Illustration: Church marble floor design from Venice.
It must seem sometimes as if Venice is awash with a complexity of floor designs for both religious and secular buildings. There are a number of explanations, reasoning's and conjecture as to why this should be, ranging from its Byzantine roots, its undoubted wealth and its climate. Whatever the real reasons, the city has produced some of the most fascinating, complex and richly textured floor decoration to be found anywhere in Europe, and certainly some of the best surviving examples that we have.
Much of the work is marble based with insets of semi-precious materials such as lapis lazuli, offsetting the rich earth tones that make up so much of the decorative work. The examples shown here are all from Venice bar two which originate from Ravenna a city that also has a long tradition and a very long connection with Byzantium. It is perhaps this very real connection with the Byzantine Empire and its sophisticated decorative arts system, a craft tradition that was often both admired and envied in equal measures, that gave the initial impetus to this very specialised decorative tradition.
Illustration: Church marble floor design from Venice.
Venetian decorative floors cover the whole gambit of decorative styles, as well as that of different historic eras. There are floors that are closer in style to that of the old Roman mosaic floors, complete with imagery of animals and plant life as well as the incorporation of decorative borders. There are also medieval styled floors, very often incorporated into religious buildings. These are often symbolically driven and therefore have medallions dedicated to saints, as well as the usual decorative abstract insets and borders. The three Venetian examples shown in this article are very much part of a more sophisticated Renaissance style, one that used a system of abstract mathematical decoration, often including an optical illusional concept whereby different multi-sided shapes would be incorporated into the pattern work. However, it would be true to say that many of the Renaissance era floor patterns were very much rooted in the pattern work produced in the medieval period.
Illustration: Marble floor design from St Mark's Basilica, Venice.
Although this sophisticated style is undoubtedly a reflection of the rich tradition that is such an integral part of the decoration and ornament of Venice, it is also a tradition that encompassed much of medieval Europe. There are many floors of tile, mosaic and inset pattern work, much of it perhaps surprisingly geometrically and mathematically more complex than perhaps we would at first assume, particularly for a period that is still often classed today as being a relatively simple and unsophisticated European era.
Many of these complex floors decorated religious buildings and would no doubt have had a spiritual dimension to them as well as one that was purely decorative. The complex pattern work could well have reflected, at least in part, the often rich and aesthetic qualities of the medieval mind. Some have noted that the significance of the complexity of floor designs within a religious context, might well have had something to do with ideas of humility, where the individual would have lowered their eyes within the church and therefore have contemplated the intricacy that could be found on the floor, rather than allowing their eyes to wander around. Whatever the true reasoning behind the amount of effort put into these floor patterns, and there is probably more than one, much of the spiritual and philosophical understanding that enriched and embellished the original pattern work, has now gone and that is certainly a shame. However, we are still left with some of the most beautifully elaborate and intricately decorated floors produced in any era.
Illustration: Church marble floor designs from Ravenna.
What these floor decorations do show us, whether from Venice, Ravenna, or even across Europe as a whole, is how much that can be achieved by the bringing together what is in fact, when the decorative pattern work is broken down, a very simple set of blocks. These simple units can produce in themselves very little. However, putting them together in a framework, whether mathematically or purely decoratively, can produce an effect that appears multi-faceted, even three-dimensional in character. Many of the floors used colour as a particular tool for pattern. Floor patterns in Venice used as little as four distinct colours, but equally effective pattern work could be achieved with as little as two colours, using an effective positive and negative framework. Using tones of the same colour can also give the impression that an overall unifying effect has been achieved, this is often much more preferable and certainly more sophisticated than the use of acutely distinct colours.
Many of the floors in Venice have used stone and marble that are earth based in tone and therefore the effect of the pattern work is much more subtle than perhaps some of the later and somewhat showier examples that can be seen in seventeenth and eighteenth century palaces across Europe. The earth tones were obviously an effective means of tying the floor to the building itself, often creating a unity when the same stone and marble was used throughout the building and not just within the decorative floor.
Illustration: Marble floor design from the Church of St Vitale, Ravenna.
Unfortunately, many of these sophisticated floor pattern systems have been lost across Europe over the generations. Many of the religiously based ones were actually dug up by various enthusiastic members of the Protestant Reformation who often saw them as forms of idolatry or merely as reminders of the previous Catholic tenants. They were not replaced until the Victorian era, but these often bore no real correlation with the original floors and were merely mass produced encaustic tiles claiming to be produced in the style of the medieval, but perhaps any decoration is better than none at all.
At least a number of these startlingly beautiful floors do still exist in Venice, and for that we should be truly grateful.
Further reading links:
Further reading links:
