A Wanderer in Venice
by E. V. Lucas · English · Gutenberg #16705 · 598,222 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Wanderer in Venice
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: A Wanderer in Venice
Author: E. V. Lucas
Illustrator: Harry Morley
Release date: September 17, 2005 [eBook #16705]
Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16705
Credits: Produced by Pilar Somoza and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WANDERER IN VENICE ***
Produced by Pilar Somoza and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
A WANDERER IN
VENICE
BY
E.V. LUCAS
WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY
HARRY MORLEY
AND THIRTY-TWO PHOTOGRAPHS FROM PAINTINGS AND A MAP
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1914
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1914,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1914.
Norwood Press:
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
[Illustration: THE GRAND CANAL FROM THE STEPS OF S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE]
"In like manner I say, that had there bin an offer made unto me
before I took my journey to Venice, eyther that foure of the richest
manors of Somerset-shire (wherein I was borne) should be gratis
bestowed upon me if I never saw Venice, or neither of them if I
should see it; although certainly these manors would do me much more
good in respect of a state of livelyhood to live in the world than
the sight of Venice, yet notwithstanding I will ever say while I
live, that the sight of Venice and her resplendent beauty,
antiquities, and monuments, hath by many degrees more contented
my minde, and satisfied my desires, than those foure Lordships
could possibly have done."--THOMAS CORYAT.
[Illustration: A Bird's Eye View Of Venice]
PREFACE
For a detailed guide to Venice the reader must go elsewhere; all that I
have done is invariably to mention those things that have most
interested me, and, in the hope of being a useful companion, often a few
more. But my chief wish (as always in this series) has been to create a
taste.
For the history of Venice the reader must also go elsewhere, yet for the
sake of clarity a little history has found its way even into these
pages. To go to Venice without first knowing her story is a mistake, and
doubly foolish because the city has been peculiarly fortunate in her
chroniclers and eulogists. Mr. H.F. Brown stands first among the living,
as Ruskin among the dead; but Ruskin is for the student patient under
chastisement, whereas Mr. Brown's serenely human pages are for all. Of
Mr. Howells' _Venetian Life_ I have spoken more than once in this book;
its truth and vivacity are a proof of how little the central Venice has
altered, no matter what changes there may have been in government or
how often campanili fall. The late Col. Hugh Douglas's _Venice on Foot_,
if conscientiously followed, is such a key to a treasury of interest as
no other city has ever possessed. To Mrs. Audrey Richardson's _Doges of
Venice_ I am greatly indebted, and Herr Baedeker has been here as
elsewhere (in the Arab idiom) my father and my mother.
E.V.L.
_June, 1914._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
CHAPTER I
THE BRIDE OF THE ADRIATIC 1
CHAPTER II
S. MARK'S. I: THE EXTERIOR 6
CHAPTER III
S. MARK'S. II: THE INTERIOR 17
CHAPTER IV
THE PIAZZA AND THE CAMPANILE 31
CHAPTER V
THE DOGES' PALACE. I: THE INTERIOR 46
CHAPTER VI
THE DOGES' PALACE. II: THE EXTERIOR 65
CHAPTER VII
THE PIAZZETTA 78
CHAPTER VIII
THE GRAND CANAL. I: FROM THE DOGANA TO THE PALAZZO REZZONICO,
LOOKING TO THE LEFT 91
CHAPTER IX
THE GRAND CANAL. II: BROWNING AND WAGNER 100
CHAPTER X
THE GRAND CANAL. III: FROM THE RIO FOSCARI TO S. SIMEONE, LOOKING
TO THE LEFT 110
CHAPTER XI
THE GRAND CANAL. IV: FROM THE STATION TO THE MOCENIGO PALACE,
LOOKING TO THE LEFT 119
CHAPTER XII
THE GRAND CANAL. V: BYRON IN VENICE 130
CHAPTER XIII
THE GRAND CANAL. VI: FROM THE MOCENIGO PALACE TO THE MOLO,
LOOKING TO THE LEFT 143
CHAPTER XIV
ISLAND AFTERNOONS' ENTERTAINMENTS. I: MURANO, BURANO AND
TORCELLO 151
CHAPTER XV
ON FOOT. I: FROM THE PIAZZA TO SAN STEFANO 162
CHAPTER XVI
THE ACCADEMIA. I: TITIAN, TINTORETTO, AND PAUL VERONESE 168
CHAPTER XVII
THE ACCADEMIA. II: THE SANTA CROCE MIRACLES AND CARPACCIO 179
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ACCADEMIA. III: GIOVANNI BELLINI AND THE LATER PAINTERS 187
CHAPTER XIX
THE CANALE DI S. MARCO AND S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE 195
CHAPTER XX
ON FOOT. II: THREE CHURCHES AND CARPACCIO AGAIN 206
CHAPTER XXI
ON FOOT. III: THE MERCERIA AND THE RIALTO 217
CHAPTER XXII
S. ROCCO AND TINTORETTO 231
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FRARI AND TITIAN 245
CHAPTER XXIV
SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO 254
CHAPTER XXV
S. ELENA AND THE LIDO 263
CHAPTER XXVI
ON FOOT. IV: FROM THE DOGAN TO S. SEBASTIANO 270
CHAPTER XXVII
CHURCHES HERE AND THERE 279
CHAPTER XXVIII
GIORGIONE 287
CHAPTER XXIX
ISLAND AFTERNOONS' ENTERTAINMENTS. II: S. LAZZARO AND CHIOGGIA 299
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
THE GRAND CANAL FROM THE STEPS OF S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE _Frontispiece_
S. MARK'S FROM THE PIAZZA. THE MERCERIA CLOCK ON THE
LEFT _Facing page_ 10
THE CAMPANILE AND THE PIAZZA FROM COOK'S CORNER " 28
THE CORNER OF THE OLD LIBRARY AND THE DOGES' PALACE " 54
THE PONTE DI PAGLIA AND THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, WITH A CORNER
OF THE DOGES' PALACE AND THE PRISON " 66
THE DOGANA (WITH S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE JUST VISIBLE) " 88
DOORWAY OF S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE " 112
THE RIALTO BRIDGE FROM THE PALAZZO DEI DIECI SAVII " 126
THE RIO TORRESELLE AND BACK OF THE PALAZZO DARIO " 152
TRAGHETTO OF S. ZOBENIGO, GRAND CANAL " 198
THE GRAND CANAL, SHOWING S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE " 218
S. MARIA GLORIOSA DEI FRARI " 228
THE COLLEONI STATUE AND SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO " 240
THE PALAZZO PESARO (ORFEI), CAMPO S. BENEDETTO " 276
THE ARMENIAN MONASTERY AND THE LAGOON " 300
VIEW FROM THE DOGANA AT NIGHT " 308
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN MONOTONE
ONE OF THE NOAH MOSAICS. In the Atrium of S. Mark's _Facing page_ 18
From a Photograph by Naya.
THE PRESENTATION. From the Painting by Titian in the Accademia " 36
From a Photograph by Brogi.
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE. From the Painting by Tintoretto in the
Doges' Palace " 48
From a Photograph by Naya.
S. CHRISTOPHER. From the Fresco by Titian in the Doges' Palace " 62
From a Photograph by Naya.
THE ADAM AND EVE CORNER OF THE DOGES' PALACE " 70
From a Photograph by Naya.
S. TRIFONIO AND THE BASILISK. From the Painting by Carpaccio
at S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni " 76
From a Photograph by Anderson.
S. JEROME IN HIS CELL. From the Painting by Carpaccio at S.
Giorgio degli Schiavoni " 82
From a Photograph by Anderson.
THE MARRIAGE AT CANA. From the Painting by Tintoretto in the
Church of the Salute " 96
From a Photograph by Anderson.
VENICE WITH HERCULES AND CERES. From the Painting by Veronese
in the Accademia " 102
From a Photograph by Naya.
S. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM WITH SAINTS. From the Painting by Piombo
in the Church of S. Giov. Crisostomo " 116
From a Photograph by Naya.
THE DREAM OF S. URSULA. From the Painting by Carpaccio in the
Accademia " 120
From a Photograph by Brogi.
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST. From the Painting by Cima in the Church
of S. Giovanni in Bragora " 136
From a Photograph by Anderson.
MADONNA AND SLEEPING CHILD. From the Painting by Giovanni
Bellini in the Accademia " 144
From a Photograph by Naya.
VENUS, RULER OF THE WORLD. From the Painting by Giovanni
Bellini in the Accademia " 158
From a Photograph by Anderson.
THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN. From the Painting by Titian in
the Accademia " 164
From a Photograph by Brogi.
THE MIRACLE OF S. MARK. From the Painting by Tintoretto in the
Accademia " 170
From a Photograph by Anderson.
THE FEAST IN THE HOUSE OF LEVI. From the Painting by Veronese
in the Accademia " 176
From a Photograph by Naya.
THE DEPARTURE OF THE BRIDEGROOM AND HIS MEETING WITH URSULA.
From the Painting by Carpaccio in the Accademia " 182
From a Photograph by Naya.
S. GEORGE. From the Painting by Mantegna in the Accademia " 190
From a Photograph by Brogi.
MADONNA AND CHILD. From the Painting by Giovanni Bellini in
the Accademia " 192
From a Photograph by Brogi.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS. From the Painting by Giovanni
Bellini in the Church of S. Zaccaria " 208
From a Photograph by Naya.
S. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. From the Painting by Carpaccio at
S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni " 212
From a Photograph by Anderson.
S. CHRISTOPHER, S. JEROME AND S. AUGUSTINE. From the painting
by Giovanni Bellini in the Church of S. Giov. Crisostomo " 224
From a Photograph by Naya.
THE CRUCIFIXION (CENTRAL DETAIL). From the Painting by
Tintoretto in the Scuola di S. Rocco " 236
From a Photograph by Anderson.
THE MADONNA OF THE PESARO FAMILY. From the Painting by Titian
in the Church of the Frari " 246
From a Photograph by Naya.
THE MADONNA TRIPTYCH. By Giovanni Bellini in the Church of
the Frari " 252
From a Photograph by Naya.
BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI. From the Statue by Andrea Verrocchio " 256
From a Photograph by Brogi.
MADONNA WITH THE MAGDALEN AND S. CATHERINE. From the Painting
by Giovanni Bellini in the Accademia " 260
From a Photograph by Brogi.
MADONNA AND SAINTS. From the Painting by Boccaccino in the
Accademia " 266
From a Photograph.
THE PRESENTATION. From the Painting by Tintoretto in the
Church of the Madonna dell'Orto " 282
From a Photograph by Anderson.
THE TEMPEST. From the Painting by Giorgione in the Giovanelli
Palace " 288
From a Photograph by Naya.
ALTAR-PIECE. By Giorgione at Castel Franco " 296
From a Photograph by Naya.
A WANDERER IN VENICE
CHAPTER I
THE BRIDE OF THE ADRIATIC
The best approach to Venice--Chioggia--A first view--Another water
approach--Padua and Fusina--The railway station--A complete
transformation--A Venetian guide-book--A city of a dream.
I have no doubt whatever that, if the diversion can be arranged, the
perfect way for the railway traveller to approach Venice for the first
time is from Chioggia, in the afternoon.
Chioggia is at the end of a line from Rovigo, and it ought not to be
difficult to get there either overnight or in the morning. If overnight,
one would spend some very delightful hours in drifting about Chioggia
itself, which is a kind of foretaste of Venice, although not like enough
to her to impair the surprise. (But nothing can do that. Not all the
books or photographs in the world, not Turner, nor Whistler, nor Clara
Montalba, can so familiarize the stranger with the idea of Venice that
the reality of Venice fails to be sudden and arresting. Venice is so
peculiarly herself, so exotic and unbelievable, that so far from ever
being ready for her, even her residents, returning, can never be fully
prepared.)
But to resume--Chioggia is the end of all things. The train stops at the
station because there is no future for it; the road to the steamer
stops at the pier because otherwise it would run into the water.
Standing there, looking north, one sees nothing but the still,
land-locked lagoon with red and umber and orange-sailed fishing-boats,
and tiny islands here and there. But only ten miles away, due north, is
Venice. And a steamer leaves several times a day to take you there,
gently and loiteringly, in the Venetian manner, in two hours, with
pauses at odd little places _en route_. And that is the way to enter
Venice, because not only do you approach her by sea, as is right, Venice
being the bride of the sea not merely by poetical tradition but as a
solemn and wonderful fact, but you see her from afar, and gradually more
and more is disclosed, and your first near view, sudden and complete as
you skirt the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore, has all the most desired
ingredients: the Campanile of S. Marco, S. Marco's domes, the Doges'
Palace, S. Theodore on one column and the Lion on the other, the Custom
House, S. Maria della Salute, the blue Merceria clock, all the business
of the Riva, and a gondola under your very prow.
That is why one should come to Venice from Chioggia.
