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into deep hollows, and cast indented shadows on the weed-grown wall. The process has gone too far, and yet I doubt not but that this building is seen to greater advantage now than when first built, always with exception of one circumstance, that the French shattered the lower wheel window, and set up in front of it an escutcheon with "Libertas" upon it, which abomination of desolation, the Lucchese have not yet had humanheartedness enough to pull down.

Putting therefore the application of architecture as an accessory out of the question, and supposing our object to be the exhibition of the most impressive qualities of the building itself, it is evidently the duty of the draughtsman to represent it under those conditions, and with that amount of age-mark upon it which may best exalt and harmonize the sources of its beauty: this is no pursuit of mere picturesqueness, it is true following out of the ideal character of the building; nay, far greater dilapidation than this may in portions be exhibited, for there are beauties of other kinds, not otherwise attainable, brought out by advanced dilapidation; but when the artist suffers the mere love of ruinousness to interfere with his perception of the art of the building, and substitutes rude fractures and blotting stains for all its fine chiselling and determined color, he has lost the end of his own art.

Effects of

So far of aging; next of effects of light and § 27. fight, how neces- color. It is, I believe, hardly enough observed sary to the understanding of detail. among architects that the same decorations are of totally different effect according to their position and the time of day. A moulding which is of value on a building facing south, where it takes deep shadows from steep sun, may be utterly ineffective if placed west or east; and a moulding which is chaste and intelligible in shade on a north side, may be grotesque, vulgar, or confused when it takes black shadows on the south. Farther, there is a time of day in which every architectural decoration is seen to best advantage, and certain times in which its peculiar force and character are best explained; of these niceties the architect takes little cognizance, as he must in some sort calculate on the effect of ornament at all times; but to the artist they are of infinite importance, and especially for this reason, that there is always much detail on buildings which

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not be drawn as such, which is too far off, or too minute, which must consequently be set down in short-hand of some d or another; and, as it were, an abstract, more or less losophical, made of its general heads. Of the style of this tract, of the lightness, confusion, and mystery necessary in I have spoken elsewhere; at present I insist only on the ingement and matter of it. All good ornament and all good hitecture are capable of being put into short-hand; that is, 1 has a perfect system of parts, principal and subordinate, which, even when the complemental details vanish in disce, the system and anatomy yet remain visible so long as anyg is visible; so that the divisions of a beautiful spire shall nown as beautiful even till their last line vanishes in blue t, and the effect of a well-designed moulding shall be visibly iplined, harmonious, and inventive, as long as it is seen to moulding at all. Now the power of the artist of marking character depends not on his complete knowledge of the gn, but on his experimental knowledge of its salient and ing parts, and of the effects of light and shadow, by which r saliency is best told. He must therefore be prepared, ording to his subject, to use light, steep or level, intense or le, and out of the resulting chiaroscuro select those peculiar hinging points on which the rest are based, and by which Ise that is essential may be explained.

The thoughtful command of all these circumstances constis the real architectural draughtsman; the habits of executeverything either under one kind of effect or in one manner, f using unintelligible and meaningless abstracts of beautiful gns, are those which must commonly take the place of it and the most extensively esteemed.*

Architectural

Let us now proceed with our review of those ng of Gentile artists who have devoted themselves more peculiarly i and Vittor to architectural subject.

ccio;

Foremost among them stand Gentile Bellini Vittor Carpaccio, to whom we are indebted for the only ting faithful statements of the architecture of Old Venice,

I have not given any examples in this place, because it is difficult to ain such circumstances of effect without diagrams: I purpose entering fuller discussion of the subject with the aid of illustration.

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and who are the only authorities to whom we can trust in conjecturing the former beauty of those few desecrated fragments, the last of which are now being rapidly swept away by the idiocy of modern Venetians.

