Part 19

A few steps from this terrible ruin chance has made a ruin of ravishing beauty; this is the interior of Otho-Heinrich’s Palace, of which until now I have only described the façade. There it stands open to everybody under the sunshine and the rain, the snow and the wind, without a ceiling, without a canopy, and without a roof, whose dismantled walls are pierced as if by hazard with twelve Renaissance doors,--twelve jewels of _orfèvrerie_, twelve _chefs d’œuvre_, twelve idyls in stone--entwined as if they issued from the same roots, a wonderful and charming forest of wild flowers, worthy of the Palatines, _consule dignæ_. I can only tell you that this mixture of art and reality is indescribable; it is at once a contest and a harmony. Nature, who has a rival in Beethoven, finds also a rival in Jean Goujon. The arabesques form tendrils and the tendrils form arabesques. One does not know which to admire most, the living or the sculptured leaf.

This ruin appears to be filled with a divine order.

It seems to me that this Palace, built by the fairies of the Renaissance, is now in its natural state. All these marvellous fantasies of free and savage art would be out of harmony in these halls when treaties of peace or war were signed here, when grave princes dreamed here, and when queens were married and German emperors created here. Could these Vertumnuses, Pomonas, or Ganymedes have understood anything about the ideas that came into the heads of Frederick IV. or Frederick V., by the grace of God Count Palatine of the Rhine, Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire, Elector and Duke of Upper and Lower Bavaria? A grand _seigneur_ slept in this chamber beside a king’s daughter, under a ducal baldaquin; now there is neither _seigneur_, king’s daughter, baldaquin, nor even ceiling to this chamber; it is now the home of the bind-weed, and the wild mint is its perfume. It is well. It is better thus. This adorable sculpture was made to be kissed by the flowers and looked upon by the stars....

The night had fallen, the clouds were spread over the sky, and the moon had mounted nearly to the zenith, while I was still sitting on the same stone, gazing into the darkness which had gathered around me and into the shadows which I had within me. Suddenly the town-clock far below me sounded the hour; it was midnight: I rose and descended. The road leading to Heidelberg passes the ruins. At the moment when I arrived before them, the moon, veiled by the diffused clouds and surrounded by an immense halo, threw a weird light upon this magnificent mass of mouldering ruins....

The ruin, always open, is deserted at this hour. The idea of entering it possessed me. The two stone giants, who guard the stone court, allowed me to pass. I crossed the dark porch, upon which the iron portcullis still hangs, and entered the court. The moon had almost disappeared beneath the clouds. There was only a pallid light in the sky.

Nothing is grander than that which has fallen. This ruin, illuminated in such a way, at such an hour, was indescribably sad, gentle, and majestic. I fancied that in the scarcely perceptible rustling of the trees and foliage there was something grave and respectful. I heard no footstep, no voice, no breath. In the court there was neither light, nor shadow; a sort of dreamful twilight outlined everything and veiled everything. The confused gaps and rifts allowed the feeble rays of moonlight to penetrate the most remote corners; and in the black depths of the inaccessible arches and corridors, I saw white figures, slowly gliding.

It was the hour when the façades of old abandoned buildings are no longer façades, but faces. I walked over the uneven pavement without daring to make any noise, and I experienced between the four walls of this enclosure that strange disquietude, that undefined sentiment which the ancients called “the horror of the sacred woods.” There is a kind of insurmountable terror in the sinister mingled with the superb.

However, I climbed up the green and damp steps of the old stairway without rails and entered the old roofless dwelling of Otho-Heinrich. Perhaps you will laugh; but I assure you that to walk at night through chambers which have been inhabited by people, whose doors are dismantled, whose apartments each have their peculiar signification, saying to yourself: “Here is the dining-room, here is the bedroom, here is the alcove, here is the mantel-piece,”--and to feel the grass under your feet and to see the sky above your head, is terrifying. A room which has still the form of a room and whose ceiling has been lifted off, as it were like the lid of a box, becomes a mournful and nameless thing. It is not a house, it is not a tomb. In a tomb you feel the _soul_ of a man; in this place you feel his shadow.

As soon as I passed the Knights’ Hall I stopped. Here there was a singular noise, the more distinct because a sepulchral silence filled the rest of the ruin. It was a weak, prolonged, strident rattle, mingled at moments with a little, dry and rapid hammering, which at times seemed to come from the depths of the darkness, from a far-away copse, or the edifice itself; at times, from beneath my feet between the rifts in the pavement. Whence came this noise? Of what nocturnal creature was it the cry, or the knocking? I am not acquainted with it, but as I listen to it, I cannot help thinking of that hideous, legendary spinner who weaves rope for the gibbet.

However, nothing, nobody, not a living person is here. This hall, like the rest of the Palace, is deserted. I struck the pavement with my cane, the noise ceased, only to begin again a moment afterwards. I knocked again, it ceased, then it began again. Yet I saw nothing but a large frightened bat, which the blow of my cane on the stones had scared from one of the sculptured corbels of the wall, and which circled around my head in that funereal flight which seems to have been made for the interior of ruined towers....

