A DAY IN PADOVA

As I awoke, I was reminded of the eternal clash between the expectations and aspirations of mental life with the brutish realities of the physical world. I was sick. When one travels to an exotic, foreign land, he is naturally filled with lofty ideas of sunny skies, perfect schedules, and fantastic experiences. Instead, the reckless physical world inserts surprises: a rainy day, lost baggage, a civil war, or in my case, a very unpleasant germ. Ah, here in the city of ancient plagues I had come down with one of my own.

What it must have been like to have become ill in old Venice I can only imagine. A storm at sea, a knife fight, a crouching tiger -these are all existential threats that one can see and understand. But illness... to have your own body destroy itself from the inside out; that must have been a terror we moderns can scarce imagine. The only protection was to pray, to pray and to wrap yourself in a cloak of superstitions (good and bad air, ring-around-the-rosie, the Evil Eye, etc). Last week, as I was walking through Dorsoduro, I came across a costume hanging outside of a shop that I had seen in a textbook long ago. It was a pitch black cloak with a black wide brimmed hat; beneath the hat was a mask with a long curved bill and spectacles around the eye holes. It was the outfit of a medieval doctor -besides a priest, the only one who would dare to enter the home of a plague-stricken individual. I was shocked to see it and felt disquieted. It was a uniform of ignorance (imagine that a beaked mask can keep you from getting tuberculosis or bubonic plague) and a reminder of just how hopeless the future of a medieval patient must have been.

Luckily, I was not deathly ill, and was able to drag myself out of bed, take some medicine, and hobble over to the vaporetto. How many times in my life would I get to see Padova? I could rest Thursday, and I had probably already contaminated everyone in the group the previous day. After rendezvousing with Dino, we grabbed some refreshment at the train station (I had the most AMAZING frozen coffee drink I've ever tasted) and we boarded the train to Padova. I read a little, listened to music some, and just tried not to be miserable.

Upon leaving the train station, we entered a very modern section of Padova. It could have been any somewhat old city in the USA (modern has a very different meaning after living in Venice). The cars were small, and there were sleek and fast streetcars that zoomed over tracks in the streets (so cool!). Most noticeably, there were multitudes of mopeds, motercycles, and most of all, bicycles. Bikes were everywhere. We crossed a bridge and the low remains of the city walls and entered into the old part of Padova. The streets were reminiscent of Verona, but narrower and twistier. We saw students everywhere, as it is a university town. We crossed through the ruins of an ancient Roman arena; unlike in Verona, all that remained were some crumbling walls and a few pieces of stone strewn about. It was located in a very pleasant park and we saw college students sitting on benches and sleeping among the ruins of their ancient ancestors. The Scaligheri chapel was built facing into the arena, but we would return to that later.

We continued towards the center of the city where we came upon a piazza dominated by the Basilica of Saint Anthony, an incredible mountain of domes and towering walls. We entered a neighboring chapel and oratory to see works done by Titian and Giotto's proto-Renaissance successor. Both rooms were beautiful. In the chapel, it was interesting to see how Titian tried to blend the style of his three paintings with the pre existing artworks, which looked like picture book illustrations and used pastel-like colors. Even so, it was fascinating to see the little differences that set Titian apart; his use of optical illusion to make the trees and clouds appear real versus the blob-like depictions by the other artist, the many facial expressions and orientations of bodies as opposed to the other artist, etc. The oratory was beautiful and fascinating -the works were clearly a blend of Gothic and Renaissance art and appeared to be experimental. They all contained architecture that the painter was using to figure out perspective and two images of the Nativity were in an identical setting from a slightly different vantage point. He was working on shadowing and realistic action as well, though he does not entirely succeed.


After this, we reconvened over by the statue of the Venetian hero, the Spotted Cat. The statue is actually extremely important, as it was created by Donatello and was the first real equestrian statue since the Fall of Rome. It must have been incredible to unveil the statue -a symbol that medieval Italy had risen to the level of the Romans and could stand with heads held high among their ancestors. We then entered the Basilica of Saint Anthony.

