Ducal Palace of Venice

“ A few paces off, bare and erect like a ship's mast, the gigantic Campanile towers in the air, and announces to distant mariners the time-honored royalty of Venice. At its base, closely pressed to it, the delicate loggetta of Sansovino seems like a flower, so many statues, bas-reliefs, bronzes, and marbles, whatever is rich and imaginative of living and elegant art, crowd around it to adorn it...
"Like a magnificent diamond in a brilliant setting, the Ducal Palace effaces the rest.... Never has the like architecture been seen; all here is novel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Peter, and the crushing flat of the devil under his own door, when it is beaten in, would hardly be understood without the respective gate-ways above. The best of all the later capitals of the Ducal Palace of Venice depends for great part of its value on the richness of a small campanile, which is pointed to proudly by a small emperor in a turned-up hat, who, the legend informs us, is “Numa Pompilio, imperador, edifichador di tempi e chiese.” ”

“ It is on this account that pictures representing the Madonna seated, with a doge or a general kneeling before her, are so frequently to be met with in private collections, in the churches, and above all in the Ducal Palace, in which these allegorical compositions, intended to express the close alliance between Religion and the State, seem to have been purposely multiplied."
In no other place in all Venice does the atmosphere of the Middle Ages linger as it does in the Palazzo Ducale. ”

“ We shall find it so used very dextrously on the Ducal Palace of Venice, there with a meaning which rendered it right necessary; but the Renaissance architects address themselves to spectators who care for nothing but feasting, and suppose that clusters of pears and pineapples are visions of which their imagination can never weary, and above which it will never care to rise. I am no advocate for image worship, as I believe the reader will elsewhere sufficiently find ”

“ It was the determination of this one fact which occupied me the greater part of the time I spent in Venice. It had always appeared to me most strange that there should be in no part of the city any incipient 233 or imperfect types of the form of the Ducal Palace; it was difficult to believe that so mighty a building had been the conception of one man, not only in disposition and detail, but in style; and yet impossible, had it been otherwise, but that some early examples of approximate Gothic form must exist. There is not one. ”

“ The air is thick with it and dense and difficult to breathe; for it was genius that was not happy, inasmuch as it, lacked the art to fix itself for ever. It is not immortality that we breathe at the Scuola di San Rocco, but conscious, reluctant mortality.
Fortunately, however, we can turn to the Ducal Palace, where everything is so brilliant and splendid that the poor dusky Tintoret is lifted in spite of himself into the concert. This deeply original building is of course the loveliest thing in Venice, and a morning’s stroll there is a wonderful illumination. ”

“ The Ducal Palace TO turn from the fair temple of the Christian faith in Venice, warm with the affection and the presence of her people, to the empty splendour of the Palace where her secular princes sat in state, is to turn from life to death. If a patrician of the great days were to revive and enter St Mark’s he would find the same hierarchy, the same ritual, the same prayers and praise uttered in the same language to the God he knew. ”

“ The traveller who delights to linger on St. Mark’s Place, in the Basilica, at the Ducal Palace, in the museums and churches, should also halt long and often at the Rialto. This is a corner with a character quite its own; here crowd together, laden with fruit and vegetables, the black boats that come from the islands to provision Venice, the great hulls laden with cocomeri, angurie, with gourds and water-melons piled in mountains of colour; there the gondolas jostle, and the gondoliers chatter like birds in their Venetian idiom ”

“ The building dates back to the tenth and eleventh centuries, and portions of the materials used in its construction have been brought from almost every country in Europe. The ceiling of the interior is richly adorned with mosaics in the form of various noted paintings. Behind the High Altar repose the remains of St. Mark, while further back stand four spiral columns said to have belonged to the Temple of Solomon. The building to the right is the Ducal Palace. VENICE, Italy.—The capital of the Province of Venice, is situated on the lagoons, a long breast of lowlands in the Adriatic. ”

“ In perspective, on one side the Ducal Palace appears, and on the other the Campanile and the angle of the Procuratorie, while in the distance is the Clock-Tower. The Piazza is full of people. Priests in fine vestments, Senators in their robes, soldiers with nodding plumes in their hats, trumpeters and drummers, all witness the ceremony. The Doge, wearing the ducal crown, in his crimson velvet dress, beneath the mantle of the cloth of gold, is most impressive, as he slightly bends his knee when receiving the sword. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In every group of windows in Venice which I was able to examine, and which were centralized in this manner, I found evidence in their mouldings of their being anterior to the Ducal Palace. That palace did away with the subtle proportion and centralization of the Byzantine. Its arches are of equal width, and its capitals are all different and ungrouped; some, indeed, are larger than the rest, but this is not for the sake of proportion, only for particular service when more weight is to be borne. ”

“ Other artists, of whom we know nothing else, such as Antonio Busetto, Antonio Foscolo, Gasparino Rosso, Giacomo da Como, Marco da Legno and others, were called in to help in evolving this masterpiece of decorated architecture, affording us an example of the way in which the ducal palace and other monuments of Venice grew out of the collaboration of numerous nameless artists. By the year 1431 the facade was nearly completed, and Contarini made a bargain with Martino and Giovanni Benzon for the marbles to cover what was yet unfinished. The facade is a triumph of graceful elegance ”

“ SECTION CXVIII. Many of the pictures on the ceilings and walls of the Ducal Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less reduced, by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not altogether without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention of the Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens, that public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture, will pay fifty to repaint it ”