At the moment I descended the flight of stairs the moon shone forth, large and brilliant, from a rift in the clouds; the Palace of Frederick IV., with its double pediment, suddenly appeared, magnificent and clear as daylight with its sixteen pale and formidable giants; while, at my right, Otho’s façade, a black silhouette against the luminous sky, allowed a few dazzling rays of moonlight to escape through its twenty-four windows.

I said clear as daylight--I am wrong. The moon upon ruins is more than a light,--it is a harmony. It hides no detail, it exaggerates no wounds, it throws a veil on broken objects and adds an indescribable, misty aureole of majesty to ancient buildings. It is better to see a palace, or an old cloister, at night than in the day. The hard brilliancy of the sunlight is severe upon the ruins and intensifies the sadness of the statues....

I went out of the Palace through the garden, and, descending, I stopped once more for a moment on one of the lower terraces. Behind me the ruin, hiding the moon, made, half down the slope, a large mass of shadow, where in all directions were thrown out long, dark lines, and long, luminous lines, which striped the vague and misty background of the landscape. Below me lay drowsy Heidelberg, stretched out at the bottom of the valley, the length of the mountain; all the lights were out; all the doors were shut; below Heidelberg I heard the murmur of the Neckar, which seemed to be whispering to the hill and valley; and the thoughts which filled me all the evening,--the nothingness of man in the Past, the infirmity of man in the Present, the grandeur of Nature, and the eternity of God,--came to me altogether, in a triple figure, whilst I descended with slow steps into the darkness between this river awake and living, this sleeping town, and this dead Palace.

_Le Rhin_ (Paris, 1842).

THE DUCAL PALACE.

JOHN RUSKIN.

The charm which Venice still possesses, and which for the last fifty years has rendered it the favourite haunt of all the painters of picturesque subject, is owing to the effect of the palaces belonging to the period we have now to examine, mingled with those of the Renaissance.

The effect is produced in two different ways. The Renaissance palaces are not more picturesque in themselves than the club-houses of Pall Mall; but they become delightful by the contrast of their severity and refinement with the rich and rude confusion of the sea life beneath them, and of their white and solid masonry with the green waves. Remove from beneath them the orange sails of the fishing boats, the black gliding of the gondolas, the cumbered decks and rough crews of the barges of traffic, and the fretfulness of the green water along their foundations, and the Renaissance palaces possess no more interest than those of London or Paris. But the Gothic palaces are picturesque in themselves, and wield over us an independent power. Sea and sky, and every other accessory might be taken away from them, and still they would be beautiful and strange. They are not less striking in the loneliest streets of Padua and Vicenza (where many were built during the period of the Venetian authority in those cities) than in the most crowded thoroughfares of Venice itself; and if they could be transported into the midst of London, they would still not altogether lose their power over the feelings.

The best proof of this is in the perpetual attractiveness of all pictures, however poor in skill, which have taken for their subject the principal of these Gothic buildings, the Ducal Palace. In spite of all architectural theories and teachings, the paintings of this building are always felt to be delightful; we cannot be wearied by them, though often sorely tried; but we are not put to the same trial in the case of the palaces of the Renaissance. They are never drawn singly, or as the principal subject, nor can they be. The building which faces the Ducal Palace on the opposite side of the Piazzetta is celebrated among architects, but it is not familiar to our eyes; it is painted only incidentally, for the completion, not the subject, of a Venetian scene; and even the Renaissance arcades of St. Mark’s Place, though frequently painted, are always treated as a mere avenue to its Byzantine church and colossal tower. And the Ducal Palace itself owes the peculiar charm which we have hitherto felt, not so much to its greater size as compared with other Gothic buildings, or nobler design (for it never yet has been rightly drawn), as to its comparative isolation. The other Gothic structures are as much injured by the continual juxtaposition of the Renaissance palaces, as the latter are aided by it; they exhaust their own life by breathing it into the Renaissance coldness: but the Ducal Palace stands comparatively alone, and fully expresses the Gothic power....

The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace, a Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and the existing building is formed by the union of the two. We shall review the history of each in succession.

1st. The BYZANTINE PALACE.

The year of the death of Charlemagne, 813,--the Venetians determined to make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital of their state. Their Doge, Angelo or Agnello Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement of the small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the future Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the rising of the banks of sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build wooden bridges over the canals. For the offices of religion he built the Church of St. Mark; and on, or near, the spot where the Ducal Palace now stands, he built a palace for the administration of the government.

The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last representation of her power....

[Illustration: THE DUCAL PALACE]

In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by fire, but repaired before 1116, when it received another emperor Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honoured by imperial praise. Between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani....

2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE.

The reader, doubtless, recollects that the important change in the Venetian government which gave stability to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297, under the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, a man thus characterized by Sansovino:--“A prompt and prudent man, of unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who laid, so to speak, the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by the admirable regulations which he introduced into the government.”...

