cannot be done in the solid
parapet: it is also more agreeable to be able to see partially down
through the penetrations, than to be obliged to lean far over the edge.
The solid parapet was rarely used in Venice after the earlier ages.

Sec. XVIII. (2.) The Traceried Parapet is chiefly used in the Gothic of
the North, from which the above example, in the Casa Contarini Fasan, is
directly derived. It is, when well designed, the richest and most
beautiful of all forms, and many of the best buildings of France and
Germany are dependent for half their effect upon it; its only fault
being a slight tendency to fantasticism. It was never frankly received
in Venice, where the architects had unfortunately returned to the
Renaissance forms before the flamboyant parapets were fully developed in
the North; but, in the early stage of the Renaissance, a kind of pierced
parapet was employed, founded on the old Byzantine interwoven
traceries; that is to say, the slab of stone was pierced here and there
with holes, and then an interwoven pattern traced on the surface round
them. The difference in system will be understood in a moment by
comparing the uppermost example in the figure at the side, which is a
Northern parapet from the Cathedral of Abbeville, with the lowest, from
a secret chamber in the Casa Foscari. It will be seen that the Venetian
one is far more simple and severe, yet singularly piquant, the black
penetrations telling sharply on the plain broad surface. Far inferior in
beauty, it has yet one point of superiority to that of Abbeville, that
it proclaims itself more definitely to be stone. The other has rather
the look of lace.

[Illustration: Fig. XXV.]

The intermediate figure is a panel of the main balcony of the Ducal
Palace, and is introduced here as being an exactly transitional
condition between the Northern and Venetian types. It was built when the
German Gothic workmen were exercising considerable influence over those
in Venice, and there was some chance of the Northern parapet introducing
itself. It actually did so, as above shown, in the Casa Contarini Fasan,
but was for the most part stoutly resisted and kept at bay by the
Byzantine form, the lowest in the last figure, until that form itself
was displaced by the common, vulgar, Renaissance baluster; a grievous
loss, for the severe pierced type was capable of a variety as endless as
the fantasticism of our own Anglo-Saxon manuscript ornamentation.

Sec. XIX.