The other sea approach is from Fusina, at the end of an electric-tram
line from Padua. If the Chioggia scheme is too difficult, then the
Fusina route should be taken, for it is simplicity itself. All that the
traveller has to do is to leave the train at Padua overnight--and he
will be very glad to do so, for that last five-hour lap from Milan to
Venice is very trying, with all the disentanglement of registered
luggage at the end of it before one can get to the hotel--and spend the
next morning in exploring Padua's own riches: Giotto's frescoes in the
Madonna dell'Arena; Mantegna's in the Eremitani; Donatello's altar in
the church of Padua's own sweet Saint Anthony; and so forth; and then
in the afternoon take the tram for Fusina. This approach is not so
attractive as that from Chioggia, but it is more quiet and fitting than
the rush over the viaduct in the train. One is behaving with more
propriety than that, for one is doing what, until a few poor decades ago
of scientific fuss, every visitor travelling to Venice had to do: one is
embarked on the most romantic of voyages: one is crossing the sea to its
Queen.
This way one enters Venice by her mercantile shipping gate, where there
are chimneys and factories and a vast system of electric wires. Not that
the scene is not beautiful; Venice can no more fail to be beautiful,
whatever she does, than a Persian kitten can; yet it does not compare
with the Chioggia adventure, which not only is perfect visually, but,
though brief, is long enough to create a mood of repose for the
anticipatory traveller such as Venice deserves.
On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that there are many visitors
who want their first impression of this city of their dreams to be
abrupt; who want the transition from the rattle of the train to the
peace of the gondola to be instantaneous; and these, of course, must
enter Venice at the station. If, as most travellers from England do,
they leave London by the 2.5 and do not break the journey, they will
reach Venice a little before midnight.
But whether it is by day or by night, this first shock of Venice is not
to be forgotten. To step out of the dusty, stuffy carriage, jostle one's
way through a thousand hotel porters, and be confronted by the sea
washing the station steps is terrific! The sea tamed, it is true; the
sea on strange visiting terms with churches and houses; but the sea none
the less; and if one had the pluck to taste the water one would find it
salt. There is probably no surprise to the eye more complete and
alluring than this first view of the Grand Canal at the Venetian
terminus.
But why do I put myself to the trouble of writing this when it has all
been done for me by an earlier hand? In the most popular of the little
guide-books to Venice--sold at all the shops for a franc and twenty
centimes, and published in German, English, and, I think, French, as
well as the original Italian--the impact of Venice on the traveller by
rail is done with real feeling and eloquence, and with a curious
intensity only possible when an Italian author chooses an Italian
translator to act as intermediary between himself and the English
reader. The author is Signor A. Carlo, and the translator, whose
independence, in a city which swarms with Anglo-Saxon visitors and even
residents, in refusing to make use of their services in revising his
English, cannot be too much admired, is Signor G. Sarri.
Here is the opening flight of these Two Gentlemen of Venice: "The
traveller, compelled by a monotone railway-carriage, to look for hours
at the endless stretching of the beautifull and sad Venetian plain,
feels getting wear, [? near] this divine Queen of the Seas, whom so many
artists, painters and poets have exalted in every time and every way;
feels, I say, that something new, something unexpected is really about
to happen: something that will surely leave a deep mark on his
imagination, and last through all his life. I mean that peculiar
radiation of impulsive energy issueing from anything really great,
vibrating and palpitating from afar, fitting the soul to emotion or
enthusiasm...."
Yesterday, or even this morning, in Padua, Verona, Milan, Chioggia, or
wherever it was, whips were cracking, hoofs clattering, motor horns
booming, wheels endangering your life. Farewell now to all!--there is
not a wheel in Venice save those that steer rudders, or ring bells; but
instead, as you discern in time when the brightness and unfamiliarity of
it all no longer bemuse your eyes, here are long black boats by the
score, at the foot of the steps, all ready to take you and your luggage
anywhere for fifty per cent more than the proper fare. You are in
Venice.
If you go to the National Gallery and look at No. 163 by Canaletto you
will see the first thing that meets the gaze as one emerges upon
fairyland from the Venice terminus: the copper dome of S. Simeon. The
scene was not much different when it was painted, say, _circa_ 1740. The
iron bridge was not yet, and a church stands where the station now is;
but the rest is much the same. And as you wander here and there in this
city, in the days to come, that will be one of your dominating
impressions--how much of the past remains unharmed. Venice is a city of
yesterdays.
One should stay in her midst either long enough really to know something
about her or only for three or four days. In the second case all is
magical and bewildering, and one carries away, for the mind to rejoice
in, no very definite detail, but a vague, confused impression of wonder
and unreality and loveliness. Dickens, in his _Pictures of Italy_, with
sure instinct makes Venice a city of a dream, while all the other towns
which he describes are treated realistically.
But for no matter how short a time one is in Venice, a large proportion
of it should be sacred to idleness. Unless Venice is permitted and
encouraged to invite one's soul to loaf, she is visited in vain.
CHAPTER II
S. MARK'S. I: THE EXTERIOR
Rival cathedrals--The lure of S. Mark's--The façade at night--The Doge's
device--S. Mark's body--A successful theft--Miracle pictures--Mosaic
patterns--The central door--Two problems--The north wall--The fall of
Venice--Napoleon--The Austrian occupation--Daniele Manin--Victor
Emmanuel--An artist's model--The south wall--The Pietra del Bando--The
pillars from Acre.
Of S. Mark's what is one to say? To write about it at all seems indeed
more than commonly futile. The wise thing to do is to enter its doors
whenever one has the opportunity, if only for five minutes; to sit in it
as often as possible, at some point in the gallery for choice; and to
read Ruskin.
To Byzantine architecture one may not be very sympathetic; the visitor
may come to Venice with the cool white arches of Milan still comforting
his soul, or with the profound conviction that Chartres or Cologne
represents the final word in ecclesiastical beauty and fitness; but none
the less, in time, S. Mark's will win. It will not necessarily displace
those earlier loves, but it will establish other ties.
But you must be passive and receptive. No cathedral so demands
surrender. You must sink on its bosom.
S. Mark's façade is, I think, more beautiful in the mass than in detail.
Seen from the Piazza, from a good distance, say half way across it,
through the red flagstaffs, it is always strange and lovely and unreal.
To begin with, there is the remarkable fact that after years of
familiarity with this wonderful scene, in painting and coloured
photographs, one should really be here at all. The realization of a
dream is always amazing.
It is possible--indeed it may be a common experience--to find S. Mark's,
as seen for the first time, especially on a Sunday or fête day, when the
vast red and green and white flags are streaming before it, a little
garish, a little gaudy; too like a coloured photograph; not what one
thinks a cathedral ought to be. Should it have all these hues? one asks
oneself, and replies no. But the saint does not long permit this
scepticism: after a while he sees that the doubter drifts into his
vestibule, to be rather taken by the novelty of the mosaics--so much
quieter in tone here--and the pavement, with its myriad delicate
patterns. And then the traveller dares the church itself and the spell
begins to work; and after a little more familiarity, a few more visits
to the Piazza, even if only for coffee, the fane has another devotee.
At night the façade behaves very oddly, for it becomes then as flat as a
drop scene. Seen from the Piazza when the band plays and the lamps are
lit, S. Mark's has no depth whatever. It is just a lovely piece of
decoration stretched across the end.
The history of S. Mark's is this. The first patron saint of Venice was
S. Theodore, who stands in stone with his crocodile in the Piazzetta,
and to whose history we shall come later. In 828, however, it occurred
to the astute Doge Giustiniano Partecipazio that both ecclesiastically
and commercially Venice would be greatly benefited if a really
first-class holy body could be preserved in her midst. Now S. Mark had
died in A.D. 57, after grievous imprisonment, during which
Christ appeared to him, speaking those words which are incised in the
very heart of Venice, "Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meus"--"Peace be to
thee, Mark my evangelist"; and he was buried in Alexandria, the place of
his martyrdom, by his fellow-Christians. Why should not the sacred
remains be stolen from the Egyptian city and brought to Venice? Why not?
The Doge therefore arranged with two adventurers, Rustico of Torcello
and Buono of Malamocco, to make the attempt; and they were successful.
When the body was exhumed such sweetness proceeded from it that all
Alexandria marvelled, but did not trace the cause.
The saint seems to have approved of the sacrilege. At any rate, when his
remains were safely on board the Venetian ship, and a man in another
ship scoffed at the idea that they were authentic, the Venetian ship
instantly and mysteriously made for the one containing this sceptic,
stove its side in, and continued to ram it until he took back his
doubts. And later, when, undismayed by this event, one of the sailors on
S. Mark's own ship also denied that the body was genuine, he was
possessed of a devil until he too changed his mind.
The mosaics on the cathedral façade all bear upon the life of S. Mark.
That over the second door on the left, with a figure in red, oddly like
Anatole France, looking down upon the bed, represents S. Mark's death.
In the Royal Palace are pictures by Tintoretto of the finding of the
body of S. Mark by the Venetians, and the transportation of it from
Alexandria, under a terrific thunderstorm in which the merchants and
their camel are alone undismayed.
Arrived in Venice the remains were enclosed in a marble pillar for
greater safety, but only two or three persons knew which pillar, and,
these dying, the secret perished. In their dismay all the people
grieved, but suddenly the stones opened and revealed the corpse.
Thereafter many miracles were performed by it; Venice was visited by
pilgrims from all parts of the world; its reputation as a centre of
religion grew; and the Doge's foresight and address were justified.
Before, however, S. Mark and his lion could become the protectors of the
Republic, S. Theodore had to be deposed. S. Theodore's church, which
stood originally on a part of the Piazza (an inscription in the pavement
marks the site) now covered by the Campanile and one or two of the
flagstaffs, is supposed to have been built in the sixth century. That it
was destroyed by fire in the tenth, we know, and it is known too that
certain remains of it were incorporated in the present structure of S.
Mark's, which dates from the eleventh century, having been preceded by
earlier ones.
To my mind not one of the external mosaic pictures is worth study; but
some of the mosaic patterns over the doors are among the most lovely
things I ever saw. Look at the delicate black and gold in the arch over
the extreme right-hand door. Look at the black and gold bosses in that
next it. On the other side of the main entrance these bosses have a
little colour in them. On the extreme left we find symbolism: a golden
horseman, the emblems of the four Evangelists, and so forth, while above
is a relief in black stone, netted in: this and the group over the
central door being the only external statuary in Venice to which the
pigeons have no access.
The carvings over the central door are interesting, although they have a
crudity which will shock visitors fresh from the Baptistery doors at
Florence. As in most Venetian sculpture symbolism plays an important
part, and one is not always able to translate it. Here are arches within
arches: one of scriptural incidents--at any rate Adam and Eve and Cain
and Abel are identifiable; one of grotesques and animals; one of uncouth
toilers--a shepherd and woodman and so forth--with God the Father on the
keystone. What these mean beyond the broad fact that religion is for
all, I cannot say. Angels are above, and surmounting the doorway is
Christ. Among all this dark stonework one is conscious now and then of
little pink touches which examination shows to be the feet of reposing
pigeons.
Above is the parapet with the four famous golden horses in the midst;
above them in the architrave over the central recess is S. Mark's lion
with the open book against a background of starred blue. Then angels
mounting to Christ, and on each side pinnacled saints. It is all rather
barbaric, very much of a medley, and unforgettable in its total effect.
Two mysteries the façade holds for me. One is the black space behind the
horses, which seems so cowardly an evasion of responsibility on the part
of artists and architects for many years, as it was there when Gentile
Bellini painted his Santa Croce miracle; and the other is the identity
of the two little grotesque figures with a jug, one towards each end of
the parapet over the door. No book tells me who they are, and no
Venetian seems to know. They do not appear to be scriptural; yet why
should they be when the Labours of Hercules are illustrated in sculpture
on the façade above them?
[Illustration: S. MARK'S FROM THE PIAZZA, THE MERCERIA CLOCK ON THE
LEFT]
The north façade of S. Mark's receives less attention than it should,
although one cannot leave Cook's office without seeing it. The north has
a lovely Gothic doorway and much sculpture, including on the west wall
of the transept a rather nice group of sheep, and beneath it a pretty
little saint; while the Evangelists are again here--S. Luke painting, S.
Matthew looking up from his book, S. John brooding, and S. Mark writing.
The doorway has a quaint interesting relief of the manger, containing a
very large Christ child, in its arch. Pinnacled saints, with holy men
beneath canopies between them, are here, and on one point the quaintest
little crowned Madonna. At sunset the light on this wall can be very
lovely.
At the end of the transept is a tomb built against the wall, with lions
to guard it, and a statue of S. George high above. The tomb is that of
Daniele Manin, and since we are here I cannot avoid an historical
digression, for this man stands for the rise of the present Venice. When
Lodovico Manin, the last Doge, came to the throne, in 1788, Venice was,
of course, no longer the great power that she had been; but at any rate
she was Venice, the capital of a republic with the grandest and noblest
traditions. She had even just given one more proof of her sea power by
her defeat of the pirates of Algiers. But her position in Europe had
disappeared and a terrible glow was beginning to tinge the northern
sky--none other than that of the French Revolution, from which was to
emerge a Man of Destiny whose short sharp way with the map of Europe
must disturb the life of frivolity and ease which the Venetians
contrived still to live.
