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IV. ST. mark's. 101
that I must be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some length,
and accurately marking the limits of the assertion I have
made. I do not mean that every dwelling-house of mediaeval
cities was as richly adorned and as exquisite in composition as
the fronts of their cathedrals, but that they presented features
of the same kind, often in parts quite as beautiful; and that
the churches were not separated by any change of style from
the buildings round them, as they are now, but were merely
more finished and full examples of a universal style, rising out
of the confused streets of the city as an oak tree does out of
an oak copse, not differing in leafage, but in size and symmetry. Of course the quainter and smaller forms of turret
and window necessary for domestic service, the inferior, materials, often wood instead of stone, and the fancy of the inhabitants, which had free play in the design, introduced odd-
nesses, vulgarities, and variations into house architecture, which
were prevented by the traditions, the wealth, and the skill of
the monks and freemasons; while, on the other hand, conditions of vaulting, buttressing, and arch and tower building,
were necessitated by the mere size of the cathedral, of which it
would be difficult to find examples elsewhere. But there was
nothing more in these features than the adaptation of mechanical skill to vaster requirements; there was nothing intended to be, or felt to be, especially ecclesiastical in any of the
forms so developed; and the inhabitants of every village and
city, when they furnished funds for the decoration of their
church, desired merely to adorn the house of God as they
adorned their own, only a little more richly, and with a somewhat graver temper in the subjects of the carving. Even this
last difference is not always clearly discernible: all manner of
ribaldry occurs in the details of the ecclesiastical buildings of
the North, and at the time when the best of them were built,
every man's house was a kind of temple; a figure of the Madonna, or of Christ, almost always occupied a niche over the
principal door, and the Old Testament histories were curiously
interpolated amidst the grotesques of the brackets and the
gables.
| Title | The stones of Venice - 2 |
| Creator | Ruskin, John |
| Publisher | J. Wiley |
| Place of Publication | New York |
| Date | 1889 |
| Language | eng |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Title | 00000123 |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Transcript | IV. ST. mark's. 101 that I must be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some length, and accurately marking the limits of the assertion I have made. I do not mean that every dwelling-house of mediaeval cities was as richly adorned and as exquisite in composition as the fronts of their cathedrals, but that they presented features of the same kind, often in parts quite as beautiful; and that the churches were not separated by any change of style from the buildings round them, as they are now, but were merely more finished and full examples of a universal style, rising out of the confused streets of the city as an oak tree does out of an oak copse, not differing in leafage, but in size and symmetry. Of course the quainter and smaller forms of turret and window necessary for domestic service, the inferior, materials, often wood instead of stone, and the fancy of the inhabitants, which had free play in the design, introduced odd- nesses, vulgarities, and variations into house architecture, which were prevented by the traditions, the wealth, and the skill of the monks and freemasons; while, on the other hand, conditions of vaulting, buttressing, and arch and tower building, were necessitated by the mere size of the cathedral, of which it would be difficult to find examples elsewhere. But there was nothing more in these features than the adaptation of mechanical skill to vaster requirements; there was nothing intended to be, or felt to be, especially ecclesiastical in any of the forms so developed; and the inhabitants of every village and city, when they furnished funds for the decoration of their church, desired merely to adorn the house of God as they adorned their own, only a little more richly, and with a somewhat graver temper in the subjects of the carving. Even this last difference is not always clearly discernible: all manner of ribaldry occurs in the details of the ecclesiastical buildings of the North, and at the time when the best of them were built, every man's house was a kind of temple; a figure of the Madonna, or of Christ, almost always occupied a niche over the principal door, and the Old Testament histories were curiously interpolated amidst the grotesques of the brackets and the gables. |
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