DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0125
‘THE STONES OF VENICE.’
113
an admirable page upon redundance as a quality, not,
needless to say, of all fine Gothic, but of the Gothic
that is most full of all Gothic qualities, and especially
the Gothic quality of humility : “ That humility which
is the very life of the Gothic school is shown not
only in the imperfection, but in the accumulation, of
ornament.”
With the selfsame care are the many Gothic con-
structions of Venice discovered by Ruskin’s research
as the few Byzantine ; nearly all, except the Ducal
Palace, suffer from “ the continual juxtaposition of
the Renaissance palaces, . . . they exhaust their own
life by breathing it into the Renaissance coldness.”
The Ducal Palace, according to Ruskin, was a work of
sudden Gothic. It is unlike the true transitional work
done between the final cessation of pure Byzantine
building, about 1300, and its own date—1320 to 1350.
The struggle between Byzantine and Gothic (formed
on the mainland) had been one of equals, equally
organised and vital. Ruskin shows us the brilliant
contest, with here and there a bit of true Gothic tangled
and taken prisoner till its friends should come up and
sustain it. And of the Gothic victory the English
reader (Ruskin writes, in spite of all, for the ultra-
English reader, the insular, the suburban, the very
churchwarden) should note that the Venetian houses
were the refined and ornate dwellings of “a nation
as laborious, as practical, as brave, and as prudent as
ourselves. ... At Venice, . . . Vicenza, Padua, and
H
113
an admirable page upon redundance as a quality, not,
needless to say, of all fine Gothic, but of the Gothic
that is most full of all Gothic qualities, and especially
the Gothic quality of humility : “ That humility which
is the very life of the Gothic school is shown not
only in the imperfection, but in the accumulation, of
ornament.”
With the selfsame care are the many Gothic con-
structions of Venice discovered by Ruskin’s research
as the few Byzantine ; nearly all, except the Ducal
Palace, suffer from “ the continual juxtaposition of
the Renaissance palaces, . . . they exhaust their own
life by breathing it into the Renaissance coldness.”
The Ducal Palace, according to Ruskin, was a work of
sudden Gothic. It is unlike the true transitional work
done between the final cessation of pure Byzantine
building, about 1300, and its own date—1320 to 1350.
The struggle between Byzantine and Gothic (formed
on the mainland) had been one of equals, equally
organised and vital. Ruskin shows us the brilliant
contest, with here and there a bit of true Gothic tangled
and taken prisoner till its friends should come up and
sustain it. And of the Gothic victory the English
reader (Ruskin writes, in spite of all, for the ultra-
English reader, the insular, the suburban, the very
churchwarden) should note that the Venetian houses
were the refined and ornate dwellings of “a nation
as laborious, as practical, as brave, and as prudent as
ourselves. ... At Venice, . . . Vicenza, Padua, and
H