Then came Napoleon's Italian campaign and his defeat of Lombardy. Venice
resisted; but such resistance was merely a matter of time: the force was
all-conquering. Two events precipitated her fate. One was the massacre
of the French colony in Verona after that city had been vanquished;
another was the attack on a French vessel cruising in Venetian waters
on the watch for Austrian men-of-war. The Lido fort fired on her and
killed her commander, Langier. It was then that Napoleon declared his
intention of being a second Attila to the city of the sea. He followed
up his threat with a fleet; but very little force was needed, for Doge
Manin gave way almost instantly. The capitulation was indeed more than
complete; the Venetians not only gave in but grovelled. The words "Pax
tibi, Marce, Evangelista meus" on the lion's book on S. Mark façade were
changed to "Rights of Man and of Citizenship," and Napoleon was thanked
in a profuse epistle for providing Venice with glorious liberty. Various
riots of course accompanied this renunciation of centuries of noble
tradition, and under the Tree of Liberty in the Piazza the Ducal
insignia and the Libro d'Oro were burned. The tricolour flew from the
three flagstaffs, and the two columns in the Piazzetta were covered with
inscriptions praising the French. This was in May, 1797.
So much for Venice under Manin, Lodovico. The way is now paved for
Manin, Daniele, who was no relation, but a poor Jewish boy to whom a
Manin had stood as godfather. Daniele was born in 1804. In 1805 the
Peace of Pressburg was signed, and Venice, which had passed to Austria
in 1798, was taken from Austria and united to Napoleon's Italian
kingdom, with Eugène Beauharnais, the Emperor's brother-in-law, as ruler
under the title Prince of Venice. In 1807 Napoleon visited the city and
at once decreed a number of improvements on his own practical sensible
lines. He laid out the Giardini Pubblici; he examined the ports and
improved them; he revised the laws. But not even Napoleon could be
everywhere at once or succeed in everything, and in 1813 Austria took
advantage of his other troubles to try and recapture the Queen of the
Adriatic by force, and when the general Napoleonic collapse came the
restitution was formally made, Venice and Lombardy becoming again
Austrian and the brother of Francis I their ruler.
All went fairly quietly in Venice until 1847, when, shortly after the
fall of the Orleans dynasty in France, Daniele Manin, now an eloquent
and burningly patriotic lawyer, dared to petition the Austrian Emperor
for justice to the nation whom he had conquered, and as a reply was
imprisoned for high treason, together with Niccolò Tommaseo. In 1848, on
March 17, the city rose in revolt, the prison was forced, and Manin not
only was released but proclaimed President of the Venetian Republic. He
was now forty-four, and in the year of struggle that followed proved
himself both a great administrator and a great soldier.
He did all that was humanly possible against the Austrians, but events
were too much for him; bigger battalions, combined with famine and
cholera, broke the Venetian defence; and in 1849 Austria again ruled the
province. All Italy had been similarly in revolt, but her time was not
yet. The Austrians continued to rule until Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel
built up the United Italy which we now know. Manin, however, did not
live to see that. Forbidden even to return to Venice again, he retired
to Paris a poor and broken man, and there died in 1854.
The myriad Austrians who are projected into Venice every day during the
summer by excursion steamers from Trieste rarely, I imagine, get so far
as the Campo dominated by Manin's exuberant statue with the great winged
lion, and therefore do not see this fine fellow who lived to preserve
his country from them. Nor do they as a rule visit that side of S.
Mark's where his tomb stands. But they can hardly fail to see the
monument to Victor Emmanuel on the Riva--with the lion which they had
wounded so grievously, symbolizing Italy under the enemy, on the one
side, and the same animal all alert and confident, on the other, flushed
with the assurance which 1866 brought, and the sturdy king riding forth
to victory above. This they cannot well help seeing.
The little piazzetta on the north side of S. Mark's has a famous well,
with two porphyry lions beside it on which small Venetians love to
straddle. A bathing-place for pigeons is here too, and I have counted
twenty-seven in it at once. Here one day I found an artist at work on
the head of an old man--a cunning old rascal with short-cropped grey
hair, a wrinkled face packed with craft, and a big pipe. The artist, a
tall, bearded man, was painting with vigour, but without, so far as I
could discern, any model; and yet it was obviously a portrait on which
he was engaged and no work of invention. After joining the crowd before
the easel for a minute or so, I was passing on when a figure emerged
from a cool corner where he had been resting and held out his hand. He
was a cunning old rascal with short-cropped grey hair, a wrinkled face
packed with craft, and a big pipe; and after a moment's perplexity I
recognized him as the model. He pointed to himself and nodded to the
picture and again proffered his open palm. Such money as I have for free
distribution among others is, however, not for this kind; but the idea
that the privilege of seeing the picture in the making should carry with
it an obligation to the sitter was so comic that I could not repulse him
with the grave face that is important on such occasions. Later in the
same day I met the artist himself in the waters of the Lido--a form of
rencontre that is very common in Venice in the summer. The converse is,
however, the more amusing and usually disenchanting: the recognition, in
the Piazza, in the evening, in their clothes, of certain of the
morning's bathers. Disillusion here, I can assure you.
On the south wall of S. Mark's, looking over the Molo and the lagoon, is
the famous Madonna before whom two lights burn all night. Not all day
too, as I have seen it stated. Above her are two pretty cherubs against
a light-blue background, holding the head of Christ: one of the gayest
pieces of colour in Venice. Justice is again pinnacled here, and on her
right, on another pinnacle, is a charming angel, upon whom a lion
fondlingly climbs. Between and on each side are holy men within
canopies, and beneath is much delicate work in sculpture. Below are
porphyry insets and veined marbles, and on the parapet two griffins, one
apparently destroying a child and one a lamb. The porphyry stone on the
ground at the corner on our left is the Pietra del Bando, from which the
laws of the Republic were read to the people. Thomas Coryat, the
traveller, who walked from Somerset to Venice in 1608 and wrote the
result of his journey in a quaint volume called _Coryat's Crudities_,
adds another to the functions of the Pietra del Bando. "On this stone,"
he says, "are laide for the space of three dayes and three nights the
heads of all such as being enemies or traitors to the State, or some
notorious offenders, have been apprehended out of the citie, and
beheaded by those that have been bountifully hired by the Senate for the
same purpose." The four affectionate figures, in porphyry, at the corner
of the Doges' Palace doorway, came also from the East. Nothing definite
is known of them, but many stories are told. The two richly carved
isolated columns were brought from Acre in 1256.
Of these columns old Coryat has a story which I have found in no other
writer. It may be true, and on the other hand it may have been the
invention of some mischievous Venetian wag wishing to get a laugh out of
the inquisitive Somerset pedestrian, whose leg was, I take it,
invitingly pullable. "Near to this stone," he says, referring to the
Pietra del Bando, "is another memorable thing to be observed. A
marvailous faire paire of gallowes made of alabaster, the pillars being
wrought with many curious borders, and workes, which served for no other
purpose but to hang the Duke whensoever he shall happen to commit any
treason against the State. And for that cause it is erected before the
very gate of his Palace to the end to put him in minde to be faithfull
and true to his country. If not, he seeth the place of punishment at
hand. But this is not a perfect gallowes, because there are only two
pillars without a transverse beame, which beame (they say) is to be
erected when there is any execution, not else. Betwixt this gallowes
malefactors and condemned men (that are to goe to be executed upon a
scaffold betwixt the two famous pillars before mentioned at the South
end of S. Mark's street, neare the Adriaticque Sea) are wont to say
their prayers, to the Image of the Virgin Mary, standing on a part of S.
Mark's Church right opposite unto them."
CHAPTER III
S. MARK'S. II: THE INTERIOR
Vandal guides--Emperor and Pope--The Bible in mosaic--The Creation of
the world--Cain and Abel--Noah--The story of Joseph--The golden
horses--A horseless city--A fiction gross and palpable--A populous
church--The French pilgrims--Rain in Venice--S. Mark's Day--The
procession--New Testament mosaics--S. Isidoro's chapel--The chapel of
the Males--A coign of vantage--The Pala d'oro--Sansovino--S. Mark's
treasures--The Baptistery--The good Andrea Dandolo--The vision of Bishop
Magnus--The parasites.
Let us now enter the atrium. When I first did so, in 1889, I fell at
once into the hands of a guide, who, having completed his other
services, offered for sale a few pieces of mosaic which he had casually
chipped off the wall with his knife somewhere in the gallery. Being
young and simple I supposed this the correct thing for guides to do, and
was justified in that belief when at the Acropolis, a few weeks later,
the terrible Greek who had me in tow ran lightly up a workman's ladder,
produced a hammer from his pocket and knocked a beautiful carved leaf
from a capital. But S. Mark's has no such vandals to-day. There are
guides in plenty, who detach themselves from its portals or appear
suddenly between the flagstaffs with promises of assistance; but they
are easily repulsed and the mosaics are safe.
Entering the atrium by the central door we come upon history at once.
For just inside on the pavement whose tesselations are not less lovely
than the ceiling mosaics--indeed I often think more lovely--are the
porphyry slabs on which the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa asked pardon of
Pope Alexander III, whom he had driven from Rome into an exile which had
now brought him to Venice. The story has it that the great Emperor
divested himself of his cloak of power and lay full length on these very
stones; the Pope placed his foot on his neck, saying, "I will tread on
the asp and the basilisk." The Emperor ventured the remark that he was
submitting not to the Pope but to S. Peter. "To both of us," said
Alexander. That was on July 24, 1177, and on the walls of the Doges'
Palace we shall see pictures of the Pope's sojourn in Venice and
subsequent triumph.
The vestibule mosaics are not easy to study, as the best are in the
domes immediately overhead. But they are very interesting in their
simple directness. Their authors had but one end in view, and that was
to tell the story. As thorough illustrations they could not be
overpraised. And here let me say that though Baedeker is an important
book in Venice, and S. Mark's Square is often red with it, there is one
even more useful and necessary, especially in S. Mark's, and that is the
Bible. One has not to be a very profound Biblical student to keep pace,
in memory, with the Old Masters when they go to the New Testament; but
when the Old is the inspiration, as chiefly here, one is continually at
fault.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE NOAH MOSAICS
_In the Atrium of S. Mark's_]
The vestibule mosaics are largely thirteenth century. That is to say,
they were being fixed together in these domes and on these walls when
England was under the first Edwards, and long indeed before America,
which now sends so many travellers to see them--so many in fact that it
is almost impossible to be in any show-place without hearing the
American accent--was dreamed of.
The series begins in the first dome on the right, with the creation of
the world, a design spread over three circles. In the inner one is the
origin of all things--or as far back as the artist, wisely untroubled by
the question of the creation of the Creator, cared to go. Angels seem
always to have been. In the next circle we find the creation of the sun,
moon, and stars, birds, beasts, and fishes, and finally of man. The
outer circle belongs to Adam and Eve. Adam names the animals; his rib is
extracted; Eve, a curiously forbidding woman, rather a Gauguinesque
type, results; she is presented to Adam; they eat the fruit; they take
to foliage; they are judged; the leaves become real garments; they are
driven forth to toil, Adam with an axe and Eve with a distaff.
On the sides is the story of Cain and Abel carried back to an earlier
point than we are accustomed to see it. Later, to the altar Cain brings
fruit and Abel a lamb; a hand is extended from heaven to the fortunate
Abel while Cain sulks on a chair. The two brothers then share a
sentry-box in apparent amity, until Cain becomes a murderer.
We next come, on the sides, to the story of Noah and the Tower of Babel.
Noah's biography is vivid and detailed. We see him receiving Divine
instruction to build the ark, and his workmen busy. He is next among the
birds, and himself carries a pair of peacocks to the vessel. Then the
beasts are seen, and he carries in a pair of leopards, or perhaps pumas;
and then his whole family stand by while two eagles are inserted, and
other big birds, such as storks and pelicans, await their turn. I
reproduce this series. On the other side the rains have begun and the
world is drowning. Noah sends out the dove and receives it again; the
waters subside; he builds his altar, and the animals released from the
ark gambol on the slopes of Ararat. The third series of events in the
life of Noah I leave to the visitor to decipher. One of the incidents so
captured the Venetian imagination that it is repeated at the eastern
corner of the Ducal Palace lagoon façade.
The second dome tells the history of Abraham, and then three domes are
given to the best story in the world, the story of Joseph. The first
dome treats of his dream, showing him asleep and busy with it, and the
result, the pit being a cylinder projecting some feet from the ground.
Jacob's grief on seeing the coat of many colours is very dramatic. In
the next we find Potiphar's wife, Joseph's downfall, and the two
dreaming officials. The third tells of Joseph and Jacob and is full of
Egyptian local colour, a group of pyramids occurring twice. On the wall
are subsidiary scenes, such as Joseph before Pharaoh, the incident of
Benjamin's sack with the cup in it, and the scene of the lean kine
devouring the fat, which they are doing with tremendous spirit, all
beginning simultaneously from behind.
The last dome relates the story of Moses, but it is by an inferior
artist and does not compare with the others. The miracle of the manna on
the wall is, however, amusing, the manna being rather like melons and
the quails as large as pheasants. On the extreme left a cook is at work
grilling some on a very open fire. Another inferior mosaic on the north
side of the atrium, represents S. Christopher with his little Passenger.
It is a pity that Titian's delightful version in the Doges' Palace could
not have been followed.
