ABSTRACT
The St Mark's Basilica is a Byzantine-style building that dominates the eastern side of the Piazza San Marco, Venice. Ruskin challenged the popular taste in architecture, transforming the way Byzantine buildings were perceived. His persuasive descriptions of the building influenced popular opinion. The first metaphor that was used for describing the surface of St Mark's Basilica was dress. The second metaphor used for describing the church was armour. Ruskin argued that the armour was a common form of dress in the thirteenth century. Ruskin took this metaphor further as he synthesized the metaphor of the armour with dress. The third metaphor employed for describing the wall was hide. Ruskin claimed that St Mark's was like the "body of an animal [that] is protected and adorned by its scales or its skin". The surface of St Mark's also corresponded to the principle of the cohesive surface in the theory of the adorned wall veil.
