ader asks in some surprise,--Stucco! and in the
great Gothic period? Even so, but _not stucco to imitate stone_. Herein
lies all the difference; it is stucco confessed and understood, and laid
on the bricks precisely as gesso is laid on canvas, in order to form them
into a ground for receiving color from the human hand,--color which, if
well laid on, might render the brick wall more precious than if it had
been built of emeralds. Whenever we wish to paint, we may prepare our
paper as we choose; the value of the ground in no wise adds to the value
of the picture. A Tintoret on beaten gold would be of no more value than
a Tintoret on coarse canvas; the gold would merely be wasted. All that
we have to do is to make the ground as good and fit for the color as
possible, by whatever means.

Sec. XXXI. I am not sure if I am right in applying the term "stucco" to
the ground of fresco; but this is of no consequence; the reader will
understand that it was white, and that the whole wall of the palace was
considered as the page of a book to be illuminated: but he will
understand also that the sea winds are bad librarians; that, when once
the painted stucco began to fade or to fall, the unsightliness of the
defaced color would necessitate its immediate restoration; and that
therefore, of all the chromatic decoration of the Gothic palaces, there
is hardly a fragment left.

Happily, in the pictures of Gentile Bellini, the fresco coloring of the
Gothic palaces is recorded, as it still remained in his time; not with
rigid accuracy, but quite distinctly enough to enable us, by comparing
it with the existing colored designs in the manuscripts and glass of the
period, to ascertain precisely what it must have been.

Sec. XXXII. The walls were generally covered with chequers of very warm
color, a russet inclining to scarlet, more or less relieved with white,
black, and grey; as still seen in the only example which, having been
executed in marble, has been perfectly preserved, the front of the Ducal
Palace. This, however, owing to the nature of its materials, was a
peculiarly simple example; the ground is white, crossed with double bars
of pale red, and in the centre of each chequer there is a cross,
alternately black with a red centre and red with a black centre where
the arms cross. In painted work the grounds would be, of course, as
varied and complicated as those of manuscripts; but I only know of one
example left, on the Casa Sagredo,