While the cathedral is vast and contains many exquisite works of art, it is very dark. Upon entering, there is an ugly depiction of Madonna and Child with actual crowns attached to their heads. Nearby is a beautiful altar. A painted background depicts light emanating from Heaven illuminating a large gold monstrance. Past this is the tomb of St. Anthony. It is a large white stone tomb, and many people passed it, kissed it, and prayed beside it. A stall outside sells special candles that can be donated here as an offering. Near this are three giant gold reliquaries containing such things as his tongue. I do not understand how mere physical vestiges of a great man can have any spiritual significance, but I am not Catholic. Donatello's famous reliefs were undergoing renovation, but I was able to get a peak of them behind the curtain. It was inside this church that I started to feel very ill.

After this, we headed over to the market in front of the Palace of Law. Most stalls were packing up, and we headed over to a small restaraunt to eat lunch (at about 1 pm). I had a sforino sandwhich and some black grain. The sandwich was good, the grain cosi cosi. I also had some cooked spinach, bread, and a (too-small) mocchiato. The meal was good, and we discussed aspects of the course and whether the course should shift to a full exchange program in Padova.
After this, we went to the Scrovegni Chapel, built by the son of a usurer to atone for his father's sins. The entire interior is covered with frescoes by Giotto. The paintings have been painstakingly restored and we had to reserve a time slot to see them. We arrived at 3 and watched a 15 minute movie about the chapel in a glass room adjoining it. The previous group exited as the movie finished, and we were ushered inside.

The frescoes were astounding. They were in proto-Renaissance style, but Giotto was far ahead of his time and even used paint to create texture, as when halos extended out of the walls. Judas has a black halo. Especially striking was his Last Judgment on the back wall that depicted haloed saints rising and sinners swept away by fire into a Hell filled with blue demons. The time inside was too short to fully appreciate everything, but it was enough to see a good amount. We then spent a little time at the nearby civic museum. I saw some Roman pots and a man buried with a horse, but mostly I rested as I was feeling very ill.

Next we went across town to the Duomo and saw another beautiful proto-Renaissance chapel. The depiction of Christ surrounded by saints on the inner dome was especially beautiful. We then got gelato and walked over to the University of Padova. Along the way, we passed recent graduates, who were dressed up ridiculously for their public mocking, as per tradition. They wear laurals and ridiculous outfits and their most embarrasing moments are posted and spoken aloud for all the campus to know. We could hear the traditional song:

"Dottore, dottore, Dottore del buso del cul. Vaffancul, vaffancul."

Doctor, doctor, you're just a doctor of the a-hole, go f--- off, go f--- off

It's actually a very catchy tune and there's often alcohol involved. We waited for a bit inside the new section of the university, listening to the craziness outside. Soon a woman came to take us on a brief tour of the historic sections.

The university of Padova was founded in 1222 and is the second oldest in Italy and perhaps all of Europe. It soon became a haven for academic freedom as opposed to the University of Bologna, which was tightly connected to the Church. This freedom was especially well guarded when the infamously secular Venetian Republic took over Padova and, among other things, supplied the university with a steady supply of executed criminals for anatomy studies. Galileo and Copernicus taught here and it was a hotbed for the Renaissance, helping to birth modern science and humanism. We visited the first anatomy theater in existence, a surprisingly small room with tight wooden balconies that could fit 200 people. That, plus the candles, lack of ventalation, formaldyhide, and decomposing body (sometimes in use for a whole week) must have made the place a nightmare to actually be in. The concept of the place was creepy but at the same time ennobling. In the adjacent room we saw early medical experiments, like a brace for paralytics and the first hospital bed. It was in a place like this that people were able to finally escape the bird-faced doctors of superstition and slowly move toward the world of microbes, antibiotics, and MRI. It was the work of these early scientists that, though their concepts seem laughable to the modern mind, took the terror out of my current sickness and replaced it with rational actions, recommendations, and a decent shot at survival.