The atrium is remarkable not only for its illustrations to Genesis. Its
mosaic patterns are very lovely, and its carved capitals. The staircase
to the left of the centre door of the church proper leads to the
interior galleries and to the exterior gallery, where the golden horses
are. Of the interior galleries I speak later. Let me say here that these
noble steeds were originally designed and cast for a triumphal arch, to
be driven by Victory, in honour of Nero. Filched from Rome by
Constantine, they were carried to his own city as an ornament to the
imperial hippodrome. In 1204 the great Doge Enrico Dandolo, having
humiliated Constantinople, brought the horses to Venice as a trophy, and
they were transferred to the service of the church. Here, above the
central portal of the cathedral, they stood for nearly six centuries,
and then in 1797 a more modern Constantine, one Napoleon, carried them
to Paris, to beautify his city. In 1815, however, when there was a
redistribution of Napoleonic spoils, back they came to Venice, to their
ancient platform, and there they now are, unchanged, except that their
golden skins are covered with the autographs of tourists.
One odd thing about them is that they and Colleoni's steed are the only
horses which many younger and poorer Venetians have ever seen. As to the
horselessness of Venice, the last word, as well as one of the first, in
English, was written by our old friend Coryat in the following passage:
"For you must consider that neither the Venetian Gentlemen nor any
others can ride horses in the streets of Venice as in other Cities and
Townes, because their streets being both very narrow and slippery, in
regard they are all paved with smooth bricke, and joyning to the water,
the horse would quickly fall into the river, and so drowne both himselfe
and his rider. Therefore the Venetians do use Gondolaes in their streets
insteede of horses, I meane their liquid streets: that is, their
pleasant channels. So that I now finde by mine owne experience that the
speeches of a certaine English Gentleman (with whom I once discoursed
before my travels), a man that much vaunted of his observations in
Italy, are utterly false. For when I asked him what principall things he
observed in Venice, he answered me that he noted but little of the city,
because he rode through it in post. A fiction, and as grosse and
palpable as ever was coyned."
From the horses' gallery there is a most interesting view of the Piazza
and the Piazzetta, and the Old Library and Loggetta are as well seen
from here as anywhere.
Within the church itself two things at once strike us: the unusual
popularity of it, and the friendliness. Why an intensely foreign
building of great size should exert this power of welcome I cannot say;
but the fact remains that S. Mark's, for all its Eastern domes and gold
and odd designs and billowy floor, does more to make a stranger and a
Protestant at home than any cathedral I know; and more people are also
under its sway than in any other. Most of them are sightseers, no doubt,
but they are sightseers from whom mere curiosity has fallen: they seem
to like to be there for its own sake.
The coming and going are incessant, both of worshippers and tourists,
units and companies. Guides, professional and amateur, bring in little
groups of travellers, and one hears their monotonous informative voices
above the foot-falls; for, as in all cathedrals, the prevailing sound is
of boots. In S. Mark's the boots make more noise than in most of the
others because of the unevenness of the pavement, which here and there
lures to the trot. One day as I sat in my favourite seat, high up in the
gallery, by a mosaic of S. Liberale, a great gathering of French
pilgrims entered, and, seating themselves in the right transept beneath
me, they disposed themselves to listen to an address by the French
priest who shepherded them. His nasal eloquence still rings in my ears.
A little while after I chanced to be at Padua, and there, in the church
of S. Anthony, I found him again, again intoning rhetoric.
S. Mark's is never empty, but when the rain falls--and in Venice rain
literally does fall--it is full. Then do the great leaden spouts over
the façade pour out their floods, while those in the courtyard of the
Doges' Palace expel an even fiercer torrent. But the city's recovery
from a deluge is instant.
But the most populous occasion on which I ever saw S. Mark's was on S.
Mark's own day--April 25. Then it is solid with people: on account of
the procession, which moves from a point in front of the high altar and
makes a tour of the church, passing down to the door of the Baptistery,
through the atrium, and into the church again by the door close to the
Cappella dei Mascoli. There is something in all Roman Catholic
ceremonial which for me impairs its impressiveness--perhaps a thought
too much mechanism--and I watched this chanting line of choristers,
priests, and prelates without emotion, but perfectly willing to believe
that the fault lay with me. Three things abide vividly in the memory:
the Jewish cast of so many of the large inscrutable faces of the wearers
of the white mitres; a little aged, isolated, ecclesiastic of high rank
who muttered irascibly to himself; and a precentor who for a moment
unfolded his hands and lowered his eyes to pull out his watch and peep
at it. Standing just inside the church and watching the people swarm in
their hundreds for this pageantry, I was struck by the comparatively
small number who made any entering salutation. No children did. Perhaps
the raptest worshipper was one of Venice's many dwarfs, a tiny, alert
man in blue linen with a fine eloquent face and a great mass of
iron-grey hair.
This was the only occasion on which I saw the Baptistery accessible
freely to all and the door into the Piazzetta open.
One should not look at a guide-book on the first visit to S. Mark's; nor
on the second or third, unless, of course, one is pressed for time. Let
the walls and the floors and the pillars and the ceiling do their own
quiet magical work first. Later you can gather some of their history.
The church has but one fault which I have discovered, and that is the
circular window to the south. Beautiful as this is, it is utterly out of
place, and whoever cut it was a vandal.
But indeed S. Mark's ought to have a human appeal, considering the human
patience and thought that have gone to its making and beautifying,
inside and out. No other church has had much more than a tithe of such
toil. The Sistine Chapel in Rome is wonderful enough, with its frescoes;
but what is the labour on a fresco compared with that on a mosaic?
Before every mosaic there must be the artist and the glass-maker; and
then think of the labour of translating the artist's picture into this
exacting and difficult medium and absolutely covering every inch of the
building with it! And that is merely decoration; not structure at all.
There are mosaics here which date from the tenth century; and there are
mosaics which are being renewed at this moment, for the prosperity of
the church is continually in the thoughts of the city fathers. The
earliest is that of Christ, the Virgin, and S. Mark, on the inside wall
over the central door. My own favourites are all among the earlier ones.
Indeed, some of the later ones are almost repulsively flamboyant and
self-conscious. Particularly I like the great scene of Christ's agony
high up on the right wall, with its lovely green and gold border,
touched with red. But all the patterns, especially in the roof arches,
are a delight, especially those with green in them. I like too the
picture of Christ on a white ass in the right transept, with the
children laying their cloaks in His way. And the naïve scene of Christ's
temptation above it, and the quaint row of disciples beneath it, waiting
to have their feet washed.
Of the more modern mosaics the "Annunciation" and "Adoration of the
Magi" are among the most pleasing.
There are some curious and interesting early mosaics in the chapel of S.
Isidoro in the left transept. It is always dark in this tiny recess, but
bit by bit the incidents in the pictures are revealed. They are very
dramatic, and the principal scene of the saint's torture by being
dragged over the ground by galloping horses is repeated in relief on the
altar. I have failed to find any life of any S. Isidoro that relates the
story. Note the little bronze lions on each side of the altar--two more
for that census of Venetian lions which I somewhere suggest might be
made. The little chapel on the left of S. Isidoro's is known as the
Cappella dei Mascoli, or males, for hither come the young wives of
Venice to pray that they may bring forth little gondoliers. That at any
rate is one story; another says that it was the chapel of a
confraternity of men to which no woman might belong. In the mosaic high
up on the left is a most adorably gay little church, and on the altar
are a pretty baby and angels. On a big pillar close to this chapel is a
Madonna with a votive rifle hung by it; but I have been unable to find
its story. It might be a moving one.
It is not detail, however lovely, for which one seeks S. Mark's, but
general impressions, and these are inexhaustible. It is a temple of
beauty and mystery in which to loiter long, and, as I have said, just by
the S. Liberale in the gallery of the right transept, I made my seat.
From this point one sees under the most favourable conditions the mosaic
of the entry into Jerusalem; the choir; the choir screen with its
pillars and saints; the two mysterious pulpits, beneath which children
creep and play on great days; and all the miracle of the pavements. From
here one can follow the Mass and listen to the singing, undisturbed by
the moving crowd.
S. Mark's is described by Ruskin as an illuminated missal in mosaic. It
is also a treasury of precious stones, for in addition to every known
coloured stone that this earth of ours can produce, with which it is
built and decorated and floored, it has the wonderful Pala d'oro, that
sumptuous altar-piece of gold and silver and enamel which contains some
six thousand jewels. More people, I guess, come to see this than
anything else; but it is worth standing before, if only as a reminder of
how far the Church has travelled since a carpenter's son, who despised
riches, founded it; as a reminder, too, as so much of this building is,
of the day when Constantinople, where in the eleventh century the Pala
d'oro was made, was Christian also.
The fine carved pillars of the high altar's canopy are very beautiful,
and time has given them a quality as of ivory. According to a custodian,
without whom one cannot enter the choir, the remains of S. Mark still
lie beneath the high altar, but this probably is not true. At the back
of the high altar is a second altar with pillars of alabaster, and the
custodian places his candle behind the central ones to illustrate their
soft lucency, and affirms that they are from Solomon's own temple. His
candle illumines also Sansovino's bronze sacristy door, with its fine
reliefs of the Deposition and the Resurrection, with the heads of
Evangelists and Prophets above them. Six realistic heads are here too,
one of which is Titian's, one Sansovino's himself, and one the head of
Aretino, the witty and licentious writer and gilt-edged parasite--this
last a strange selection for a sacristy door. Sansovino designed also
the bronze figures of the Evangelists on the balustrade of the choir
stalls and the reliefs of the Doge's and Dogaressa's private pews.
There are two Treasuries in S. Mark's, One can be seen every day for
half a franc; the other is open only on Fridays and the entrance fee is,
I believe, five francs. I have not laid out this larger amount; but in
the other I have spent some time and seen various priceless temporal
indications of spiritual power. There is a sword of Doge Mocenigo, a
wonderful turquoise bowl, a ring for the Adriatic nuptials, and so
forth. But I doubt if such details of S. Mark's are things to write
about. One should go there to see S. Mark's as a whole, just as one goes
to Venice to see Venice.
The Baptistery is near the entrance on the left as you leave the church.
But while still in the transept it is interesting to stand in the centre
of the aisle with one's back to the high altar and look through the open
door at the Piazza lying in the sun. The scene is fascinating in this
frame; and one also discovers how very much askew the façade of S.
Mark's must be, for instead of seeing, immediately in front, the centre
of the far end of the square, as most persons would expect, one sees
Naya's photograph shop at the corner.
The Baptistery is notable for its mosaic biography of the Baptist, its
noble font, and the beautiful mural tomb of Doge Andrea Dandolo. Andrea,
the last Doge to be buried within S. Mark's, was one of the greatest of
them all. His short reign of but ten years, 1343 to 1354, when he died
aged only forty-six, was much troubled by war with the Genoese; but he
succeeded in completing an alliance against the Turks and in finally
suppressing Zara, and he wrote a history of Venice and revised its code
of laws. Petrarch, who was his intimate friend, described Andrea as
"just, upright, full of zeal and of love for his country ... erudite ...
wise, affable, and humane." His successor was the traitor Marino
Faliero. The tomb of the Doge is one of the most beautiful things in
Venice, all black bronze.
It was the good Andrea, not to be confused with old Henry Dandolo, the
scourge of the Greeks, to whom we are indebted for the charming story of
the origin of certain Venetian churches. It runs thus in the translation
in _St. Mark's Rest_:--
"As head and bishop of the islands, the Bishop Magnus of Altinum went
from place to place to give them comfort, saying that they ought to
thank God for having escaped from these barbarian cruelties. And there
appeared to him S. Peter, ordering him that in the head of Venice, or
truly of the city of Rivoalto, where he should find oxen and sheep
feeding, he was to build a church under his (S. Peter's) name. And thus
he did; building S. Peter's Church in the island of Olivolo [now
Castello], where at present is the seat and cathedral church of Venice.
[Illustration: THE CAMPANILE AND THE PIAZZA FROM COOK'S CORNER]
"Afterwards appeared to him the angel Raphael, committing it to him,
that at another place, where he should find a number of birds together,
he should build him a church: and so he did, which is the church of the
Angel Raphael in Dorsoduro.
"Afterwards appeared to him Messer Jesus Christ our Lord, and committed
to him that in the midst of the city he should build a church, in the
place above which he should see a red cloud rest: and so he did, and it
is San Salvador.
"Afterwards appeared to him the most holy Mary the Virgin, very
beautiful, and commanded him that where he should see a white cloud
rest, he should build a church: which is the church of S. Mary the
Beautiful.
"Yet still appeared to him S. John the Baptist, commanding that he
should build two churches, one near the other,--the one to be in his
name, and the other in the name of his father. Which he did, and they
are San Giovanni in Bragora, and San Zaccaria.
"Then appeared to him the apostles of Christ, wishing, they also, to
have a church in this new city: and they committed it to him that where
he should see twelve cranes in a company, there he should build it."
Of the Baptistery mosaics the most scanned will always be that in which
Salome bears in the head. In another the decapitated saint bends down
and touches his own head. The scene of Christ's baptism is very quaint,
Christ being half-submerged in Jordan's waves, and fish swimming past
during the sacred ceremony. Behind the altar, on which is a block of
stone from Mount Tabor, is a very spirited relief of S. George killing
the dragon.
