and manner of workmanship to those of the chapter-house of the Frari,
and consequently carrying us back to a very early date in the fourteenth
century: several of the capitals of these windows, and two richly
sculptured string-courses in the wall below, are of Byzantine
workmanship, and in all probability fragments of the Ziani Palace. The
traceried windows on the Rio Facade, and the two eastern windows on the
Sea Facade, are all of the finest early fourteenth century work,
masculine and noble in their capitals and bases to the highest degree,
and evidently contemporary with the very earliest portions of the lower
arcades. But the moment we come to the windows of the Great Council
Chamber the style is debased. The mouldings are the same, but they are
coarsely worked, and the heads set amidst the leafage of the capitals
quite valueless and vile.

I have not the least doubt that these window-jambs and traceries were
restored after the great fire;[59] and various other restorations have
taken place since, beginning with the removal of the traceries from all
the windows except the northern one of the Sala del Scrutinio, behind
the Porta della Carta, where they are still left. I made out four
periods of restoration among these windows, each baser than the
preceding. It is not worth troubling the reader about them, but the
traveller who is interested in the subject may compare two of them in
the same window; the one nearer the sea of the two belonging to the
little room at the top of the Palace on the Piazzetta Facade, between
the Sala del Gran Consiglio and that of the Scrutinio. The seaward jamb
of that window is of the first, and the opposite jamb of the second,
period of these restorations. These are all the points of separation in
date which I could discover by internal evidence. But much more might be
made out by any Venetian antiquary whose time permitted him thoroughly
to examine any existing documents which allude to or describe the parts
of the Palace spoken of in the important decrees of 1340, 1342, and
1344; for the first of these decrees speaks of certain "columns looking
towards the Canal"[60] or sea, as then existing, and I presume these
columns to have been part of the Ziani Palace, corresponding to the part
of that palace on the Piazzetta where were the "red columns" between
which Calendario was executed; and a great deal more might be determined
by any one who would thoroughly unravel the obscure language of