The previous inscription once existing on the church
itself:
"Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno
Desuper undecimo fuit facta primo,"
is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much
probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro."] according to
Sansovino and the author of the "Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco," in 1094
according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and 1096, those years
being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I incline to the
supposition that it was soon after his accession to the throne in 1085,
though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead of Vital Falier.
But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh century the great
consecration of the church took place. It was again injured by fire in
1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of Venice there was
probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree embellish or alter
the fabric, so that few parts of it can be pronounced boldly to be of
any given date. Two periods of interference are, however, notable above
the rest: the first, that in which the Gothic school had superseded the
Byzantine towards the close of the fourteenth century, when the
pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window traceries were added to the
exterior, and the great screen, with various chapels and
tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the Renaissance
school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian and Tintoret
substituted, over one half of the church, their own compositions for the
Greek mosaics with which it was originally decorated; [Footnote: Signed
Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc.
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