§ XXIX. Hence arose the universal and admirable system of the diapered or chequered background of early ornamental art. They are completely developed in the thirteenth century, and extend through the whole of the fourteenth gradually yielding to landscape, and other pictorial backgrounds, as the designers lost perception of the purpose of their art, and of the value of color. The chromatic decoration of the Gothic palaces of Venice was of course founded on these two great principles, which prevailed constantly wherever the true chivalric and Gothic spirit possessed any influence. The windows, with their intermediate spaces of marble, were considered as the objects to be relieved, and variously quartered with vigorous color. The whole space of the brick wall was considered as a background; it was covered with stucco, and painted in fresco, with diaper patterns. § XXX. What? the reader 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. § 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.