The adjoining chapel is that named after Cardinal Zeno, who lies in the
magnificent central tomb beneath a bronze effigy of himself, while his
sacred hat is in crimson mosaic on each side of the altar. The tomb and
altar alike are splendid rather than beautiful: its late Renaissance
sculptors, being far removed from Donatello, Mino, and Desiderio, the
last of whom was one of the authors of the beautiful font in the
adjoining Baptistery. Earlier and more satisfactory reliefs are those of
an angel on the right of the altar and a Madonna and Child on the left
which date from a time when sculpture was anonymous. The mosaics
represent the history of S. Mark.
One may walk or sit at will in S. Mark's as long as one wishes, free and
unharassed; but a ticket is required for the galleries and a ticket for
the choir and treasury; and the Baptistery and Zeno chapel can be
entered only by grace of a loafer with a key who expects something in
return for opening it. The history of this loafer's privilege I have not
obtained, and it would be interesting to learn by what authority he is
there, for he has no uniform and he accepts any sum you give him. If all
the hangers-on of the Roman Catholic Church, in Italy alone, who perform
these parasitical functions and stand between man and God, could be
gathered together, what a huge and horrible army it would be!
CHAPTER IV
THE PIAZZA AND THE CAMPANILE
The heart of Venice--Old-fashioned music--Teutonic invaders--The
honeymooners--True republicanism--A city of the poor--The black
shawls--A brief triumph--Red hair--A band-night incident--The
pigeons of the Piazza--The two Procuratie--A royal palace--The
shopkeepers--Florian's--Great names--Venetian restaurants--Little
fish--The old campanile--A noble resolve--The new campanile--The angel
vane--The rival campanili--The welcome lift--The bells--Venice from the
Campanile.
S. Mark's Square, or the Piazza, is more than the centre of Venice: to a
large extent it is Venice. Good Venetians when they die flit evermore
among its arcades.
No other city has so representative a heart. On the four musical nights
here--afternoons in the winter--the Piazza draws like a magnet. That
every stranger is here, you may be sure, and most Venetian men. Some sit
outside Florian's and the other cafés; others walk round and round the
bandstand; others pause fascinated beside the musicians. And so it has
been for centuries, and will be. New ideas and fashions come slowly into
this city, where one does quite naturally what one's father and
grandfather did; and a good instance of such contented conservatism is
to be found in the music offered to these contented crowds, for they are
still true to Verdi, Wagner, and Rossini, and with reluctance are
experiments made among the newer men.
In the daytime the population of the Piazza is more foreign than
Venetian. In fact the only Venetians to be seen are waiters,
photographers, and guides, the knots of errand boys watching the
artists, and, I might add, the pigeons. But at night Venice claims it,
although the foreigner is there too. It is amusing to sit at a table on
the outside edge of Florian's great quadrangle of chairs and watch the
nationalities, the Venetians, the Germans, the Austrians, and the
Anglo-Saxons, as they move steadily round and round. Venice is, of
course, the paradise both of Germans and Austrians. Every day in the
spring and summer one or two steamers arrive from Trieste packed with
Austrian tourists awfully arrayed. Some hundreds have to return to
Trieste at 2 o'clock; other hundreds remain till night. The beautiful
word Venezia, which we cheapen but not too cruelly to Venice and the
French soften to Venise, is alas! to Teutonic tongues Venedig.
The Venetians reach the Square first, smart, knowing, confident,
friendly, and cheerful; then the Germans and Austrians, very obviously
trippers; and then, after their hotel dinners, at about quarter past
nine, the English: the women with low necks, the men in white shirts,
talking a shade too loud, monarchs of all they survey. But the
honeymooners are the best--the solicitous young bridegrooms from
Surbiton and Chislehurst in their dinner-jackets and black ties; their
slender brides, with pretty wraps on their heads, here probably for the
last or the first time, and so determined to appear Continental and
tolerant, bless their hearts! They walk round and round, or sit over
their coffee, and would be so happy and unselfconscious and clinging
were it not for the other English here.
The fine republicanism of Venice is nowhere so apparent as on band
nights. Such aristocrats as the city holds (and judging from the
condition of the palaces to-day, there cannot be many now in residence)
either look exactly like the middle classes or abstain from the Piazza.
The prevailing type is the well-to-do citizen, very rarely with his
women folk, who moves among street urchins at play; cigar-end hunters;
soldiers watchful for officers to salute; officers sometimes returning
and often ignoring salutes; groups of slim upright Venetian girls in the
stately black shawls, moving, as they always do, like queens; little
uniformed schoolboys in "crocodiles"; a policeman or two; a party from
the country; a workman with his wife and babies (for though the
Venetians adore babies they see no incongruity in keeping them up till
ten o'clock); epauletted and cockhatted gendarmes; and at intervals,
like ghosts, officials from the arsenal, often alone, in their spotless
white linen.
Every type of Venetian is seen in the Square, save one--the gondolier.
Never have I seen a gondolier there, day or night: not because it is too
grand for him, but it is off his beat. When he has done his work he
prefers the wine shops of his own sestiere. No thought of any want of
welcome would deter him, for Venice is republic to the core. In fact one
might go farther and say that it is a city of the poor. Where the poor
lived in the great days when the palaces were occupied by the rich, one
cannot quite understand, since the palace is the staple building; but
there is no doubt as to where they live now: they live everywhere. The
number of palaces which are wholly occupied by one family must be
infinitesimal; the rest are tenements, anything but model buildings,
rookeries. Venice has no aristocratic quarter as other cities have. The
poor establish themselves either in a palace or as near it as possible.
I have referred to the girls in their black shawls or scialli. They
remain in the memory as one of Venice's most distinguished possessions.
A handsome young private gondolier in white linen with a coloured scarf,
bending to the oar and thrusting his boat forward with muscular strokes,
is a delight to watch; but he is without mystery. These girls have grace
and mystery too. They are so foreign, so slender and straight, so sad.
Their faces are capable of animation, but their prevailing expression is
melancholy. Why is this? Is it because they know how secondary a place
woman holds in this city of well-nourished, self-satisfied men? Is it
that they know that a girl's life is so brief: one day as supple and
active as they are now and the next a crone? For it is one of the
tragedies that the Venetian atmosphere so rapidly ages women.
But in their prime the Venetian girls in the black shawls are
distinguished indeed, and there was not a little sagacity in the remark
to me by an observer who said that, were they wise, all women would
adopt a uniform. One has often thought this, in London, when a nurse in
blue or grey passes refreshingly along a pavement made bizarre by
expensive and foolish fashions; one realizes it even more in Venice.
Most of these girls have dark or black hair. The famous red hair of
Venetian women is rarely seen out of pictures.
Round and round goes the chattering contented crowd, while every table
at each of the four cafés, Florian's and the Aurora, the Quadri and the
Ortes Rosa, swells the noise. Now and then the music, or the ordinary
murmur of the Square in the long intervals, is broken by the noisy
rattle of a descending shop shutter, or the hour is struck by the
Merceria clock's bronze giants; now and then a pigeon crosses the sky
and shows luminous where the light strikes its breast; now and then a
feather flutters from a window ledge, great bats flit up and down, and
the mosquitoes shrill in one's ear. It is an entertainment never failing
in interest to the observer, and not the least amusing question that one
asks oneself is, Where does every one sleep?
I shall always remember one band night here, for it was then that I saw
a girl and her father whose images will never leave me, I know not why.
Every now and then, but seldom indeed, a strange face or form will thus
suddenly photograph itself on the memory, when it is only with the
utmost concentrated effort, or not at all, that we can call up mental
pictures of those near and dear to us. I know nothing of these two; I
saw them only once again, and then in just the same fugitive way; but if
an artist were now to show me a portrait of either, I could point out
where his hand was at fault. The band was playing the usual music--_Il
Trovatore_ or _Aïda_ or _Lohengrin_--and the crowd was circulating when
an elderly man with a long-pointed grey beard and moustache and the
peculiar cast of countenance belonging to them (Don Quixotic) walked
past. He wore a straw hat slightly tilted and was smoking a cigar. His
arm was passed through that of a tall slender girl of about his own
height, and, say, twenty-five, in red. She was leaning towards him and
he slightly inclined towards her. They walked faster than Venice, and
talked animatedly in English as they passed me, and the world had no one
in it but themselves; and so they disappeared, with long strides and a
curious ease of combined movement almost like skillful partners in a
dance. Two nights later I saw them again. This time she was in black,
and again they sailed through the crowd, a little leaning towards each
other, he again holding her arm, and again both discussing in English
something with such interest that they were conscious of nothing around
them. Sitting outside a café on the Piazza every evening for a month,
one naturally sees many travellers come and go; but none other in that
phantasmagoria left any mark on my mind. Why did these?
So much for S. Mark's Square by night. With thousands of persons, to
think of S. Mark's Square by day is chiefly to think of pigeons. Many a
visitor to Venice who cannot remember the details of a single painting
there can show you a photograph of herself with pigeons on her shoulders
and arms. Photographers and dealers in maize are here all day to effect
these pretty conjunctions; but the Kodak has seriously impaired their
profits. The birds are smaller than our London monsters and not quite so
brilliantly burnished. How many there are I have no idea; but since they
are sacred, their numbers must be ever increasing. Why they are sacred
is something of a mystery. One story states that the great Enrico
Dandolo had carrier-pigeons with him in the East which conveyed the
grand tidings of victories to Venice; another says that the same heroic
old man was put in possession of valuable strategic information by means
of a carrier-pigeon, and on returning to Venice proclaimed it a bird to
be reverenced. There was once a custom of loosing a number of pigeons
among the crowd in the Piazza on Palm Sunday. The birds being weighted
floundered downwards and were caught and killed for the pot; but such as
escaped were held to have earned their liberty for ever.
[Illustration: THE PRESENTATION
FROM THE PAINTING BY TITIAN
_In the Accademia_]
At night no doubt the pigeons roost among S. Mark's statuary and on
convenient ledges in the neighbourhood; by day, when not on the pavement
of the Piazza, the bulk of the flock are dotted about among the reliefs
of the Atrio, facing S. Mark's.
They have no timidity, but by a kind of honourable understanding they
all affect to be startled by the bells at certain hours and the midday
gun, and ascend in a grey cloud for a few seconds.
They are never so engaging as when flying double, bird and shadow,
against the Campanile.
Their collective cooing fills the air and makes the Piazza's day music.
Venetians crossing the Piazza walk straight on, through the birds, like
Moses crossing the Red Sea; the foreigners pick their way.
What with S. Mark's and the pigeons, the Campanile and coffee, few
visitors have any time to inquire as to the other buildings of the
Piazza. Nor are they of much interest. Briefly they are the Old
Procuratie, which forms the side on which the clock is, the Atrio or
Nuova Fabbrica opposite S. Mark's, and the New Procuratie on the
Campanile side. The Old Procuratie, whose main row of windows I once
counted, making either a hundred or a hundred and one, is now offices
and, above, residences. Here once abode the nine procurators of Venice
who, under the Doge, ruled the city.
The New Procuratie is now the Royal Palace, and you may see the royal
lackeys conversing with the sentinels in the doorway by Florian's. It is
the finer building: over the arches it has good sprawling
Michael-Angelesque figures, noble lions' heads, and massive
ornamentations.
I don't know for certain, but I should guess that the Royal Palace in
Venice is the only abode of a European King that has shops underneath
it. Wisely the sleeping apartments face the Grand Canal, with a garden
intervening; were they on the Piazza side sleep would be very
difficult. But all the great State rooms overlook the Piazza. The Palace
is open on fixed days and shown by a demure flunkey in an English bowler
hat, but it should be the last place to be visited by the sightseer. Its
only real treasures--the Tintorettos illustrating the life of S.
Mark--were not visible on the only occasion on which I ventured in.
Beneath these three buildings--the two Procuratie and the Fabbrica
Nuova--runs an arcade where the Venetians congregate in wet weather and
where the snares for tourists are chiefly laid by the dealers in
jewellery, coral, statuary, lace, glass, and mosaic. But the Venetian
shopkeepers are not clever: they have not the sense to leave the nibbler
alone. One has not been looking in the window for more than two seconds
before a silky-voiced youth appears at the door and begins to recommend
his wares and invite custom; and then of course one moves away in
terror.
Here, too, under the arcade, are the head-quarters of the cafés, which
do most of their business on the pavement of the Square. Of these
Florian's is the oldest and best. At certain hours, however, one must
cross the Square to either the Ortes Rosa or Quadri, or be roasted. The
original Florian was wise in his choice of site, for he has more shady
hours than his rivals opposite. In an advertisement of the café in the
musical programme it is stated that, "the oldest and most aristocratic
establishment of its kind in Venice, it can count among its clients,
since 1720, Byron, Goethe, Rousseau, Canova, Dumas, and Moor," meaning
by Moor not Othello but Byron's friend and biographer, the Anacreon of
Erin. How Florian's early patrons looked one can see in a brilliant
little picture by Guardi in the National Gallery, No. 2099. The café
boasts that its doors are never shut, day or night; and I have no doubt
that this is true, but I have never tested it in the small hours.
