Cathedrals - “The Quarry”
Cathedrals are ever-present in Europe: “I am aware of no other city of Europe in which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But the principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the palace of her prince, and called the “Chiesa Ducale.” The patriarchal church, inconsiderable in size and mean in decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian group, and its name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the greater number of travellers passing hastily through the city…two most important temples of Venice, next to the ducal chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to national effort, but to the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast organization of those great societies on the mainland of Italy.” The ubiquity of cathedrals indicates the stimulus of religion in Europe. Cathedrals are centers of reverence and delineations of architectural progression which is paralleled in their splendor and fittings.
Imagery of a ‘Religious Building’ - “The Virtues of Architecture”
Ruskin explicates, “A building which recorded the Bible history by means of a series of sculptural pictures, would be perfectly useless to a person unacquainted with the Bible beforehand; on the other hand, the text of the Old and New Testaments might be written on its walls, and yet the building be a very inconvenient kind of book, not so useful as if it had been adorned with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So, again, the power of exciting emotion must vary or vanish, as the spectator becomes thoughtless or cold; and the building may be often blamed for what is the fault of its critic, or endowed with a charm which is of its spectator’s creation.” The imagery of a religious building emphasizes the partiality of architectural merits. Spectators’ interpretations and clarifications of buildings is reliant on on their discernment of the precise milieu of the buildings. A religious building would impeccably communicate to a spectator who is appreciative of the Biblical scriptures which are assimilated in the building.