As an engineering major and an assistant in scientific research at Purdue, this University felt like a site of pilgrimage. Here medicine was slowly pried away from superstition! Here was a place where giants like Galileo and Copernicus taught! A place where the foundations of science were hashed out and basic discoveries were made, and the home of the first woman to ever graduate from a university. How exciting it must have been to first discover the arrangement of organs in the human body, what the heart did, that Jupiter had moons or that the Earth revolved around the sun!

It was dark by this time and the moon was out; I could see the same craters that Galileo had looked at with his telescope 500 years ago and felt a kinship with the scientists of the Renaissance. What they started by looking at the planets with a telescope I am continue by looking at carbon nanotubes with a NIR microscope.

Cristo Al Limbo: An Analysis

Cristo Al Limbo is a fascinating panel that uses elements of Renaissance and Gothic style to convey multiple shades of form and meaning. Found in the Correr Museum in Venice, Italy, the piece was painted by an unknown Flemish artist in the 15th century. As it is not listed in the Correr Catalouge or mentioned on the literature of the gallery, I could not find further factual information about Cristo Al Limbo. That does not hinder discussion of the piece, however, as it is stylistically interesting and overflowing with symbolism. [note, the images of the piece are rather blurry but the lines in the painting are sharp]

The style of the piece is neither Gothic nor Renaissance, but is a type of proto-Renaissance. One can see explicit shading effects on Christ’s robe and on the three human bodies in the painting. There is a slight shadow from Christ’s foot, and a light source to the left illuminates part of the scene (it is not entirely from Christ otherwise He would have no shadow). Anatomical details are generally accurate and the three human bodies appear to be fairly realistic; all exemplary aspects of Renaissance style. However, bodily positioning and gesturing is highly unnatural and symbolic, reminiscent of the Gothic and Byzantine tradition. The perfect alignment of Christ’s staff with the demon’s eye, His foot on the lower door, and the presence of plants under Christ further demonstrate the presence of iconic symbolism.

It is significant that neither Christ nor those he is rescuing have halos. While it is understandable that the two figures to the right would not have halos (as they are in Limbo), Christ too is lacking one. His identity remains obvious, thanks to the cross/scepter and stigmata, but the artist apparently saw no need to emphasize his holiness. This marks a significant departure from the Gothic tradition. In fact, the only use of gold in the painting is found in the hem of Christ’s robe and in the fiery background of Hell, a place overflowing with Ruskinian Gothic grotesqueness.

There is some attempt at perspective in the foreground; the door recedes away somewhat realistically, but the mountains appear too close and the artist seems to abandon perspective after that. This may be a choice of traditional (i.e. Gothic) non-perspective or it could be due to the fantastical nature of the scene. Overall, the foreground slightly recedes but the background pops back out, creating a flat image.

To me, all these techniques suggest that the artist was experimenting with certain Renaissance features, but retained much of the Gothic/Byzantine mindset. Such a mindset proposed that “…exterior unity is accomplished not only by elements within the art, but also and mainly by the contemporary visuality or cultural context that surrounds it…” (R.S. Nelson, Visuality Before and After the Renaissance, p158) In other words, the symbolic interpretation of the viewer adds an entirely new dimension and focus to the painting, augmenting and unifying the optical features of the painting. The fact that the image is visually flat and the figures somewhat unnatural is offset by the vivid spiritual action created in the viewer’s mind. While aspects of color and form are an important part of the painting, interpretation is the key to giving it depth.

In “The Banquet”, Dante Alighieri asserts that, “writings can be understood, and ought to be understood chiefly in four senses…” He goes on to list these sentences as literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogic. The literal sense is simply the “face value” of a work, while the allegorical sense is the hidden message symbolized by literal actions. The moral and anagogic senses are sort of specialized types of the allegorical; the moral sense is the practical message or “moral” of the story, while the anagogical sense is the spiritual truth of the story as it relates to God’s plan for the world. Dante uses the example of Christ taking three disciples with him to a mountain as meaning “keep your trusted associates few” to illustrate the moral sense, and he uses a biblical passage regarding Israel leaving Egypt as meaning that “the soul becomes free upon leaving sin” to illustrate the anagogic sense. What Dante applies to writings could equally be applied to any narrative or scene, and this is especially fruitful in the case of Christo Al Limbo.