Oddly enough there are no restaurants in the Piazza, but many about its
borders on the north and west. The visitor to Venice, as a rule, eats in
his hotel; and I think he is wise. But wishing to be in Venice rather
more thoroughly than that, I once lived in rooms for a month and ate in
all the restaurants in turn. Having had this experience I expect to be
believed when I say that the restaurants of Venice are not good. The
food is monotonous, and the waiting, even at what is called the best,
the Bauer-Grünwald, say, or the Pilsen, is leisurely. Add to this that
the guests receive no welcome, partly because, all the places being
understaffed, no one can be spared for that friendly office, and partly
because politeness is not a Venetian foible. An immense interval then
elapses before the lista, or bill of fare, is brought, partly because
there is no waiter disengaged and partly because there seems to be a law
in Venetian restaurants that one lista shall suffice for eight tables.
Then comes the struggle--to find anything new either to eat or drink.
The lista contains in print a large number of attractive things, but few
are obtainable, for on an Italian menu print is nothing: it is only the
written words that have any relevance. The print is in Italian and
German, the reason being that Italians, Germans, and Austrians are the
only people who resort to restaurants. The English and Americans eat in
their hotels, en pension. (In Venice, I might say, all foreigners are
addressed first in German, except by the little boys in the streets
whose one desire on earth is to direct you to S. Marco and be paid for
their trouble. They call you _m'soo_.) Once a meal is ordered it comes
rapidly enough, but one has to be very hungry to enjoy it. For the most
part Venetian food is Italian food: that is to say, almost wholly veal
and paste; but in the matter of fish Venice has her specialities. There
are, for examples, those little toy octopuses which on my first visit,
twenty-five years ago, used to be seen everywhere in baskets at corners,
but now have disappeared from the streets. These are known as calamai or
calamaretti, and if one has the courage to take the shuddering first
step that counts they will be found to be very good. But they fail to
look nice. Better still are scampi, a kind of small crawfish, rather
like tenderer and sweeter langouste.
To the investigator I recommend the dish called variously frutta di mare
and fritto misto, in which one has a fried jumble of the smaller sea
creatures of the lagoon, to the scampi and calamaretti being added fresh
sardines (which the fishermen catch with the hand at low tide), shrimps,
little soles, little red mullets, and a slice or two of big cuttle fish.
A popular large fish is the bronzino, and great steaks of tunny are
always in demand too. But considering Venice's peculiar position with
regard to the sea and her boasted dominion over it fish are very dear.
Even more striking is the dearness of fruit, but this, I take it, is due
to the distance that it must come, either by rail or water. No
restaurant that I discovered--as in the fair land of France and indeed
elsewhere in Italy--places wine or grapes free on the table.
As I say, I tried all the Venetian houses, small and large--the Cappello
Nero, the Bella Venezia, the Antico Panada, the Bauer-Grünwald, the
Bonvecchiato, the Cavalletti, the Pilsen; and the only one I felt any
desire to return to was the Pilsen, which is large and noisy and
intensely Teutonic, but a shade more attentive than the others. The
Bella Venezia is the best purely Venetian house.
I cannot remember the old campanile with enough vividness to be sure,
but my impression is that its brick was a mellower tint than that of the
new: nearer the richness of S. Giorgio Maggiore's, across the water.
Time may do as much for the new campanile, but at present its colour is
not very satisfactory except when the sun is setting. Indeed, so new is
it that one cannot think of it as having any association whatever with
S. Mark's. If it belongs to anything it is to Venice as a whole, or
possibly the Royal Palace. Yet one ought not to cavil, for it stands so
bravely on the spot where its predecessor fell, and this is a very
satisfactory proof that the Venetians, for all the decay of their lovely
city and the disappearance of their marvellous power, are Venetians
still.
The old campanile, after giving various warnings, fell on July 14, 1902,
at half-past nine in the morning. On the evening of the same day the
Town Council met, under the chairmanship of Count Grimani, the mayor,
and without the least hesitation decided that a successor must be
erected: in the fine words of the count: "Dov'era, com'era" ("Where it
was and as it was"). Sympathy and contributions poured in from the
outside world to strengthen the hands of the Venetians, and on S. Mark's
Day (April 25), 1903, the first stone was laid. On S. Mark's Day, 1912,
the new campanile was declared complete in every part and blessed in the
presence of representatives of all Italy, while 2479 pigeons, brought
hither for the purpose, carried the tidings to every corner of the
country.
The most remarkable circumstance about the fall of the campanile is
that no one was hurt. The Piazza and Piazzetta are by no means empty at
half-past nine in the morning, yet these myriad tons of brick and stone
sank bodily to the ground and not a human bruise resulted. Here its
behaviour was better than that of the previous campanile of S. Giorgio
Maggiore, which, when it fell in 1774, killed one monk and injured two
others. Nor was S. Mark's harmed, although its sacristan confesses to
have been dumb for three days from the shock. The falling golden angel
from the top of the campanile was found in front of the central door as
though to protect the church. Sansovino's Loggetta, it is true, was
crushed and buried beneath the debris, but human energy is indomitable,
and the present state of that structure is a testimony to the skill and
tenacity which still inhabit Venetian hands and breasts.
What I chiefly miss in the new campanile is any aerial suggestion. It
has actual solidity in every inch of it, apart from the fact that it
also conveys the idea of solidity, as any building must which has taken
the place of one so misguided as to fall down. But its want of this
intangible quality, together with its newness, have displaced it in my
eyes as the king campanile of Venice. In my eyes the campanile of S.
Giorgio Maggiore now reigns supreme, while I am very much attached also
to those of the Frari and S. Francesco della Vigna. But let S. Mark's
campanile take heart: some day Anno Domini will claim these others too,
and then the rivalry will pass. But as it is, morning, noon, and evening
the warm red bricks and rich green copper top of S. Giorgio Maggiore's
bell-tower draw the gaze first, and hold it longest. It is the most
beautiful campanile of all, and its inevitableness is such that did we
not know the truth we should wonder if the six days of creation had not
included an afternoon for the ordainment of such edifices.
It would need a Hans Andersen to describe the feelings of the other
Venetian campaniles when S. Mark's tall column fell. S. Giorgio's I
imagine instantly took command, but no doubt there were other claimants
to the throne. I rather fancy that the Frari's had something to say, and
S. Pietro in Castello's also, on account of his age and his early
importance; but who could pay any serious attention at that time to a
tower so pathetically out of the perpendicular as he now is?
The new campanile endeavours to reproduce the old faithfully, and it was
found possible to utilize a little of the old material. The figures of
Venice on the east wall above the belfry canopy and Justice on the west
are the ancient ones pieced together and made whole; the lions on the
north and south sides are new. The golden angel on the summit is the old
one restored, with the novelty, to her, as to us, of being set on a
pivot to act as a vane. I made this discovery for myself, after being
puzzled by what might have been fancied changes of posture from day to
day, due to optical illusion. One of the shopkeepers on the Square, who
has the campanile before his eye continually, replied, however, when I
asked him if the figure was fixed or movable, "Fixed." This double duty
of the new campanile angel--to shine in golden glory over the city and
also to tell the wind--must be a little mortifying to her celestial
sister on the campanile of S. Giorgio, who is immovable. But no doubt
she has philosophy enough to consider subjection to the caprices of the
breeze a humiliation.
Another change for which one cannot be too grateful is the lift. For the
modest price of a franc one can be whirled to the belfry in a few
seconds at any time of the day and refresh one's eyes with the city and
the lagoon, the Tyrolese Alps, and the Euganean hills. Of old one
ascended painfully; but never again. Before the fall there were five
bells, of which only the greatest escaped injury. The other four were
taken to a foundry set up on the island of Sant'Elena and there fused
and recast at the personal cost of His Holiness the late Pope, who was
Patriarch of Venice. I advise no one to remain in the belfry when the
five are at work. They begin slowly and with some method; they proceed
to a deafening cacophony, tolerable only when one is far distant.
There are certain surprises in the view from the campanile. One is that
none of the water of the city is visible--not a gleam--except a few
yards of the Grand Canal and a stretch of the Canale della Giudecca; the
houses are too high for any of the by-ways to be seen. Another
revelation is that the floor pattern of the Piazza has no relation to
its sides. The roofs of Venice we observe to be neither red nor brown,
but something between the two. Looking first to the north, over the
three flagstaffs and the pigeon feeders and the Merceria clock, we see
away across the lagoon the huge sheds of the dirigibles and (to the
left) the long railway causeway joining Venice to the mainland as by a
thread. Immediately below us in the north-east are the domes of S.
Mark's, surmounted by the graceful golden balls on their branches,
springing from the leaden roof, and farther off are the rising bulk of
SS. Giovanni e Paolo, with its derivative dome and golden balls, the
leaning tower of S. Maria del Pianto, and beyond this the cemetery and
Murano. Beneath us on the east side is the Ducal Palace, and we look
right into the courtyard and on to the prison roof. Farther away are
the green trees of the Giardini Pubblici, the leaning tower of S.
Pietro di Castello, and S. Nicholas of the Lido. In the south-east are
the Lido's various hotels and the islands of S. Lazzaro (with the
campanile) and S. Servolo. In the south is the Grand Canal with a Guardi
pattern of gondolas upon it, criss-crossing like flies; then S.
Giorgio's lovely island and the Giudecca, and beyond these various
islands of the lagoon: La Grazia, S. Clemente, and, in the far distance,
Malamocco. In the south-west the Custom House pushes its nose into the
water, with the vast white mountain of the Salute behind it. In the west
is the Piazza, immediately below, with its myriad tables and chairs;
then the backs of the S. Moïse statues; and farther away the Frari and
its campanile, the huge telegraph-wire carriers of the harbour; across
the water Fusina, and beyond in the far distance the jagged Euganean
hills.
At sunset the landscape is sharpened and brought nearer. The deep blue
of the real sea, beyond the lagoon, grows deeper; the great fields of
mud (if it is low tide) gleam and glisten. And so it will ever be.
CHAPTER V
THE DOGES' PALACE. I: THE INTERIOR
Uningratiating splendour--Doges and Heaven--Venetian pride--The most
beautiful picture of all--A non-scriptural Tintoretto--The Sala del
Collegio--The Sala del Senato--More Doges and Heaven--The Council of
Ten--Anonymous charges--Tintoretto's "Last Judgment"--An immense
room--Tintoretto's "Paradiso"--Sebastiano Ziani and his exploits--Pope
Alexander III and Barbarossa--Old blind Dandolo--The Crusades--Zara--The
Fall of Constantinople--Marino Faliero and his fall--The first Doge in
the room--The last Doge in the room--The Sala dello Scrutinio--Palma's
"Last Judgment"--A short way with mistresses--The rest of the Doges--Two
battle pictures--The Doges' suites--The Archæological Museum--The Bridge
of Sighs--The dungeons.
I have to confess to weariness in the Ducal apartments. The rooms are
splendid, no doubt, and the pictures are monuments of energy; but it is
the windows that frame the most delectable scenes. In Venice, where the
sun usually shines, one's normal wish is to be out, except when, as in
S. Mark's there is the wonder of dimness too. For Venice is not like
other historic cities; Venice, for all her treasures of art, is first
and foremost the bride of the Adriatic, and the call of the sea is
strong. Art's opportunity is the dull days and rainy.
With the best will to do so, I cannot be much impressed by the glory and
power of the Doges. They wear a look, to me, very little removed from
Town Councillors: carried out to the highest power, no doubt, but
incorrigibly municipal none the less; and the journey through these
halls of their deliberations is tedious and unenchanting. That I am
wrong I am only too well aware. Does not Venetian history, with its
triumphs and pageantry of world-power, prove it? And would Titian and
Paul Veronese and Tintoretto have done all this for a Mayor and
Corporation? These are awkward questions. None the less, there it is,
and the Doges' Palace, within, would impart no thrill to me were it not
for Tintoretto's "Bacchus and Ariadne."
Having paid for our tickets (for only on Sundays and holidays is the
Palace free) we take the Scala d'Oro, designed by Sansovino, originally
intended only for the feet of the grandees of the Golden Book. The first
room is an ante-room where catalogues are sold; but these are not
needed, for every room, or nearly every room, has hand-charts of the
paintings, and every room has a custodian eager to impart information.
Next is the Hall of the Four Doors, with its famous and typical
Titian--Doge Grimani, fully armed and accompanied by warriors,
ecstatically acknowledging religion, as symbolized by a woman, a cross,
and countless cherubim. Behind her is S. Mark with an expression of some
sternness, and beside him his lion, roaring.
Doges, it appears,--at any rate the Doges who reigned during Titian's
long life--had no sense of humour, or they could not have permitted this
kind of self-glorification in paint. Both here and at the Accademia we
shall see picture after picture in which these purse-proud Venetian
administrators, suspecting no incongruity or absurdity, are placed, by
Titian and Tintoretto, on terms of perfect intimacy with the hierarchy
of heaven. Sometimes they merely fraternize; sometimes they masquerade
as the Three Kings or Wise Men from the East; but always it is into the
New Testament that, with the aid of the brush of genius, they force
their way.
Modesty can never have been a Venetian characteristic; nor is it now,
when Venice is only a museum and show place. All the Venetians--the men,
that is,--whom one sees in the Piazza have an air of profound
self-satisfaction. And this palace of the Doges is no training-place for
humility; for if its walls do not bear witness, glorious and chromatic,
to the greatness of a Doge, it is merely because the greatness of the
Republic requires the space. In this room, for example, we find Tiepolo
allegorizing Venice as the conqueror of the sea.