Nothing can be more careful, nothing more delicately finished, or more dignified in feeling than the works of both these men; and as architectural evidence they are the best we could have had, all the gilded parts being gilt in the picture, so that there can be no mistake or confusion of them with yellow color or light, and all the frescoes or mosaics given with the most absolute precision and fidelity. At the same time they are by no means examples of perfect architectural drawing; there is little light and shade in them of any kind, and none whatever of the thoughtful observance of temporary effect of which we have just been speaking; so that, in rendering the character of the relieved parts, their solidity, depth, or gloom, the representation fails altogether, and it is moreover lifeless from its very completion, both the signs of age and the effects of use and habitation being utterly rejected; rightly so, indeed, in these instances, (all the architecture of these painters being in background to religious subject,) but wrongly so, if we look to the architecture alone. Neither is there anything like aerial perspective attempted; the employment of actual gold in the decoration of all the distances, and the entire realization of their details, as far as is possible on the scale compelled by perspective, being alone sufficient to prevent this, except in the hands of painters far more practised in effect than either Gentile or Carpaccio. But with all these discrepancies, Gentile Bellini's church of St. Mark's is the best church of St. Mark's that has ever been painted, so far as I know; and I believe the reconciliation of true aerial perspective and chiaroscuro with the splendor and dignity obtained by the real gilding and elaborate detail, is a problem yet to be accomplished. With the help of the Daguerreotype, and the lessons of color given by the later Venetians, we ought now to be able to accomplish it, more especially as the right use of gold has been shown us by the greatest master of effect whom Venice herself produced, Tintoret, who has employed it with infinite grace on the steps ascended by the young Madonna, in his large picture in the

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rch of the Madonna dell' Orto. Perugino uses it also with gular grace, often employing it for golden light on distant s, and continually on the high light of hair, and that withlosing relative distances.

And of the

The great group of Venetian painters who tians gener- brought landscape art, for that time, to its culminating point, have left, as we have already seen, le that is instructive in architectural painting. The causes his I cannot comprehend, for neither Titian nor Tintoret ears to despise anything that affords them either variety of m or of color, the latter especially condescending to very ial details,—as in the magnificent carpet painting of the ge Mocenigo; so that it might have been expected that in rich colors of St. Mark's, and the magnificent and fantastic sses of the Byzantine palaces, they would have found whereon to dwell with delighted elaboration. This is, however, er the case, and although frequently compelled to introduce tions of Venetian locality in their backgrounds, such porns are always treated in a most hasty and faithless manner, ssing frequently all character of the building, and never anced to realization. In Titian's picture of Faith, the view Venice below is laid in so rapidly and slightly, the houses all ning this way and that, and of no color, the sea a dead gray een, and the ship-sails mere dashes of the brush, that the ost obscure of Turner's Venices would look substantial beside ; while in the very picture of Tintoret in which he has dwelt elaborately on the carpet, he has substituted a piece of ordiry renaissance composition for St. Mark's, and in the backound has chosen the Sansovino side of the Piazzetta, treating en that so carelessly as to lose all the proportion and beauty its design, and so flimsily that the line of the distant sea which s been first laid in, is seen through all the columns. Evinces of magnificent power of course exist in whatever he uches, but his full power is never turned in this direction. ore space is allowed to his architecture by Paul Veronese, but is still entirely suggestive, and would be utterly false except a frame or background for figures. The same may be said th respect to Raffaelle and the Roman school.

If, however, these men laid architecture little under contri

exteriors. Canaletto.

bution to their own art, they made their own art a glorious $30. Fresco paint gift to architecture, and the walls of Venice, which ing of the Venetian before, I believe, had received color only in arabesque patterns, were lighted with human life by Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese. Of the works of Tintoret and Titian, nothing now, I believe, remains; two figures of Giorgione's are still traceable on the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, one of which, singularly uninjured, is seen from far above and below the Rialto, flaming like the reflection of a sunset. Two figures of Veronese were also traceable till lately, the head and arms of one still remain, and some glorious olivebranches which were beside the other; the figure having been entirely effaced by an inscription in large black letters on a whitewash tablet which we owe to the somewhat inopportunely expressed enthusiasm of the inhabitants of the district in favor of their new pastor.* Judging, however, from the rate at which destruction is at present advancing, and seeing that, in about seven or eight years more, Venice will have utterly lost every external claim to interest, except that which attaches to the group of buildings immediately around St. Mark's place, and to the larger churches, it may be conjectured that the greater part of her present degradation has taken place, at any rate, within the last forty years. Let the reader with such scraps of evidence as may still be gleaned from under the stucco and paint of the Italian committees of taste, and from among the drawing-room innovations of English and German residents restore Venice in

* The inscription is to the following effect,‚—a pleasant thing to see upon the walls, were it but more innocently placed :—

CAMPO. DI. S. MAURIZIO

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DIO

CONSERVI A NOI.

LUNGAMENTE

LO ZELANTIS. E. REVERENDIS

D. LUIGI. PICCINI.

NOSTRO

NOVELLO PIEVANO.

GLI ESULTANT.

PARROCCHIANI

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