“ The Grand Canal and S. Georgio Maggiore SECOND only in architectural interest to St Mark’s and the Ducal Palace are the patrician mansions that line the chief artery of Venice, known to Venetians as the Canalazzo. No more luxurious artistic feast can be enjoyed in Europe than to leisurely examine from a gondola the architectural details of the Grande Rue that so excited the admiration of Philippe de Comines. We begin on the L. side opposite the Piazzetta. The Dogana (Custom House) is a late seventeenth-century structure, low in elevation, in order not to obstruct the view of Longhena’s Salute. ”

“ That of the Ducal Palace, however, though often, I doubt not, restored, retains much of the ancient form, and is exceedingly beautiful, though it has no appearance from below of being intended for protection, but serves only, by its extreme lightness, to relieve the eye when wearied by the breadth of wall beneath; it is nevertheless a most serviceable defence for any person walking along the edge of the roof. ”

“ The procession has entered the Piazza through a gateway between San Marco and the Ducal Palace. Groups of idlers here and there are watching the ceremony, and are composed of Oriental merchants, Venetian gallants, and an occasional magistrate in his toga, or perhaps some women and children. Mrs. Oliphant says:—
"The picture is like a book, more absolutely true than any chronicle, representing not only the looks and customs of the occasion, but the very scene. ”

“ The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy."
The far-famed place of St. Mark, with its ancient Church, the Rialto and its Bridge, the Canals and Gondolas, the Historic Columns, the Ducal Palace, and the Council Chamber, are successively presented to the spectator. Venice is re-peopled with the past, affording truth to the eye, and reflection to the mind.
The introduction of the Princes of Morocco and Arragon at Belmont, hitherto omitted, is restored, for the purpose of more strictly adhering to the author's text, and of heightening the interest attached to the episode of the caskets. ”

“ Mocenigo was not only wise for Venice abroad, but at home too. A fine of a thousand ducats had been fixed as the punishment of anyone who, in those days of expenses connected with so many campaigns, chiefly against the Genoese, dared to mention the rebuilding or beautifying of the Ducal Palace. ”

“ Paolo Veronese, many Pictures in S. Sebastiano Ducal Palace Academy Venice, Pitti, Uffizi, Brera, Capitoline and Borghese Galleries Rome, Turin, Dresden, Vienna, Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Palma il Vecchio, Jacob and Rachel Three Sisters Dresden, Barbara S. M. Formosa Venice, other altar-pieces Venice Acad., Colonna Palace Rome, Brera, Naples Mus., Vienna, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Lotto, Three Ages Pitti, Portraits Brera, Nat. Gal. Lon., altar-pieces SS. Giovanni e Paolo Venice and churches at Bergamo, Treviso, Recanti, also Uffizi, Vienna, Madrid Gals. ”

“ As for the Royal Palace, it is quite unworthy and a blot on the Venetian panorama as seen from the Customs House or S. Giorgio Maggiore, or as one sees it from the little Zattere steamboat as the Riva opens up on rounding the Punta di Dogana. Amid architecture that is almost or quite magical it is just a common utilitarian façade. ”

“ It is the dwelling of Her Highness the Duchesse de Berry, and certainly she is better lodged than at the pavilion Marsan; for this palace, the most beautiful one in Venice, is a masterpiece of architecture and its carvings are of a marvellous [162] delicacy. Nothing could be more beautiful than the groups of children who are supporting shields upon the arches of the windows. The interior is filled with precious marbles: you admire above all two porphyry columns of such rare beauty that their value would pay for the palace. ”

“ The most I can do is to name the architects of the most famous of the palaces and draw the reader's attention to the frequency with which the lovely Ducal gallery pattern recurs, like a theme in a fugue, until one comes to think the symbol of the city not the winged lion but a row of Gothic curved and pointed arches surmounted by circles containing equilateral crosses. The greatest names in Venetian architecture are Polifilo, who wrote the Hypnerotomachia, the two Bons, Rizzo, Sansovino, the Lombardis, Scarpagnino, Leopardi, Palladio, Sammicheli, and Longhena. ”

“ The European quarter of the town, however, which is often termed the City of Palaces—a name which it richly merits—is, on the contrary, very beautiful. Every good-sized house, by the way, is called, as it is in Venice, a palace. Most of these palaces are situated in gardens surrounded by high walls; they seldom join one another, for which reason there are but few imposing squares or streets.
With the exception of the governor’s palace, none of these buildings can be compared for architectural beauty and richness with the large palaces of Rome, Florence, and Venice. ”

“ The edifice in which the Doges of Venice dwelt still stands a gloomy monument of the policy of the Republic, furnishing evidence, in itself, of the specious character of the prince whom it held. It is built around a vast but gloomy court, as is usual with nearly all of the principal edifices of Europe. One of its fronts forms a side of the piazzetta so often mentioned, and another lines the quay next the port. The architecture of these two exterior faces of the palace renders the structure remarkable. ”

“ The generalising influences at play in great political centres have hardly affected the inhabitants of the city which for a thousand years of independence was a body politic complete in itself. Nor has Venetian common life lacked those elements of beauty without whose presence the popular muse is dumb. The very industries of the Venetians were arts, and when they were young and spiritually teachable, their chief bread-winning work of every day was Venice—her ducal chapel, her campanile, her palaces of marble and porphyry. ”