Window from the Ca' Foscari, Venice
John Ruskin
R. P. Cuff, engraver
1855
7 x 4 5/32 inches
Plate VIII, The Seven Lamps of Architecture in Works, 8.132
According to the "Index to the Plates" (8.xvi), Ruskin discusses this plate on the pages quoted below.
Scanned image and text by George P. Landow
“The Lamp of Truth”
In the junction of the circles of the window of the Palazzo Foscari, Plate VIII., given accurately in fig. 8, Plate IV., the section across the line s, is exactly the same as that across any break of the separated moulding above, as s. It sometimes, however, happens, that two different mouldings meet each other. This was seldom permitted in the great periods, and, when it took place, was most awkwardly managed. Fig. 1, Plate IV., gives the junction of the mouldings of the gable and vertical, in the window of the spire of Salisbury. [pp. 93-94]
“The Lamp of Power”
Far from carrying the eye to the ornaments, upon the stone, he abandoned these latter one by one; and while his mouldings received the most shapely order and symmetry, closely correspondent with that of the Rouen tracery, (compare Plates IV. and VIII.,) he kept the cusps within them perfectly flat, decorated, if at all, with a trefoil (Palazzo Foscari), or fillet (Doge's Palace), just traceable and no more, so that the quatrefoil, cut as sharply through them as if it had been struck out by a stamp, told upon the eye, with all its four black leaves, miles away. No knots of flowerwork, no ornaments of any kind, were suffered to interfere with the purity of its form: the cusp is usually quite sharp ; but slightly truncated in the Palazzo Foscari, and charged with a simple ball in that of the Doge ; and the glass of the window, where there was any, was, as we have seen, thrown back behind the stonework, that no flashes of light might interfere with its depth. [pp.131-32]
[In a note on p.131 Ruskin adds,] The plate represents one of the lateral windows of the third storey of the Palazzo Foscari. It was drawn from the opposite side of the Grand Canal, and the lines of its traceries are therefore given as they appear in somewhat distant effect. It shows only segments of the characteristic quatrefoils of the central windows. I found by measurement their construction exceedingly simple. Four circles are drawn in contact within the large circle. Two tangential lines are then drawn to each opposite pair, enclosing the four circles in a hollow cross. An inner circle struck through the intersections of the circles by the tangents, truncates the cusps.
“The Lamp of Beauty”
The moulding of the Palazzo Foscari 1 (Plate VIII., and Plate IV., fig. 8) is, for so simple a group, the grandest in effect I have ever seen; it is composed of a large roll with two subordinates. [p.166]
References
Ruskin, John. Works, "The Library Edition." eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. 39 vols. London: George Allen, 1903-1912.
Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture in Works, vol. 8. Hathi Trust Digital Library. Web. 6 June 2010.
Last modified 6 June 2010