The literal scene depicted is that of the Harrowing of Hell, a theological concept that is not officially part of Catholic doctrine. The idea is that between Christ’s death and Resurrection, He descended into Limbo and rescued the souls of the Patriarchs and righteous of Old Testament, taking them to Paradise. Christ is clearly the figure to the left of the panel, and the man and woman on the right are probably Adam and Eve, the first sinners. Despite the coldness of the painting’s style, you can see a look of thanks on Adam’s face; can detect it through the grateful clasping of his Savior’s hand in both his hands. Eve holds both hands over her heart, perhaps expressing joy at her food fortune. Christ‘s bearing is triumphant, and his facial expression is slightly aggressive, as he is assaulting Hades.

The literal interpretation of this Hell is terrifying. A giant, hairy Satan sits on a huge throne, eating the damned with his four upper arms and beak-like mouth, reminiscent of the punishment reserved for the worst traitors in Dante’s Inferno. A second terrible mouth opens in the stomach, revealing fiery torment. Underneath the throne is a giant pot filled with people being boiled alive; the two-faced Satan holds a giant pronged staff that he thrusts into them, his tail slithering above their heads. Everywhere fire is fading upwards into smoke. Tongues of flame appear in the atmosphere like claw scratches. Human souls are tossed about in the billowing air of this furnace, sometimes to be caught by Satan and devoured, sometimes to be clawed by demonic bats, or to fall back into the fire. To the left, a horrifying hairy monster is about to crush a fleeing soul with a boulder. Bleak and forbidding mountains divide this Gehenna from the foreground; maybe it is the boundary between Hell and Limbo, in which case the painting is really of Limbo but offers a vista of Hell proper. Even so, the presence of a sinister demon in the lower right corner of Limbo tells us that even the outskirts of Hell are frightening.

Viewing Christo Al Limbo with the other three senses is a sketchy endeavor for several reasons. One, deducing symbolic meanings is inherently fraught with uncertainty, as there is no way to confirm or deny an interpretation. Two, I do not share the same ideology, culture, or metaphysical language as the painter; some bits are familiar but others may be foreign. All this considered, I will nevertheless use these senses as best I can.

Allegorically, this image symbolizes Christ rescuing the viewer from his own Death and Damnation, just as He saved Adam and Eve from theirs. Morally, the message is that if you trust Christ, He will rescue you from your sin and damnation no matter how great the obstacles. Faith and repentance are rewarded. Conversely, if you reject Christ you will wind up with the damned souls in the background. Obviously, you should follow Christ.

The painting is rich in anagogic meaning. Overall, it represents Christ’s triumph over spiritual Death. Freshly dead from the Cross, Christ wears a red robe symbolizing His Sacrificial death and spilled blood. Notice how the robe flows abundantly and richly over his body; this symbolizes the abundance of His Grace and the adequateness of His sacrifice. It is hemmed in gold to emphasize its importance and sanctity. Its vivid color seems as if it could wash over the darkness of the setting and cover it completely. Inside the robe, Christ is strong and determined; it is the robe that allows him to finally come to this place and fulfill his mission. He holds a crystalline cross/staff in his right hand. With it, he stabs Death in the eye and with his foot he closes the door of a tomb on it; Death itself is dead. Beneath Christ, plants are growing, symbolizing the new Life He brings.

Christ reaches out to Adam and pulls him away from the Grave. Since Adam and Eve were the first sinners, as well as the first humans, the cycle of the human race has come full circle, from Damnation to Redemption. There is a slight imprint of a face just above Adam’s shoulder, as if the painter wanted the Viewer to insert himself along with couple that represents the whole of humanity. Alternatively, it could represent a wicked soul left behind in the fire.

The torment of the lake of fire, the monsters, the terror and pain, represent the self-consuming nature of sin. In sin, you will be damned and destroy yourself utterly. Your existence without God will be unimaginably awful; the fire, monsters, and torture are simply vivid ways of expressing the incomprehensibly bad nature of spiritual death.