And now for the jewel of art in the Doges' Palace. It is in the room
opposite the door by which we entered--the ante-room of the Sala del
Collegio--and it faces us, on the left as we enter: the "Bacchus and
Ariadne" of Tintoretto. We have all seen the "Bacchus and Ariadne" of
Titian in our National Gallery, that superb, burning, synchronized
epitome of the whole legend. Tintoretto has chosen one incident only;
Love bringing Bacchus to the arms of Ariadne and at the same moment
placing on his head a starry coronal. Even here the eternal pride of
Venice comes in, for, made local, it has been construed as Love, or say
Destiny, completing the nuptials of the Adriatic (Bacchus) with Venice
(Ariadne), and conferring on Venice the crown of supremacy. But that
matters nothing. What matters is that the picture is at once
Tintoretto's simplest work and his most lovely. One can do nothing but
enjoy it in a kind of stupor of satisfaction, so soothing and perfect is
it. His "Crucifixion," which we shall see at the Scuola of S. Rocco,
must ever be this giant painter's most tremendous achievement; but the
picture before us must equally remain his culminating effort in serene,
absolute beauty. Three other mythological paintings, companions of the
"Bacchus," are here too, of which I like best the "Minerva" and the
"Mercury"; but they are far from having the quality of that other. I
have an idea that "The Origin of the Milky Way," in the National
Gallery, was painted as a ceiling piece to go with these four, but I
have no data for the theory, beyond its similarity in size and scheme.
The other great picture in this room is Paul Veronese's sumptuous "Rape
of Europa."
[Illustration: BACCHUS AND ARIADNE
FROM THE PAINTING BY TINTORETTO
_In the Doges' Palace_]
The Sala del Collegio itself, leading from this room, is full of Doges
in all the magnificence of paint, above the tawdriest of wainscotting.
Tintoretto gives us Doge Andrea Gritti praying to the Virgin, Doge
Francesco Donato witnessing as an honoured guest the nuptials of S.
Catherine, Doge Niccolô da Ponte surveying the Virgin in glory, and Doge
Alvise Mocenigo condescending to adore his Saviour. Paul Veronese
depicts an allegory of the battle of Lepanto in 1571, at which Venice
temporarily overcame the Turks. The kneeling white-bearded warrior
beside S. Giustina is the victor, afterwards Doge Sebastiano Venier, and
Christ looks on in approval. Tintoretto also painted for the Palace a
picture of this battle, but it perished in the fire of 1576. It is
Veronese who painted the virtues and attributes on the ceiling, one of
his most famous works being the woman with a web, who is sometimes
called "Industry" and sometimes "Dialectics," so flexible is symbolism.
"Fidelity" has a dog with a fine trustful head. To my weary eye the
finest of the groups is that of Mars and Neptune, with flying cherubs,
which is superbly drawn and coloured. Nothing but a chaise-longue on
which to lie supine, at ease, can make the study of these wonderful
ceilings anything but a distressing source of fatigue.
The next room is the Sala del Senato, and here again we find a blend of
heaven and Venice, with Doges as a common denominator. A "Descent from
the Cross" (by Tintoretto) is witnessed by Doge Pietro Lando and Doge
Marcantonio Trevisan; and the same hand gives us Pietro Loredan
imploring the aid of the Virgin. In the centre ceiling painting
Tintoretto depicts Venice as Queen of the Sea. The other artist here is
Palma the younger, whose principal picture represents Doge Leonardo
Loredan presiding over an attack by a lion on a bull, typifying the
position of the Republic when Pope Julius launched the League of Cambray
against it in 1508. The Doge does not look dismayed, but Venice never
recovered from the blow.
The room on the right of the throne leads to the chapel, which has
several small pictures. A Giovanni Bellini is over the altar, but it is
not one of his best. During his long life in Venice Bellini saw ten
Doges, and in his capacity as ducal painter painted four of them.
Returning to the Sala delle Quattro Porte (by way of the "Bacchus and
Ariadne" room, if we are wise), we make for the Sala del Consiglio dei
Dieci, the terrible Council of Ten. All Venetian histories are eloquent
upon this secret Tribunal, which, more powerful far than the Doge
himself, for five centuries, beginning early in the fourteenth, ruled
the city. On the walls are historical paintings which are admirable
examples of story-telling, and on the ceiling are Veroneses, original or
copied, the best of which depicts an old man with his head on his hand,
fine both in drawing and colour. It was in the wall of the next room
that the famous Bocca di Leone was placed, into which were dropped those
anonymous charges against Venetian citizens which the Council of Ten
investigated, and if true, or, very likely, if not true, punished with
such swiftness and thoroughness. How a state that offered such easy
temptations to anti-social baseness and treachery could expect to
prosper one cannot imagine. It suggests that the Venetian knowledge of
human nature was defective at the roots.
In the next room the Three Heads of the Council of Ten debated, and here
the attendant goes into spasms of delight over a dazzling inlaid floor.
This is all that is shown upstairs, for the piombi, or prison cells in
the leaden roof, are now closed.
Downstairs we come to the two Great Halls--first the gigantic Sala del
Maggior Consiglio, with Tintoretto's "Paradiso" at one end; historical
pictures all around; the portraits of the Doges above; a gorgeous
ceiling which, I fear, demands attention; and, mercifully, the little
balcony over the lagoon for escape and recovery. But first let us peep
into the room on the left, where the remains of Guariento's fresco of
Paradise, which Tintoretto was to supersede, have been set up: a
necessarily somewhat meaningless assemblage of delicate tints and pure
drawing. Then the photograph stall, which is in that ancient room of the
palace that has the two beautiful windows on a lower level than the
rest.
It is melancholy to look round this gigantic sala of the great Council
and think of the pictures which were destroyed by the great fire in
1576, when Sebastiano Venier was Doge, among them that rendering of the
battle of Lepanto, the Doge's own victory, which Tintoretto painted with
such enthusiasm. A list of only a few of the works of art which from
time to time have fallen to the flames would be tragic reading. Among
the artists whose paintings were lost in the 1576 fire were, in addition
to Tintoretto, Titian, Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, Gentile da
Fabriano and Carpaccio. Sad, too, to think that the Senators who once
thronged here--those grave, astute gentlemen in furred cloaks whom
Tintoretto and Titian and Moroni and Moretto painted for us--assemble
here no more. Sightseers now claim the palace, and the administrators of
Venetian affairs meet in the Municipio, or Town Hall, on the Grand
Canal.
The best thing about the room is the room itself: the courage of it in a
little place like Venice! Next, I suppose, all eyes turn to the
"Paradiso," and they can do nothing else if the custodian has made
himself one of the party, as he is apt to do. The custodians of Venice
are in the main silent, pessimistic men. They themselves neither take
interest in art nor understand why you should. Their attitude to you is
if not contempt only one remove from it. But one of the officials in the
Doges' Palace who is sometimes to be found in this Great Hall is both
enthusiastic and vocal. He has English too, a little. His weakness for
the "Paradiso" is chiefly due to the circumstance that it is the
"largest oil painting in the world." I dare say this is true; but the
same claim, I recall, was once made for an original poster in the
Strand. The "Paradiso" was one of Tintoretto's last works, the
commission coming to him only by the accident of Veronese's death.
Veronese was the artist first chosen, with a Bassano to assist, but when
he died, Tintoretto, who had been passed over as too old, was permitted
to try. The great man, painting on canvas, at the Misericordia, which
had been turned into a studio for him, and being assisted by his son
Domenico, finished it in 1590; and it was the delight of Venice. At
first he refused payment for it, and then consented to take a present,
but a smaller one than the Senate wished to offer.
The scheme of the work is logical and again illustrates his thoughtful
thoroughness. At the head of all is Christ with His Mother, about and
around them the angelic host led by the archangels--Michael with the
scales, Gabriel with lilies, and Raphael, in prayer, each of whom
presides, as we have seen, over one corner of the Palace. The next
circle contains the greatest Biblical figures, Moses, David, Abraham,
Solomon, Noah, the Evangelists (S. Mark prominent with his lion), and
the Early Fathers. The rest of the picture is given to saints and
martyrs. Not the least interesting figure is the S. Christopher, on the
right, low down by the door. At his feet is the painter's daughter, for
years his constant companion, who died while he was at work upon this
masterpiece.
The ceiling should be examined, if one has the strength, for Veronese's
sumptuous allegory of the Apotheosis of Venice. In this work the
painter's wife sat for Venice, as she sat also for Europa in the picture
which we have just seen in the Ante-Collegio.
On the walls are one-and-twenty representations of scenes in Venetian
history devoted to the exploits of the two Doges, Sebastiano Ziani
(1172-1178) and Enrico Dandolo (1192-1205). The greatest moment in the
career of Ziani was the meeting of Barbarossa and the Pope, Alexander
III, at S. Mark's, which has already been described; but his reign was
eventful throughout. His first act as Doge was to punish the
assassination of his predecessor, Vitale Michiel, who, for what was held
to be the bad management of an Eastern campaign which utterly and
disastrously failed, and for other reasons, was killed by the mob
outside S. Zaccaria. To him succeeded Ziani and the close of the long
feud between the Pope and the Emperor. It was the Pope's sojourn in
Venice and his pleasure in the Venetians' hospitality which led to the
elaboration of the ceremony of espousing the Adriatic. The Pope gave
Ziani a consecrated ring with which to wed his bride, and much splendour
was added to the pageant; while Ziani, on his return from a visit to the
Pope at the Vatican, where the reconciliation with Barbarossa made it
possible for the Pontiff to be at ease again, brought with him various
pompous insignia that enormously increased his prestige among simple
folk. It was also Ziani who had the columns of S. Theodore and the Lion
erected on the Molo, while it was in his reign that the first Rialto
bridge was begun. Having been Doge for six years, he retired to the
monastery of S. Giorgio and there died some years later, leaving a large
fortune to the poor of Venice and the church of S. Mark.
The paintings represent the Pope Alexander III recognized by the Doge
when hiding in Venice; the departure of the Papal and Venetian
Ambassadors for Pavia to interview the Emperor; the Pope presenting the
Doge with a blessed candle; the Ambassadors before the Emperor (by
Tintoretto); the Pope presenting the Doge with a sword, on the Molo; the
Pope blessing the Doge; the naval battle of Salvatore, in which the
Emperor Otto was captured; the Doge presenting Otto to the Pope; the
Pope giving Otto his liberty; the Emperor at the Pope's feet in the
vestibule of S. Mark's; the arrival of the Pope elsewhere; the Emperor
and the Doge at Ancona; the Pope presenting the Doge with gifts in Rome.
[Illustration: THE CORNER OF THE OLD LIBRARY AND THE DOGES' PALACE]
Ziani seems to have been a man of address, but the great Enrico Dandolo
was something more. He was a superb adventurer. He became Doge in 1193,
at the trifling age of eighty-four, with eyes that had long been dimmed,
and at once plunged into enterprises which, if not greatly to the good
of Venice, proved his own indomitable spirit and resource. It was the
time of the Fourth Crusade and the Venetians were asked to supply
transports for the French warriors of the Cross to the theatre of war.
After much discussion Dandolo replied that they would do so, the terms
being that the Venetian vessels should carry 4500 horses, 9000 esquires,
and 20,000 foot soldiers, with provisions for nine months, and for this
they should be paid 85,000 silver marks. Venice also would participate
in the actual fighting to the extent of providing fifty galleys, on
condition that half of every conquest, whether by sea or by land, should
be hers. Such was the arrangement, and the shipbuilding began at once.
But disaster after disaster occurred. The Christian commander sickened
and died; a number of Crusaders backed out; others went direct to
Palestine. This meant that the Venetians, who had prepared for a mighty
host, incurred immense expenses which could not be met. As some
reparation it was suggested to the small army of Crusaders who did
arrive in the city for deportation that on their way to the Holy Land
they should stop at Zara, on the Dalmatian coast, an unruly dependence
of the Republic, and assist in chastising it. The objections to this
course were grave. One was that the King of Hungary, in whose dominions
was Zara, was a Christian and a Crusader himself; another that the Pope
(Innocent III) forbade the project. Old blind Dandolo, however, was
adamant. Not only must the Crusaders help the Venetians whom they had so
much embarrassed by their broken bond, but he would go too. Calling the
people together in S. Mark's, this ancient sightless bravo asked if it
was not right that he should depart on this high mission, and they
answered yes. Descending from the pulpit, he knelt at the altar and on
his bonnet the Cross was fastened.
Before the expedition left, a messenger came from Alexius, nephew of the
usurping King of Constantinople and son of the rightful king, praying
the Venetians to sail first for Constantinople and support his father's
case, and to deal faithfully with Zara later; but Dandolo said that the
rebellious Zara had prior claims, and in spite of Papal threats and even
excommunication, he sailed for that place on November 10, 1202. It did
not take long to subdue the garrison, but winter setting in, Dandolo
decided to encamp there until the spring. The delay was not profitable
to the Holy Cause. The French and the Venetians grew quarrelsome, and
letters from the Pope warned the French (who held him in a dread not
shared by their allies) that they must leave Zara and proceed with the
Crusade instantly, or expect to suffer his wrath.
