another window group of the same design, but consisting of a single pair, while in the intervening space, and along the rest of the wall toward the church of St. Mark, are unequally spaced single windows with pilasters supporting the archivolts, and other pilasters flanking these, all raised on high pedestals connected by a continuous podium. In the upper stage of the basement, at the head of the giant’s stair, the pointed arcade is interrupted by a group of three round arches on grouped pilasters. The wall surfaces are everywhere elaborately panelled and enriched with arabesques, and the friezes, spandrels, and podiums have panelled disks, festoons, and arabesque ornaments in tiresome profusion. [Illustration: Plate VI FAÇADE OF COURT, DUCAL PALACE Venice] [Illustration: FIG. 90.] The north side is also in the Renaissance style, but here is only one enclosed story, and this is on the level of the upper arcade of the east side. The architectural scheme of this part is different, except that its entablature is a continuation of the lower one of the eastern façade. The work here appears to have been wholly new, and the regularly spaced windows are each framed with a pseudo-Corinthian order in high relief, the shafts of this order being raised on ornamented round pedestals resting on corbel-blocks (Fig. 90). The walls are incrusted with large slabs of veined marble, and an ornamental disk in relief is set in each interspace. The finest thing in this court is the giant’s stair. Few architectural works of the Renaissance are so reasonable and so free from superfluous and unmeaning features. The steps, broken about midway by a landing stage, are enclosed by balustrades of severely simple design starting from square newels; and the sides are plainly panelled in marble, with delicate mouldings and arabesque carvings on the surfaces of the framing members. The mechanical execution of the whole is superb, no settlement or fracture appearing in any part.