Stones of Venice | Page 7

of
Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with
some glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the
real life had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the
impression instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction
between the elder palaces and those built "within this last hundred
years; which all have their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a
hundred miles away, and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and
serpentine upon their fronts."
On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
which so struck the French ambassador. [Footnote: Appendix 6,
"Renaissance Ornaments."] He was right in his notice of the distinction.
There had indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the
fifteenth century; and a change of some importance to us moderns: we
English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes
to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of architecture,
never since revived. But that the reader may understand this, it is
necessary that he should have some general idea of the connection of
the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of Europe, from its
origin forwards.
SECTION XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new,
is derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from
the East. The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the
various modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once
for all: if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all the
types of successive architectural invention upon it like so many beads.
The Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all
Romanesque, massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine,
and what else you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all
Gothic, Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe:
those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed

and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength
of architecture, are from the race of Japheth: the spirituality and
sanctity of it from Ismael, Abraham, and Shem.
SECTION XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his
shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier
derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he should
be able to refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the shaft
was first perfected. But it may be incidently observed, that if the
Greeks did indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three
families of the earth have each contributed their part to its noblest
architecture: and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the
sustaining or bearing member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the
spiritualization of both.
SECTION XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian,
are the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of
five orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be
any more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is
convex: those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the
kind. On the other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early
English, Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The
transitional form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre
or root of both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and
grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species. [Footnote:
Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."]
SECTION XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was
clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result,
until they begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service;
except only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it,
and the Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often
very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity:
seized upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it;
invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all
over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest
at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman
Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the
time, very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many respects
ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination,

which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the
Bosphorus and the Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as
the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes Corpse-light. The
architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange, gilded, and embalmed
repose: it, with the religion