Venice

Byzantine Palaces.

Fine examples of Venetian Byzantine palaces—at least of the façades—are still to be seen on the Grand Canal and in some of the small canals. The interiors have been modified past recognition of their original disposition. The Byzantine palace seems to have had twin angle-towers—such as those of the Ca' Molin on the Riva degli Schiavoni, where Pe trarch lived. The Fondaco dei Turchi ( 13th century), now the Natural History Museum, also has two angle-towers. The fa çades presented continuous colonnades on each floor with semi circular high stilted arches, leaving a very small amount of wall space. The buildings were usually battlemented in fantastic form. A good specimen may be seen in Lazzaro Sebastiani's pic ture of the piazzetta, in the Museo Civico. There on the right we see the handsome building of the old bakery, occupying the site of the present library ; it has two arcades of Saracenic arches and a fine row of battlements. Other specimens still in existence are Palazzo Loredan and Palazzo Farsetti (now the municipal build ings), and the splendid Palazzo Da Mosto, all on the Grand Canal. The richest ornamentation was applied to the arches and string courses while plaques of sculpture, roundels and coats of arms adorned the façades. The remains of a Byzantine façade now almost entirely built into a wall in the Rio di Ca' Foscari offer us excellent illustration of this elaborate style of decorative work.

Gothic Architecture.

Venetian Gothic, both ecclesiastical and domestic, shares most of the characteristics of north Italian Gothic generally. The material, brick and terra-cotta, is the determining cause of the characteristics of north Italian Gothic.

The Ducal Palace.

Soon after the concentration at Rialto the doge Angelo Particiaco began an official residence for the head of the state, a small, strongly fortified castle; one of its massive angle-towers is now incorporated in St. Mark's and serves as the treasury. It was burnt in 976 and again in i io6. Sebastian Ziani (1 173-1179) restored and enlarged the palace. Of his work some traces still remain in the richly sculptured bands built in at inter vals along the 14th-century façade on the Rio, and part of the handsome larch-wood beams which formed the loggia of the piazzetta façade, still visible on the inner wall of the present loggia. The palace was begun by Pietro Gradenigo in 13o9.

Towards the end of the 14th century, this façade, with its lower colonnade, upper loggia with handsome Gothic tracery, and the vast impending upper storey, which give to the whole building its striking appearance and audacious design, had been carried as far as the tenth column on the piazzetta side. In 1424 the building was resumed and carried as far as the north-west angle, near St. Mark's, thus completing the sea and piazzetta façades of two storeys with open colonnades, forming a long loggia on the ground and first floors, with seventeen arches on the sea front and eighteen on the other façade. Above this is a lofty third storey, pierced

with a few large windows, with pointed arches once filled with tracery, which is now lost. The whole surface of the ponderous upper storey is covered with a diaper pattern in slabs of creamy white Istrian stone and red Verona marble, giving a delicate rosy orange hue to the building. Very beautiful sculpture, executed with an ivory-like minuteness of finish, is used to decorate the whole building with wonderful profusion. The great gateway, the Porta della Carta, was added in from designs by Gio vanni Buon and his son Bartolomeo. The block of buildings in the interior, connecting the Porta della Carta with the Rio wing, was added about 1462. Later a fire consumed the earlier build ings along the Rio, which were replaced by the present structure.

The great internal court is surrounded with arcading. From the interior of the court access is given to the upper loggia by a very beautiful early Renaissance staircase, built in 1484-1501 by Antonio Rizzo. Two colossal statues of Neptune and Mars at the top of these stairs were executed by Jacopo Sansovino in 1554 —hence the name "giants' staircase." Owing to the fire of 1574, the fine series of early Paduan and Venetian frescoes in the chief rooms was lost. At present the magnificent council chambers for the different legislative bodies of the Venetian republic and the state apartments of the doges are highly decorated with gilt carv ing and panelling in the style of the later Renaissance. On the walls of the chief council chambers are a magnificent series of oil-paintings by Tintoretto and others—among them his master piece, "Bacchus and Ariadne," and his enormous picture of Para dise, the largest oil-painting in the world.

Gothic Churches and Palaces.

Among the many Gothic churches of Venice the largest are the Franciscan church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Fran (begun in 1338), and the Dominican church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo (1246-1430). The Fran is re markable for its splendid works of art, including Titian's famous Assumption of the Virgin, and its fine choir-stalls and for the series of six eastern chapels which from outside give a very good example of Gothic brickwork, comparable with the even finer apse of the now desecrated church of San Gregorio. The church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo was the usual burying-place of the doges, and contains many noble mausoleums of various dates. Besides these two churches we may mention Santo Stefano, an interesting building of central Gothic, "the best ecclesiastical example of it in Venice." The west entrance is later than the rest of the edifice and is of the richest Renaissance Gothic, a little earlier than the Porta della Carta.