There are doubtless other details and symbols that I, due to my culture, do not see. Perhaps the six arms of Satan or the transparency of Christ’s staff have profound meanings that remain hidden. Nevertheless, elements of Dante’s four senses can be found in the panel, giving it a depth much greater that that suggested by its limited optical perspective. Weaving Gothic/Byzantine and Renaissance traditions into a tapestry of meaning and startling imagery, Cristo Al Limbo is indeed a fascinating artwork.

Awake in Venice

I could hear the water lapping against the side of the vaporetto as I watched the sun rise above the lagoon. Venezia, newly bereft its blanket of nighttime darkness, stood starkly beautiful in the morning light. I could see the outlines of the snowy Dolomites above the many camponile that darted above the city. The buildings grew in size as the vaporetto maneuvered to land at the stop. With a groan, the boat hit the dock and the aviator man deftly secured the boat with rope. I stepped across the angry gap onto the rocking dock and walked out into the city.

It was 8:40 am and the city was silent. Never before had I seen the street along the lagoon with so few people; even the illegal purse sellers were absent. In a stunned silence of my own, I walked towards the Piazza San Marco.

It too was quiet. A few other lone tourists wandered about, similarly mesmerized by the solitude early morning sojourning afforded. I felt... relaxed. Never before in the presence of the Doge's palace or the Basilica had I felt at peace. Normally, the place is filled with the frantic hustle of tourists emitting the irresitable urge to photograph. Take a picture of this, of that, run over here, run over there, there's only so much time! It was gone, and I found that I could examine the details of each column capital on the Doge's palace, which I did, and the details on the entry to the Giant's Stairwell. I understand that, compared to the typical visitor, I have the luxury of time in which to see the details, but the experience of savoring and analyzing all the nooks and crannies of a place is exponential better than the typical tourist experience. I noticed that on one corner of the Doge's palace was carved Adam, Eve, the Serpent, and the tree, with leavesjudiciously covering their genitals. I noticed that one of the quarterfoils on the palace was actually replaced by a piece of stonework. I found my favorite column capital, containing carvings of various baskets of fruit with their Italian names.

I crossed the Piazza on my way to Campo San Stefano. What a difference a crowd makes! I think it is the sense of the panoptic eye, a general sense that you are being watched and that you must behave accordingly or "they" will disapprove. Or maybe that's just paranoia. It is this feeling that causes one to feel the need to impulsively take pictures around tourists, or to permanently hide the camera around locals and shuffle past with hardly a look at the surroundings. When no one is around, you are free of this gaze and are allowed to interact with the city as you wish. The loud noise of the panoptic crowd is replaced with the voices of the buildings, spaces, and details that were previously drowned out by the chatter of voices and clatter of footsteps.

How blissful! Solitude in the city! Merchants who, in a few hours, would be aggressively hawking overpriced goods to tourists were now slowly setting up shop: wiping down the windows, rearranging items, counting the change in the cash register, vacuuming. Men were unloading boats and teamsters pulled carts over the stairs. A few solemn tourists walked through the calli. There were people and voices, but each individual was swallowed by the city leaving a quiet peace.

This is the perfect atmosphere for photography. Any other time, I felt degenerate for pulling out the camera; here I felt degenerate for leaving it tucked away. Where before I would dash to a spot to take a picture discretely, now I would ponder the angles and composition of the image; I could afford to be a photographer instead of a camera jockey.

Returning from Campo San Stefano, the Crowd was beginning to form. The lone tourist, merchant, workman of before was a seed crystal for the crowd; now they had accumulated their first few layers of people. The city still dominated -the small clumps of people were swallowed up, painfully, by the architecture. Venice remained triumphant. But the noise increase, and the panoptic eye returned.

Turning the corner of the Doge's Palace, I was stupified by what I saw. There were herds of people coming into the city. They poured out of the vaporetto stops and crashed across the bridges as thick as the bison that once blanketed the American Plains with shaggy monotony. The Venice of the morning was dead, and the Venice of the day had begun.

