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272 XXIII. THE EDGE AND .FILLET.
DECORATION.
side, mother-of-pearl on the surface : he was content, perforce,
to gather the clay of the Brenta banks, and bake it into brick
for his -substance of wall; but he overlaid it with the wealth
of ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You might
fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which a petrifying
sea had beaten upon till it coated it with marble: at first a
dark city—washed white by the sea foam. And I told you
before that it was also a city of shafts and arches, and that its
dwellings were raised upon continuous arcades, among which
the sea waves wandered. Hence the thoughts of its builders
were early and constantly directed to the incrustation of
arches. ,
§ xii. In Fig. LVII. I have given two of these Byzantine
stilted arches: the one on the right, a, as they now too often
appear, in its bare brickwork; that on the left, with its alabaster covering, literally marble defensive armor, riveted
together in. pieces, which follow the contours of the building.
Now. on the wall, these pieces are mere, flat slabs cut to the
arch outline: but under the
Fig. lvh. '
soffit of the arch the marble
mail is curved, often cut
singularly thin, like bent
^M^^^^MPT^M^^MMfW-- *nesJ and fitted together so
rliHHHiil 1 . rilBrBSrift that the pieces would sustain each other even without
rivets. It is of course desirable that this thin sub-
arch of marble should project enough to sustain the facing of
the wall; and the reader will see, in Fig. LVII., that its edge
forms a kind of narrow band round the arch (b), a band which
the least enrichment would render a valuable decorative feature. Now this band is, of course, if the soffit-pieces project
a little beyond the face of the wall-pieces, a mere fillet, like the
wooden gunwale in Plate IX. ; and the question is, how to
enrich it most wisely. It might easily have been dog-toothed^
but the Byzantine architects had not invented the dogtooth,
and would not have used it here, if they had; for the dogtooth
| Title | The stones of Venice - 1 |
| Creator | Ruskin, John |
| Publisher | J. Wiley |
| Place of Publication | New York |
| Date | 1889 |
| Language | eng |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Title | 00000311 |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Transcript | 272 XXIII. THE EDGE AND .FILLET. DECORATION. side, mother-of-pearl on the surface : he was content, perforce, to gather the clay of the Brenta banks, and bake it into brick for his -substance of wall; but he overlaid it with the wealth of ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You might fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which a petrifying sea had beaten upon till it coated it with marble: at first a dark city—washed white by the sea foam. And I told you before that it was also a city of shafts and arches, and that its dwellings were raised upon continuous arcades, among which the sea waves wandered. Hence the thoughts of its builders were early and constantly directed to the incrustation of arches. , § xii. In Fig. LVII. I have given two of these Byzantine stilted arches: the one on the right, a, as they now too often appear, in its bare brickwork; that on the left, with its alabaster covering, literally marble defensive armor, riveted together in. pieces, which follow the contours of the building. Now. on the wall, these pieces are mere, flat slabs cut to the arch outline: but under the Fig. lvh. ' soffit of the arch the marble mail is curved, often cut singularly thin, like bent ^M^^^^MPT^M^^MMfW-- *nesJ and fitted together so rliHHHiil 1 . rilBrBSrift that the pieces would sustain each other even without rivets. It is of course desirable that this thin sub- arch of marble should project enough to sustain the facing of the wall; and the reader will see, in Fig. LVII., that its edge forms a kind of narrow band round the arch (b), a band which the least enrichment would render a valuable decorative feature. Now this band is, of course, if the soffit-pieces project a little beyond the face of the wall-pieces, a mere fillet, like the wooden gunwale in Plate IX. ; and the question is, how to enrich it most wisely. It might easily have been dog-toothed^ but the Byzantine architects had not invented the dogtooth, and would not have used it here, if they had; for the dogtooth |
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