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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[AU6U3T< 



induce the mind to reflect and grow refined, or instil into it patriotic ideas, 

 as the presence of Buch productions in the squares and in the streets. 

 The public taste is thereby constantly exercised. Indeed, so many are 

 the portions of ground appropriated exclusively to works of genius, that 

 it may be said the taste of the people coold not degenerate, even were the 

 treasures of the Vatican or Uffizii unknown to them. The effects, also, of 

 viewing these works in the open air are more healthful, and, on account of 

 the freedom and independence of the spectator, yield a pleasure superior 

 to that afforded by works of the same description within a palace ; the 

 glorious sun that heightens these beautiful objects rendering the Italians 

 at the same time susceptible of every emotion which it is in the power of 

 art to inspire. Every traveller must have heard the exclamations of praise 

 that are uttered by mule-drivers, beggars, porters, and boatmen, when 

 looking on the colossal figures which adorn some fountain, or a noble group 

 of statuary in one of their favorite squares. And all admire these places 

 abroad, from prince to peasant. It was gratifying to me, vphen in Venice, 

 to see the blind Holmein feeling and passing his hands over the beautiful 

 bronze and marble works in that city, and to witness the lively pleasure he 

 experienced from such monuments. The impressions thus produced only 

 make us regret that art does notdevelope itself to the same extent in Eng- 

 land and that such things are not carried out ou that magnificent and 

 liberal scale we see in the Italian cities. An opportunity which was 

 lately offered for making one of the most splendid piazzas in the world, in 

 front of the National Gallery, was thrown away ; and, with the exception 

 of the equestrian statue to King Charles, the whole is now a disgrace to 

 the nation, and one mass of rubbish. This is the more to be regretted, 

 because the artists of our time take precedence of the moderns in Italy ; 

 and were there less /a/se and more real patronage, some of our first sculp- 

 tors would have graced the spot with subjects rivalling the best produc- 

 tions of ancient Greece. 



To those men who contributed so much to the restoration of art in Italy, 

 we owe the most beautiful works in her great squares ; and we cannot 

 forget that the sculptors of those grand works in the Piazza del Gran- 

 duca, at Florence, of the bronze gates to the Baptistery in the same city, 

 of the fountains in Rome, Perugia, and Bologna, whilst they attained 

 excellence in that high style of art which they exhibit, were at the same 

 time or had been, jewellers, mosaicisti, and medallists; and that the prac- 

 tice of putting together the minute fragments of stone or glass, or cutting 

 the shell or cornelian into admired cameos, did not prevent them from exe- 

 cutiu" some of the grandest works ever known in sculpture ; works, of 

 which the reputation is sealed by the encouiunis of Michael Angelo and of 

 our own Flaxraau. 



II. 



"Fe« of these palaces are of good architfcture—somp of very bad; others are whim, 

 sical, but present among their strange forms many happy ideas."— Wood's •• Letters of 

 an Architect," &c. 



The details of the Venetian palaces are valuable, because they lead the 

 mind, like all eccentric but beautiful things, to think and invent for 

 itself. Their peculiarities and caprices of style are positive faults if tested 

 by the standard of the Classic examples, or by Palladio ; yet, for all thi», 

 we see in the composition of the windows, balconies, and other parts of 

 the palaces of Venice, principles of real beauty. An early and too ex- 

 clusive admiration of the Roman edifices is apt to prejudice the mind 

 against them ; but we think they must be studied by all who would not 

 separate the painter from the archilect. 



The architecture of Venice is what the city itself is in its history and 

 associations— strange and romantic; and her Doge's palace, fairy-like and 

 Eastern in its appearance, reverses the principles of all other architecture. 

 As Forsyth* says, — " Here the solid rests on the open, a wall of enormous 

 mass rests on a slender fretwork of shafts, arches, and intersected circles. 

 The very corners are cut to admit a thin spiral column, a barbarism which 

 I saw imitated in several old palaces. A front thus bisected into thick 

 and thin, such contrast of flat and fretted, can please only in perspective. 

 It is not enough that the structure be really durable, it should also appear 

 80 " The writer had, however, formed his notions of arcliiiectural beauty 

 and propriety on the precepts of Vitruvius and Palladio, and anything 

 contrary to these was immediately ridiculed and censured by him. Now, 

 the sketch of the Doge's palace (fig. 1) shows, with all its defecls, what a 

 pleasing beauty it has about it; an effect which it owes solely to its de- 

 parture from tbose prescribed rules. Ou the other hand, we see edifices 

 which the judgment might pronounce faultless, most correct in the propor- 

 tions usually given to them, Uiosl perfect in the features suitable to their 

 particular class, and, indeed, without any of those vagaries which are 

 * " Anti«iuilies, Arts, and t.etleis in Italy," 



here displayed — before which the mind remaios cold and nnexcited. A 

 total incapacity of raising pleasurable emotion must beget apathy, if not 



Fig. 1. 



disgust, towards an object. A building, like a book or a picture, may be 

 without a single absurdiiy, yet be very far from beautiful. Now, iu the 

 works of those men who thought for themselves, and were more ambitious 

 to be artists than imitators, we often find that, in departing from conven- 

 tional rules, the defects (if such they were) were redeemed by the inven- 

 tion of some striking beauties which pleased the imagination, exercised, 

 whilst it fascinated the eye, and at least possessed the merit of originality 

 and that charm which all works of great invention have — of which dull 

 copies are always destitute. Instances of these abound in Venice, and in 

 many of the Italian cities, exhibiting an approximation to the Gothic in 

 feeling, although that result was attained in quite a different way ; in the 

 Loggia of Sansovino, for example, and that of Lanzi, and in the cornices 

 and other parts of these celebrated designs, on which has been bestowed 

 great attention ; in San Michele, Florence, also, remarkable for the beauty 

 of its crowning member and the tracery of its windows : and in the Palaz- 

 zo Publico at Piacenza and Cunio.* It should only be remembered that 

 whilst on one side, by too strictly following precedent, we often substitute 

 elegance for seniiment ; ou the other, a too open defiance of it, might lead 

 to a corruption of true taste. 



It is observable in the Ducal palace, as in many other Venetian build- 

 ings, how well the contrast between the fiat mass of wall and its windows 

 is effected ; how admirably one part serves to relieve the other; also how 

 the coloured diamond patterns on those masses reduce the heaviness which 

 might otherwise appear too great for the light, ornamental corridor below. 



The angular balcony and recess (fig. 2) from another palace is a " bar- 

 barism" perhaps not likely to be committed by many English architects. 

 Nevertheless it is very beautiful. It was ingeniously contrived for com- 

 manding, from one point, different views on the canals ; but for this and a 

 thousand other similar picturesque features in her buildings, with the me- 

 mories they awaken of her former pageantries, Venice would lose more 

 than half its enchantment. .Such things fully express their meaning in 

 this wonderful city, and impress the mind with all that poetry and ro- 

 mance that is infused over it. They must be applied, however, with great 

 caution to other places and circumstances, for, bearing, as they do, more 

 the stamp of power and the force of original thought, than the evidence 

 of good taste, they should serve rather as stimuli to invention than as ex- 

 amples for imitation. The danger of sacrificing correct drawing and just 

 representation to a love of splendour, of which Reynolds, Fuseli, and 

 others, warned the student in the fascinating colours and wild compositions 

 of the great Venetian painters, might equally be incurred in an immode- 

 rate fondness for the florid palaces of Venice and the fanciful creations of 

 the Moor. 



* See "Illustrations to Hope's Historical Essay on Architecture," and CIcognara — 

 Fabbriche pin cospicae cii Venejia. 



