New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-03-30
Venice in War Time
Horatio F. Brown
In The CornhIl

tive reinforcements. The Judgment Angle
is now a round tower, with sloping escarp-
ment; the Adam and Eve Angle square
tower, with angle brackets; the Noah Angle
short, heavy, square tower with slanting
roof; each arch of the lower arcade is sup
ported by. and nearly filled in with, brick
work, strengthened at the key-stones by
inner and outer buttresses. The lighter
arcade Of the second floor is fortified by
heavy baulks of timber. condensed at the
angles in short. it looks AS though the
whole palace were trying to turn itself into
some medieval fortress-the great Este
Castle at Ferrara, for example Inside, in
the atrium leading from the Porta della
Carta to the foot of the Giants Staircase,
the bronze horses Of S. Marco are stabbed
and covered with sandbags, and so are Al
berghetti's and Nicolo del Contis bronze
well-heads in the courtyard. Upstairs. in
the great halls, not painting has been
left on wall or ceiling; they have been rolled
on huge wooden cylinders and slowed away
in safety.
The Ramparts of St. Marks
The great Church of San Marco is now
rapidly disappearing from sight behind ram
parts of protection.
On sunless days the church is almost
pitch dark, and it is only gradually that the
eye begins to distinguish the huge piles Of
sandbags that smother altar, ambo, pulpit
and font, the swaddled figures on the chan
eel screen, the muffed columns that seem
dwarfed and shrunken and misshapen, and
vaguely recall the proportions Of some early
Egyptian temple. The problem OF preserv-
ing the mosaics in case Of an internal ex-
plosion presents great difficulties, and is
capable of merely tentative solution. So
far two steps have been taken: II is pro-
posed to spread sheet Of thick cloth all
over the mosaics at a distance of about five
or six inches from their surface, thus form
ing a cushion Of air which, il is hoped, will
modify the violence Of an explosion and the
dangerous effects of the displacement of air
Further. all the glass windows of the cupolas
have been removed and. during an attack,
windows and doors are left open to dmin-
ish the shock of conclusion. But, in order
to prevent rain from entering the building,
the place of the glass windows has been
taken By screens of coarse, brownish sail
cloth, stretched on iron frames with hinges
which readily fall outwards.
TRe effect on the interior is most surpris-
ing. The light coming through these screens,
especially on a sunny day, is of soft diff
fused yellow, little brighter, perhaps, than
the light transmitted through the slabas ter
windows of such church as S. Antimo in
Tuscany. This warm, glowing light exactly
hits the key of the mosaics, which catch it,
reflect it, are Illuminated ~ it, till they re-
veal all the richness of their Oriental splen-
dor. The elongated, Byzantine figures Of the
central dome, the utramarine saints of the
southern, every design and legend on the
blazing background, speak out and are in
telligible; each cupola gitters like an in
verted saucer iull of molten gold. flooded
and shimmerng with radiant light. II Is
n revelation Of the mosacs of San Marco:
never have they been seen like this before.
But we may hope that, when the war is over.
and if Saint Marks survives, the secret Of
lighting the cupoas, thus accidentally dis
covered. may be adopted permanently. and
so confirm the old Italian saw that mon
tutt mali vengono per nuocere.'