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CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 111
divisions of the surface are to be subjects of thought. Both these orders of form, as I think nearly every other source of power and beauty, are marvellously united in that building which I fear to weary the reader by bringing forward too frequently, as a model of all perfection-the Doge’s palace at Venice: its general arrangement, a hollow square; its principal facade, an oblong, elongated to the eye by a range of thirty-four small arches, and thirty-five columns, while it is separated by a richly canopied window in the centre, into two massive divisions, whose height and length are nearly as four to five; the arcades which give it length being confined to the lower storeys, and the upper, between its broad windows, left a mighty surface of smooth marble, chequered with blocks of alternate rose-colour and white. It would be impossible, I believe, to invent a more magnificent arrangement of all that is in building most dignified and most fair.
§ 10. In the Lombard Romanesque, the two principles are more fused into each other, as most characteristically in the cathedral of Pisa:1 length of proportion, exhibited by an arcade of twenty-one arches above, and fifteen below, at the side of the nave; bold square proportion in the front; that front divided into arcades, placed one above the other, the lowest with its pillars engaged, of seven arches, the four uppermost thrown out boldly from the receding wall, and casting deep shadows; the first, above the basement, of nineteen arches; the second, of twenty-one; the third and fourth of eight each; sixty-three arches in all; all circular headed, all with cylindrical shafts, and the lowest with square panellings, set diagonally under their semicircles, an universal ornament in this style (Plate XII., fig. 7); the apse a semicircle, with a semidome for its roof, and three ranges of circular arches for its exterior ornament; in the interior of the nave, a range of circular arches below a circular-arched triforium, and a vast flat surface, observe, of wall decorated with striped marble above; the whole arrangement (not a peculiar one, but
1 [Several pages of Ruskin’s note-book of 1845 are devoted to records of careful measurements, etc., of this cathedral.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
