendramin archives that it was commenced by Sante Lombardo, A.D. 1481, is in favour of its being classed among the works of the fifteenth century.”

5. [P. 35.] RENAISSANCE SIDE OF DUCAL PALACE

In passing along the Rio del Palazzo the traveller ought especially to observe the base of the Renaissance building, formed by alternately depressed and raised pyramids, the depressed portions being casts of the projecting ones, which are truncated on the summits. The work cannot be called rustication, for it is cut as sharply and delicately as a piece of ivory, but it thoroughly answers the end which rustication proposes, and misses: it gives the base of the building a look of crystalline hardness, actually resembling, and that very closely, the appearance presented by the fracture of a piece of cap quartz; while yet the light and shade of its alternate recesses and projections are so varied as to produce the utmost possible degree of delight to the eye

¹ [See Vol. X. p. 295, and below, Venetian Index, p. 365.]

² [See Vol. X. p. 144.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]