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VENICE
997

the state grew in wealth and importance the church grew with it. About the year 1063 the Doge Contarini resolved to remodel St Mark’s. There can be no doubt that Byzantine artists had a large share in the work, but it is equally certain that Lombard workmen were employed along with the Orientals, and thus St Mark’s became, as it were, a workshop in which two styles, Byzantine and Lombard, met and were fused together, giving birth to a new style, peculiar to the district, which may fairly be called Veneto-Byzantine.

In plan (see the article Architecture) St Mark’s is a Greek cross of equal arms, covered by a dome in the centre, 42 ft. in diameter, and(by a dome over each of the arms. The plan is derived from the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, now covered by the mosque of Mahommed II., and bears a strong resemblance to the plan of St Front at Périgueux in France (1120). The addition of a narthex before the main front and a vestibule on the northern side brings the whole western arm of the cross to a square on plan. In elevation the façade seems to have connexion with the live-bayed façade of the Kahriyeh Jamè, or mosaic mosque, at Constantinople. The exterior façade is enriched with marble columns brought from Alexandria and other cities of the East, and bearing in many cases incised graffiti. Mosaics are employed to decorate the spandrels of the arches. Only one of the original mosaics now exists, the one over the doorway at the north-western, or St Alipio, angle. Its subject, which is of high historical value as a record of costume, represents the translation of the body of St Mark, and gives us a view of the west façade of the church as it was at the beginning of the 13th century before the addition of the ogee gables, with alternating crockets and statues, and the intermediate pinnacled canopies placed between the five great arches of the upper storey. The top of the narthex forms a wide gallery, communicating with the interior at the triforium level. In the centre of this gallery stand the four colossal bronze horses which belonged to some Graeco-Roman triumphal quadriga, and were brought to Venice by the Doge Enrico Dandolo after the fall of Constantinople in 120; they were carried off by Napoleon to Paris in 1797, and restored by Francis of Austria in 1815.

Mosaic is the essential decoration of the church, and the architectural details are subordinated to the colour scheme. These mosaics belong to very various dates. The Doge Domenico Selvo began the decoration of the church in 1071, though it is uncertain whether any of his work can be now identified. The mosaics of the domes would seem to belong to the 12th century, probably before 1150. The mosaics of the atrium date from 1200 to 1300; the subjects are taken from Old Testament story. The baptistery mosaics represent the life of St John. The mosaics in the chapel of St Isidore (finished by Andrea Dandolo), giving us the life of the saint, were executed in 1355. In the sacristy is a series of 10th-century mosaics, and in other parts of the church are inferior and later mosaics from cartoons by later Venetian masters. Below the mosaics the walls and arches are covered with rare marbles, porphyries and alabaster from ancient columns sawn into slices and so arranged in broad bands as to produce a rich gamut of colour.

The eastern crypt, or confessio, extends under the whole of the choir and has three apses, like the upper church. The body of St Mark formerly rested here, but is now within the high altar. Below the nave is another crypt. The floors of both crypts have sunk considerably and are often under water; this settlement accounts for the inequalities of the pavement. The original part of the magnificent mosaic pavement probably dates from the middle of the 12th century, if we may judge from the pavement at Murano, exactly similar in style, material and workmanship, which bears the date 1140. The pavement consists partly of opus Alexandrinum of red and green porphyry mixed with marbles, partly of tessellated work of glass and marble tesserae.

The choir stands about 4 ft. above the nave and is se arated from it by a marble rood-screen, on the architrave of which stand fourteen figures, the signed work of lacobello and Pietro Paolo delle Masegne, 1394.

The Pala d’oro, or retable of the high altar, is one of the chief glories of St Mark’s. It is one of the most magnificent specimens of goldsmiths' and jewellers' work in existence. It was ordered in 976 at Constantinople by the Doge Pietro I. Orseolo, and was enlarged and enriched with gems and modified in form, first by a Greek artificer in 1105, and then by Venetians between 1209 and 1345. It is composed of figures of Christ, angels, prophets and saints, in Byzantine enamel run into gold plates. It is about 11 ft. 6 in. wide, and about 4 ft. 8 in. high. It contains 1300 great pearls, 400 garnets, 90 amethysts, 300 sapphires, 300 emeralds, 15 rubies, 75 balas rubies, 4 topazes, 2 cameos; the gems, except where they have been replaced, are cut en cabochon. The treasury of St Mark’s contains a magnificent collection of church plate and jewels.

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—gemihas angular turres—such as those of the Ca’ Molin on the Byzantine palaces. Riva degli Schiavoni, where Petrarch lived. The restored (1880) Fondaco[1] dei Turchi (13th century), now the Museo Civico, also has two angle-towers. The façades presented continuous colonnades on each floor with semicircular 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 picture 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 the municipal buildings, Palazzo Loredan and Palazzo Farsetti—if, indeed, these are not to be considered rather as Romanesque—and the splendid Ca’ 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 decorative work.


Fig. 1.—Square of St Mark and surrounding buildings. The original campo was bounded on the west by the canal B, with the 6th-century church of S. Geminiano, C, on its west bank. The first enlargement of the square was effected by Doge Sebastiano Ziani in 1176, when he filled up the canal and rebuilt the church on a new site at D, thus nearly doubling the size of the square. Lastly, the square was extended southwards in the 16th century, when the new palace of the procurators, K, was built by Scamozzi. Gentile Bellini’s picture shows a line of houses along FF, reaching up to the great campanile, A. Napoleon I. in 1805–10 pulled down the church of Geminiano and built a new block at the west end of the square, L. The dates of the various parts of the existing ducal palace are indicated on the plan; the rebuilding was carried on in the following order, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V., At Z is the treasury of St Mark, which was originally one of the towers belonging to the old ducal palace; E, site of old houses; G, clock tower; H, old palace of procurators; J, old library; M, two columns; N, Ponte della Paglia; O, Bridge of Sighs; W, Giants Staircase; X, sacristy of St Mark; Y, Piazzetta.

Gothic Architecture.-Venetian Gothic, both ecclesiastical and domestic, shares most of the characteristics of north Italian Gothic generally, though in domestic architecture it displays one peculiarity which we shall presently note. The material, brick and terra-cotta, is the determining, cause of the characteristics of north Italian Gothic.

  1. This palace was originally the property of the Pesaro family, and afterwards of the duke of Este, and finally of the republic, which used it as a dwelling-place for royal guests before letting it to Turkish merchants. The word Fondaco (derived through Arabic from the Greek vravéoxeinv), as applied to some of the Venetian palaces, denotes the mercantile headquarters of a foreign trading nation; Those still existing are the Turkish and the German (F. de’ Tedeschi, the latter now converted into the post office.