definite account which I find of their proceedings, under
these circumstances, is in the Caroldo Chronicle:[120]

"1340. On the 28th of December, in the preceding year, Master Marco
Erizzo, Nicolo Soranzo, and Thomas Gradenigo, were chosen to examine
where a new saloon might be built in order to assemble therein the
Greater Council.... On the 3rd of June, 1341, the Great Council elected
two procurators of the work of this saloon, with a salary of eighty
ducats a year."

It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by
Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of December, 1340, that the
commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their
report to the Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for
the commencement of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal.[121]

_The room then begun is the one now in existence_, and its building
involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the
present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all
prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio.

Sec. XIX. In saying that it is the same now in existence, I do not mean
that it has undergone no alterations; as we shall see hereafter, it has
been refitted again and again, and some portions of its walls rebuilt;
but in the place and form in which it first stood, it still stands; and
by a glance at the position which its windows occupy, as shown in fig.
XXXVII. above, the reader will see at once that whatever can be known
respecting the design of the Sea Facade, must be gleaned out of the
entries which refer to the building of this Great Council Chamber.

Cadorin quotes two of great importance, to which we shall return in due
time, made during the progress of the work in 1342 and 1344; then one of
1349, resolving that the works at the Ducal Palace, which had been
discontinued during the plague, should be resumed; and finally one in
1362, which speaks of the Great Council Chamber as having been neglected
and suffered to fall into "great desolation," and resolves that it shall
be forthwith completed.[122]

The interruption had not been caused by the plague only, but by the
conspiracy of Faliero, and the violent death of the master builder.[123]
The work was resumed in 1362, and completed within the next three years,
at least so far as that Guariento was enabled to paint his Paradise on
the walls;[124] so that the building must, at any rate, have been roo