Gothic Style: Anthem to Emplacement

Gothic style is the physical language of medieval Emplacement. It allows an architectural portrayal of the social, spatial, and ideological Hierarchies present in medieval Christian cosmology and eliminates the residues of a pagan past present in Roman forms. As an expression of society’s beliefs and tastes, Gothic was clearly meant to influence the people who inhabited its spaces and to remind them of their place and duties. Of course, as we have learned from Foucault, such attempts at guiding society along “the narrow path” are never fully successful because the effect of architecture on people depends on the nature of an ever-evolving society. Nevertheless, the philosophical goals of Gothic are certainly worthy of discussion. Gothic style does for space what decoration does for an illuminated manuscript; it embellishes and emphasizes the social and cosmological meaning of a Place.

In his essay “Of Other Spaces”, Foucault describes the medieval conception of space as that of emplacement. By this he means that all spaces have an innate or imbued nature and fit into a hierarchy of places stretching from the depths of Hell to the pinnacles of Heaven. Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” is an example of this conception of space, where all positions and places have some sort of meaning that could ultimately be traced back to God. Because they were the work of a transcendent Author, the Hierarchies of the Universe wove a mysterious and complex tapestry understood fully by God and only dimly by Man. Critically, the spatial, temporal, and social fabric of the universe was intimately connected to that of the moral and anagalogical. Philosophy and human reason could build the foundations of such knowledge, but real Truth was only obtained through Divine Revelation, namely, the Scriptures and the Church.

This idea of Divinely Revealed Emplacement, whether in social structures (ex: divine right) or geography (ex: Jerusalem as center), is well illustrated though the use of Gothic. In “The Nature of Gothic”, Ruskin outlines six traits of the spirit of Gothic: Savageness, Changefulness, Naturalism, Grotesqueness, Rigidity, and Redundancy. All of these are important for the Gothic embellishment of emplacement-space, but, in my opinion, the most critical aspect of Gothic is the underlying trait of Intricacy.

Gothic intricacy takes many forms, and is expressed through all six traits. While not all Gothic architecture exhibits lavish crockets and gargoyles, even a simple ogee-arch window, as Ruskin points out, is infinitely variable and the interplay between the angle and shape of the arch plays with the rest of the building in a way far more complex than that of, say, a lunette window. Gothic architecture celebrates complexity rather than purified simplicity, and this is key to its function as the vehicle of Revealed Emplacement. The medieval order of places and things was rational, as some philosophers had supposed, yet was also something abstruse and fully knowable only through God. The Truth was written in parables, and the intricacy of Gothic was an architectural parable meant to reflect the inherent incomprehensibility of the Divine Plan, yet simultaneously represent it as a beautiful, purposeful thing.

The ease with which Gothic could facilitate complexity not only allowed for the depiction of a parable-laden worldview, but also allowed greater recognition of social differentiation. A round arch with some columns is not terribly expensive and variable; a spider web of ogee arches and quatrefoils is much more so on both accounts. The exponential increase of details that could be added in Gothic set a much steeper curve to distinguish the poor from the well off from the wealthy. The palazzi of the rich (Ca’ d’Orro is a good example) scream out, “This is the space of the rich! It is reserved for your betters!” The homes of the less affluent merely spoke or whispered. Gothic embellishment was a way to set aside spaces for the sacred or powerful in direct proportion to their importance. It was a visual symbol of social and spatial hierarchy.

Closely tied to this use of intricacy is the emphasis of verticality. Horizontality is Earthly (one reason why Frank Lloyd Wright used it to create symbiosis with the landscape) and implies equality and community. Nothing could be further from the goals of Gothic’s creators. Verticality naturally suggests hierarchy because every mountain has a base and peak and every man a head and feet. Gothic verticality aspires to Heaven; in churches it makes one stand in awe of God and recognize one’s own smallness by comparison. This effect is well accomplished by Gothic because ribbed vaults allow ceilings to soar, and the ogee arch inherently emphasizes verticality. In fact, many ogee arches are almost symbols of a pious recognition of Divine Order as they are like praying hands pointing up to God, who is, of course, on top. The apse and ceiling of the Chiesa di Frari are excellent examples of this effect of verticality; the soaring ribs and towering lancet windows humble the viewer as they reach towards Paradise.

