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Updated: May 29, 2025
And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their pillars where there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long ago in heaven; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall of rugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and gray, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet unseemlier shape, and colored on their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea.
Still the two systems never became united; the Venetian policy repressed the power of the church, and the Venetian artists resisted its example; and thenceforward the architecture of the city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil: the one an ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, common to the whole peninsula, and only showing Venetian sympathies in the adoption of certain characteristic mouldings; the other a rich, luxuriant, and entirely original Gothic, formed from the Venetian-Arab by the influence of the Dominican and Franciscan architecture, and especially by the engrafting upon the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the Franciscan work, its traceries.
And on each of the four sides is a massive altar carved out of the side of the cliff with the most ornate and elaborate traceries and other embellishment. Indeed, my pen is not capable of describing these most wonderful achievements of human genius and patience. But all of them have been described in great detail and with copious illustrations in books that refer to nothing else.
The two are seen last on the deck of the vessel, in perusal of a medical pamphlet composed of statistics and sketches, traceries, horrid blots, diagrams with numbers referring to notes, of the various maladies caused by the prolonged prosecution of that form of worship. 'But can they suffer so and live? exclaims the Rajah, vexed by the physical sympathetic twinges which set him wincing.
Still there are traceries and capitals of exquisite design to be found everywhere, and of statuary there is at least Onslow Ford's pathetic figure of the poet Shelley to be seen at University College, beneath a dome which does its best to mar the whole effect.
It was not the traditional white-pillared mansion. It was more wonderful. The bricks had aged a rich, red purple, and were rimmed and splotched with soft green and gray moss under traceries of vines that were beginning to put out rich russet buds.
So subtly waving is the curving outline of this furniture that one scarcely knows where it begins or ends, and it is the same with the decorations exquisitely delicate waving traceries of vines and flora, gold on gold, inlay, or paint in delicate tones.
But I can see that the dome is all covered with figures and traceries of gold, which bloom out bright like flowers whenever the whole dome looks plainest, and then fade again. But when the smoke comes across the whole picture and darkens it for a moment, then the lines upon the dome show through it like fire, and they change and waver, and then the whole temple is gone again.
On the walls were designs in color, square spots of robin's-egg blue, set in ornate frames of gilt, whose corners were elaborate moldings of fruit and flowers, with fat cupids hovering in angelic comfort. On the ceilings were colored traceries with more gilt, leading to a center where spread a cluster of lights-incandescent globes mingled with glittering prisms and stucco tendrils of gilt.
The plan of a window once given, and the moulding-section, all is said, thinks M. Violet le Duc. Very convenient indeed, for modern architects who have commission on the cost. But certainly not necessary, and perhaps even inconvenient, to Niccola Pisano, who is himself his workman, and cuts his own traceries, with his apron loaded with dust.
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