We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that “in 1301 another saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo _under the Doge Gradenigo_, and finished in 1309, _in which year the Grand Council first sat in it_.” In the first year, therefore, of the Fourteenth Century, the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was begun; and as the Byzantine Palace, was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the state, so the Gothic Palace, was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the aristocratic power. Considered as the principal representation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace is the Parthenon of Venice, and Gradenigo its Pericles....

Its decorations and fittings, however, were long in completion; the paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400. They represented the heavens covered with stars, this being, says Sansovino, the bearings of the Doge Steno.... The Grand Council sat in the finished chamber for the first time in 1423. In that year the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was completed. It had taken, to build it, the energies of the entire period which I have above described as the central one of her life.

3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE.

I must go back a step or two, in order to be certain that the reader understands clearly the state of the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately symmetry, and to contrast the works of sculpture and painting with which it was decorated,--full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the Fourteenth Century,--with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as the “Palazzo Nuovo;” and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the “Palazzo Vecchio.” That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it towards the Sea; but there was not the wide quay in front, the Riva dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Façade as important as that of the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the water; and the _old_ palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta with the same splendour as the Sea Façade.... The Great Council Chamber was used for the first time on the day when Foscari entered the Senate as Doge,--the 3rd of April, 1423, ... and the following year, on the 27th of March, the first hammer was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani.

That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly called the “Renaissance.” It was the knell of the architecture of Venice,--and of Venice herself....

The whole work must have been completed towards the middle of the Sixteenth Century.... But the palace was not long permitted to remain in this finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire, burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the precious pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the Sea Façade, and most of those on the Rio Façade, leaving the building a mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames.... The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were however extensive, and interfere in many directions with the earlier work of the palace: still the only serious alteration in its form was the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace, to the other side of the Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of Sighs, to connect them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form....

The traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the corridor, and examine with great care the series of capitals which extend on the Piazzetta side from the Fig-tree angle to the pilaster which carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples of graceful composition in massy capitals meant for hard service and distant effect, these are among the finest things I know in Gothic Art; and that above the fig-tree is remarkable for its sculptures of the four winds; each on the side turned towards the wind represented. Levante, the east wind; a figure with rays round its head, to show that it is always clear weather when that wind blows, raising the sun out of the sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned, holding the sun in its right hand: Ponente, the west wind; plunging the sun into the sea: and Tramontana, the north wind; looking up at the north star. This capital should be carefully examined, if for no other reason than to attach greater distinctness of idea to the magnificent verbiage of Milton:

“Thwart of these, as fierce, Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds, Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise, Sirocco and Libecchio.”

I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones on the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to the fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe them all carefully, until he comes to the great pilaster or complicated pier which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say, the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the lower arcade; the first new lion’s head with smooth ears, cut in the time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the Fourteenth and the other of the Fifteenth Century....

I can only say that, in the winter of 1851 the “Paradise” of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de’ Pregadi were full of pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as precious as so many kingdoms, so precious indeed, and so full of majesty, that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the great chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of purple flower and shadowy pine.

_Stones of Venice_ (London, 1851–’3).

THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA.

EDMONDO DE AMICIS.

The Mosque of Cordova, which was converted into a cathedral when the Moors were expelled but which has, notwithstanding, always remained a Mosque, was built on the ruins of the primitive cathedral not far from the Guadalquiver. Abd-er-Rahman began to build it in the year 785 or 786. “Let us build a Mosque,” said he, “which will surpass that of Bagdad, that of Damascus, and that of Jerusalem, which shall be the greatest temple of Islam and become the Mecca of the Occident.” The work was begun with ardour; and Christian slaves were made to carry the stones of razed churches for its foundation. Abd-er-Rahman, himself, worked an hour every day; in a few years the Mosque was built, the Caliphs who succeeded Abd-er-Rahman embellished it, and it was completed after a century of continuous labour.

“Here we are,” said one of my hosts, as we suddenly stopped before a vast edifice. I thought it was a fortress; but it was the wall that surrounded the Mosque, in which formerly opened twenty large bronze doors surrounded by graceful arabesques and arched windows supported by light columns; it is now covered with a triple coat of plaster. A trip around the boundary-wall is a nice little walk after dinner: you can judge then of the extent of the building.

The principal door of this enclosure is at the north, on the spot where Abd-er-Rahman’s minaret rose, from whose summit fluttered the Mohammedan standard; I expected to see the interior of the Mosque at once, and I found myself in a garden full of orange-trees, cypresses, and palms, enclosed on three sides by a very light portico, and shut in on the fourth side by the façade of the Mosque. In the time of the Arabs there was a fountain in the centre for their ablutions, and the faithful gathered under the shade of these trees before entering the temple. I remained there for some moments looking around me and breathing the fresh and perfumed air with a very lively sensation; my heart was beating rapidly at the thought of being so near the famous Mosque, and I felt myself impelled with a great curiosity and yet held back by an indescribable childish trembling. “Let us go in!” said my companions. “Another moment!” I replied. “Let me taste the pleasure of anticipation.” Finally I stepped forward, and without glancing at the marvellous door, which my companions showed me, I entered.