The façade of the Scuola di San Marco, begun in 1485 and attributed to the architect Martino Lombardo, is a marvel of delicate workmanship resembling in many of its features the small church of the Miracole (p. 151) while including details of a different character. It is in two stories, and is divided into two parts, answering to an internal division, one of which, embracing the main portal, is larger and richer than the other. An order of Corinthian pilasters embraces both parts of each story, and these pilasters are unequally spaced in conformity with the proportions of the respective parts and their openings. The main division, which is on the spectator’s left as he faces the building, has three bays of which the central one is the wider. The main portal (Fig. 91) is in this bay, and has two arch orders on pilasters flanked with larger pilasters, also in two orders, reaching to the entablature which passes over the arch. A free-standing Corinthian column on a high pedestal is set in front of each pilaster of the greater suborder, and from ressauts of the entablature over these columns an archivolt in high relief is sprung against the wall of the upper story. The shafts of the flanking columns are unusually short, the pedestals being about half the total height from the ground to the entablature. Comment on the unreason of such compositions becomes wearisome, and criticism may appear like captiousness. But if the reader will consider the character of a Greek portal, with its jamb mouldings and cornice, as reasonable and appropriate as they are simple, of a true Gothic doorway with its consistent arch orders, but with no superfluous or unmeaning features, he can hardly fail to feel the childishness of this Renaissance design in comparison. [Illustration: FIG. 91.--Portal of the Scuola di San Marco, Venice.] The other division of this front has a smaller and more simple doorway in its central bay, with an unbroken wall above, and a narrow arched window, framed with pilasters and a gabled pediment in each upper lateral bay, while the lateral compartments of the ground story are adorned with remarkable carvings in very low relief which present an extreme instance of that tendency to pictorial treatment that distinguishes the relief sculpture of the Renaissance. The main cornice, embracing both divisions of the front, is crowned with a series of arched pediments, varying in span with the bays beneath, which recall those of the façade of the church of St. Mark. Those over the main division of the façade are raised on ornamental attics of which the middle one is in two stages.