Photographs by Landow July 1966 and October 2000; by Freidus February 2020. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
“The small porticoes, already spoken of [Vol. IX. p. 245] as the most graceful pieces of composition with which I am acquainted, are sustained on detached clusters of four or five columns, forming the continuation of those of the upper series, and each of these clusters is balanced on one grand detached shaft; as much trust being thus placed in the pillars here, as is withdrawn from them elsewhere” (10.450).
Left: Compare Ruskin’s drawing, True and False Griffins: Mediaeval and Classical in Modern Painters III (5.140).
Inside St. Mark’s
“Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the darker places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark’s; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if comforted” (10.89).
The flooded piazetta between the Palazzo Ducale (on the left) and (on the right) the Library of St. Mark’s — La Libreria Vecchia or La Biblioteca Marciana.
More of Ruskin's Venice
- The Palazzo Ducale, Venice
- The Scuola de San Rocco
- On the Grand Canal
- Venetian Palazzi
- Leaving the Grand Canal
- On the way to Venice from the mainland
- Venice: Details and Corners
Last Modified 26 March 2020