Much religious architecture emphasizes the transcendent nature of God, but Gothic architecture also emphasizes the condition of Man. Two of Ruskin’s six traits, Naturalism and the Grotesque, were especially used to remind people of their place in the cosmos. Despite the spiritual aspirations of the church, or the egoism of a homeowner, a person was bound to the material world of nature and the body. One could not escape his Place. Even as the buttresses and windows soared, the lace of tree branches and ugly faces of gargoyles reminded people of their bodily nature and their (temporary) cosmic spot at the sump of a geocentric universe.

It is not immediately apparent how Ruskin’s savageness or changefulness is symbolic of hierarchical emplacement. But as stated with intricacy, the wild, variable nature of Gothic is the language of the parable. It takes the rawness of Man’s rebellious and redemptive relationship with God (and society) and channels it into a praise of order. Perhaps more importantly, savage variation has a panoptic effect that extends the message of the architecture into the imagination. The savage, sometimes grotesque, architecture knows; it knows the darkness of your heart and the secrets you hide, but you do not know it. Its meanings are visible, but maddeningly mysterious. Like God, it can see you always; it watches you from a hidden lancet window or through the eyes of the gargoyle above the crockets on the camponile. It sees your soul.

Much of this panoptic effect is the product of the creative freedom of workers, an aspect of Gothic critical to Ruskin. Far from implying freedom within the medieval worldview, however, creative freedom transformed work into worship or at least the willing embellishment of the existing order. Having the workers put themselves into the architecture extended Emplacement out of the stones and into the lives of the community. An example of this can be found on the capitals of the columns on the Piazza Ducale. Each one is the unique product of the craftsmen, and some even tell stories of their own devising. The work of their minds is set in stone and married to the World Hierarchy, connecting the workers and their families to the burden of the columns, the State.

Redundancy acts as an anchor for flights of savage variation; it is a counterweight to mystery that simplifies God’s Plan and allows regular people to understand and follow. Forms of Gothic are repeated just as axioms of religion (i.e. love thou neighbor, there is but one God, etc) are repeated through the Scriptures to bind theology to a certain skeleton. Certain forms are regularly repeated to emphasize spatial or symbolic importance, for example, a campanile, apse, nave, and transept are the standard backbone of church-space. Within a space, backbone-effect can be accomplished with features like blind arcades, bays, etc. I feel that Italian Gothic is particularly good at achieving this balance between mystery and order, mainly because it is an impure form of Gothic that takes the simple, elegant symmetries of classical architecture and makes them into a rational matrix for the mystic fantasies of Gothic (or Baroque) features. To me, it is a pleasing combination of Reason and Revelation.

Rigidity makes good Gothic great. It pulls the other elements together and gives strength and certainty to the fragile forms created to express medieval Emplacement. It sets the parables and mysteries in stone, makes them taut, and brings force to their subtlety. It allows the stone to be thrown out like a net to entrap light, sky, and space in a web of liturgy. Redundancy becomes clean and the panoptic Eye is equated with God as the power of the building grows. The tight tracery of stonework on the Piazza Ducale adds force to the strange sight of the blocky top story on top of arcades, and seems to say that the Venetian State is supported by the very air and fiber of the world itself.

By using savage variation and rigid redundance, Gothic was able to combine the rational order of the Creator with the mystic Grace of the Savior, and to bolster the position of the powerful by appealing to the clarity of its symbolic forms. Its emphasis of naturalism, verticality, and the grotesque put the viewer in his proper place, spatially or socially, and reinforced the medieval hierarchies. It transformed work into worship and brought sacred Order into the community. In the ornate anthem of the Gothic style, the medieval concept of Emplacement found its fullest architectural expression.