Then arrived the Prince Alexius once more, with definite promises of
money and men for the Crusades if the allies would come at once and win
back for him the Constantinople throne. Dandolo, who saw immense
Venetian advantage here, agreed, and carrying with it most of the
French, the fleet sailed for the Golden Horn. Dandolo, I might remark,
was now ninety-four, and it should not be forgotten that it was when he
was an emissary of the Republic at Constantinople years before that he
had been deprived forcibly of his sight. He was a soldier, a statesman,
and (as all good Doges were) a merchant, but he was humanly mindful of
past injustices too. Hence perhaps much of his eagerness to turn aside
for Byzantium.
The plan was for the French to attack on the land; the Venetians on the
sea. Blind though he had become, Dandolo's memory of the harbour and
fortifications enabled him to arrange the naval attack with the
greatest skill, and he carried all before him, himself standing on the
prow of a vessel waving the banner of S. Mark. The French on land had a
less rapid victory, but they won, none the less, and the ex-king Isaac
was liberated and crowned once more, with his son. Both, however,
instantly took to tyranny and luxurious excess, and when the time came
for the promises of reward to be fulfilled nothing was done. This led to
the mortification and anger of the allies, who declared that unless they
were paid they would take Constantinople for themselves. War was
inevitable. Meanwhile the Greeks, hating alike Venetians, French, and
the Pope, proclaimed a new king, who at once killed Alexius; and the
allies prepared for battle by signing a treaty, drawn up by the wily
nonagenarian, in which in the event of victory Venice took literally the
lion's share of the spoils.
The fighting then began. At first the Greeks were too strong, and a
feeling grew among the allies that withdrawal was best; but Dandolo
refused; they fought on, and Constantinople was theirs. Unhappily the
victors then lost all control, and every kind of horror followed,
including the wanton destruction of works of art beautiful beyond
dreams. Such visible trophies of the conquest as were saved and brought
back to Venice are now to be seen in S. Mark's. The four bronze horses
were Dandolo's spoils, the Pala d'oro, probably the four carved columns
of the high altar, and countless stone pillars and ornaments that have
been worked into the structure.
The terms of the treaty were carried out faithfully, and the French paid
the Venetians their original debt. Baldwin, Count of Flanders, the head
of the Crusade, was named Emperor and crowned; Venice acquired large
tracts of land, including the Ionian Islands; and Dandolo became "Doge
of Venice, Dalmatia, and Croatia, and Lord of one-fourth and one-eighth
of the Roman Empire."
The painters have chosen from Dandolo's career the following scenes:
Dandolo and the Crusaders pledging themselves in S. Mark's; the capture
of Zara; the request of Alexius for help; the first capture of
Constantinople by Dandolo, who set the banner on the wall; the second
capture of Constantinople; the election of Baldwin as Emperor; the
crowning of Baldwin by Dandolo.
I said at the beginning of this prêcis of a gigantic campaign that it
was not of great profit to Venice; nor was it. All her life she had
better have listened to the Little Venice party, but particularly then,
for only misfortune resulted. Dandolo, however, remains a terrific
figure. He died in Constantinople in 1205 and was buried in S. Sofia.
Doge Andrea Dandolo, whose tomb we saw in the Baptistery, was a
descendant who came to the throne some hundred and forty years later.
Mention of Andrea Dandolo brings us to the portraits of Doges around the
walls of this great hall, where the other Dandolo will also be found;
for in the place adjoining Andrea's head is a black square. Once the
portrait of the Doge who succeeded Andrea was here too, but it was
blacked out. Marino Faliero, for he it was, became Doge in 1354 when his
age was seventy-six, having been both a soldier and a diplomatist. He
found himself at once involved in the war with Genoa, and almost
immediately came the battle of Sapienza, when the Genoese took five
thousand prisoners, including the admiral, Niccolô Pisani. This blow was
a very serious one for the Venetians, involving as it did great loss of
life, and there was a growing feeling that they were badly governed.
The Doge, who was but a figure-head of the Council of Ten, secretly
thinking so too, plotted for the overthrow of the Council and the
establishment of himself in supreme power. The Arsenal men were to form
his chief army in the revolt; the false alarm of a Genoese attack was to
get the populace together; and then the blow was to be struck and
Faliero proclaimed prince. But the plot miscarried through one of the
conspirators warning a friend to keep indoors; the ringleaders were
caught and hanged or exiled; and the Doge, after confessing his guilt,
was beheaded in the courtyard of this palace. His coffin may be seen in
the Museo Civico, and of his unhappy story Byron made a drama.
One of Faliero's party was Calendario, an architect, employed on the
part of the Doges' Palace in which we are now standing. He was hanged or
strangled between the two red columns in the upper arches of the
Piazzetta façade.
The first Doge to be represented here is Antenorio Obelerio (804-810),
but he had had predecessors, the first in fact dating from 697. Of
Obelerio little good is known. He married a foreigner whom some believe
to have been an illegitimate daughter of Charlemagne, and her influence
was bad. His brother Beato shared his throne, and in the end probably
chased him from it. Beato was Doge when Rialto became the seat of
government, Malamocco having gone over to the Franks under Pepin. But of
Beato no account is here taken, Obelerio's successor being Angelo
Partecipazio (810-827), who was also the first occupant of the first
Ducal Palace, on the site of a portion of the present one. It was his
son Giustiniano, sharing the throne with his father, who hit upon the
brilliant idea of stealing the body of S. Mark from Alexandria and of
preserving it in Venice, thus establishing that city not only as a
religious centre but also as a place of pilgrimage and renown. As Mrs.
Richardson remarks in her admirable survey of the Doges: "Was it not
well that the government of the Doge Giustiniano and his successors
throughout the age should become the special concern of a
Saint-Evangelist in whose name all national acts might be undertaken and
accomplished; all national desires and plans--as distinct from and
dominant over purely ecclesiastical ones--be sanctified and made
righteous?" The success of the scheme of theft I have related in an
earlier chapter; and how this foresight was justified, history tells. It
is odd that Venice does not make more acclamation of Giustiniano (or
Partecipazio II). To his brother Giovanni, who early had shown
regrettable sympathy with the Franks and had been banished accordingly,
Giustiniano bequeathed the Dogeship (as was then possible), and it was
in his reign (829-836) that S. Mark's was begun.
The last Doge in this room is Girolamo Priuli (1559-1567), of whom
nothing of account is remembered save that it was he who invited
Tintoretto to work in the palace and on one of the ceilings. You may see
his portrait in one of the rooms, from Tintoretto's brush, in the
company of Venice, Justice, S. Mark and the Lion.
Of the others of the six-and-seventy Doges around the room I do not here
speak. The names of such as are important will be found elsewhere
throughout this book, as we stand beside their tombs or glide past their
palaces.
Before leaving the Hall one should, as I have said, walk to the balcony,
the door of which the custodian opens for each visitor with a mercenary
hand. It should of course be free to all; and Venice would do well to
appoint some official (if such could be found) to enforce such
liberties. Immediately below is all the movement of the Molo; then the
edge of the lagoon with its myriad gondolas; then the sparkling water,
with all its busy activities and swaying gondoliers; and away beyond it
the lovely island of S. Giorgio. A fairer prospect the earth cannot
show.
The first Doge in the Sala dello Scrutinio is Pietro Loredan (1567-1570)
and the last of all Lodovico Manin (1788-1797) who fell before the
inroads of Napoleon. "Take it away," he said to his servant, handing him
the linen cap worn beneath the ducal corno, "we shall not need it any
more." He retired into piety and left his fortune to good works.
This room, also a fine and spacious hall but smaller than the Sala del
Maggior Consiglio, has historical pictures, and a "Last Judgment," by
Palma the younger, which immensely interests the custodian by reason of
a little human touch which may or may not be true. On the left of the
picture, in the Infernal regions, low down, will be seen a large
semi-nude female sinner in torment; on the right, in heaven, the same
person is seen again, in bliss. According to the custodian this lady was
the painter's innamorata, and he set her in both places as a reward for
her varying moods. The other pictures represent the capture of Zara by
Marco Giustiniani in 1346. Zara, I may mention, had very badly the habit
of capture: this was the eighth time it had fallen. Tintoretto is the
painter, and it is one of his best historical works. The great sea-fight
picture on the right wall represents another battle of Lepanto, a later
engagement than Venier's; the painter is Andrea Vicentino, who has
depicted himself as the figure in the water; while in another naval
battle scene, in the Dardanelles, the painter, Pietro Liberi, is the fat
naked slave with a poniard. For the rest the guide-book should be
consulted. The balcony of the room, which juts over the Piazzetta, is
rarely accessible; but if it is open one should tarry there for the fine
view of Sansovino's Old Library.
The second set of showrooms (which require the expenditure of another
lira)--the oldest rooms in the palace--constitute the Archæological
Museum. Here one sees a few pictures, a few articles of vertû, some
sumptuous apartments, some rich ceilings, and a wilderness of ancient
sculpture. The first room shown, the Sala degli Scarlatti, is the
bedroom of the Doges, with a massive and rather fine chimney piece and
an ornate ceiling. The next room, the Sala dello Scudo, has a fine
decorative, if inaccurate, map of the world, made by a monk in the
fifteenth century. The next, the Sala Grimani, has rival lions of S.
Mark by Jacobello del Fiore, an early Venetian painter, in 1415, and
Carpaccio a century later. Jacopo's lion has a very human face;
Carpaccio's picture is finer and is also interesting for its
architectural details. The next room, the Sala Erizzo, has a very
splendid ceiling. The next is not remarkable, and then we come on the
right to the Sala dei Filosofi where the custodian displays, at the foot
of the staircase, the charming fresco of S. Christopher which Titian
made for Doge Andrea Gritti. It is a very pleasing rendering, and the
Christ Child never rode more gaily or trustfully on the friendly saint.
With true patriotism Titian has placed the incident in a shallow of the
lagoon and the Doges' Palace is seen in the distance.
Then follow three rooms in the Doges' suite in which a variety of
treasures are preserved, too numerous and heterogeneous for description.
[Illustration: S. CHRISTOPHER
FROM THE FRESCO BY TITIAN
_In the Doges' Palace_]
The antique section of the Archæological Museum is not of general
interest. It consists chiefly of Greek and Roman sculpture collected by
Cardinal Grimani or dug from time to time from the soil of Venetian
provinces. Here are a few beautiful or precious relics and much that is
indifferent. In the absence of a Hermaphrodite, the most popular
possession is (as ever) a group of Leda and the Swan. I noted among the
more attractive pieces a Roman altar with lovers (Baedeker calls them
satyrs), No. 68; a Livia in black marble, No. 102; a nice girl, Giulia
Mammea, No. 142; a boy, very like a Venetian boy of to-day, No. 145; a
giant Minerva, No. 169; a Venus, No. 174; an Apollo, No. 223. A very
beautiful Pietà by Giovanni Bellini, painted under the influence of
Dürer, should be sought and found.
The Bridge of Sighs, a little way upon which one may venture, is more
interesting in romantic fancy than in fact, and its chief merit is to
span very gracefully the gulf between the Palace and the Prison. With
the terrible cells of the Doges' Palace, to which we are about to
descend, it has no connexion. When Byron says, in the famous line
beginning the fourth canto of "Childe Harold,"
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
he probably meant that he stood in Venice on the Bridge of Straw (Ponte
di Paglia) and contemplated the Bridge of Sighs. Because one does not
stand on the Bridge of Sighs but in it, for it is merely dark passages
lit by gratings. But to stand on the Ponte di Paglia on the Riva and
gaze up the sombre Rio del Palazzo with the famous arch poised high over
it is one of the first duties of all visitors to Venice and a very
memorable experience.
Lastly, the horrible cells (which cost half a lira more), upon which and
the damp sinister rooms where the place of execution and oubliette were
situated, a saturnine custodian says all that is necessary. Let me,
however, quote a warning from the little Venetian guide-book: "Everybody
to whom are pointed out the prisons to which Carmagnola, Jacopo Foscari,
Antonio Foscarini, etc., were confined, will easily understand that such
indications cannot be true at all."
CHAPTER VI
THE DOGES' PALACE. II: THE EXTERIOR
The colour of Venice--Sunny Gothic--A magical edifice--The evolution of
a palace--A fascinating balcony--The carved capitals--A responsible
column--The _Porta della Carta_--The lions of Venice--The Giants'
Stairs--Antonio Rizzo--A closed arcade--Casanova--The bronze wells--A
wonderful courtyard--Anonymous accusations--A Venetian Valhalla.
"That house," said an American on a Lido steamboat, pointing to the
Doges' Palace, "is a wonder in its way."
Its way is unique. The soft gentle pink of its south and west façades
remains in the memory as long and as firmly as the kaleidoscopic hues of
S. Mark's. This pink is, I believe, the colour of Venice.
Whether or not the Doges' Palace as seen from S. Giorgio Maggiore, with
its seventeen massive arches below, its thirty-four slender arches
above, above them its row of quatrefoiled circles, and above them its
patterned pink wall with its little balcony and fine windows, the whole
surmounted by a gay fringe of dazzling white stone--whether or not this
is the most beautiful building in the world is a question for individual
decision; but it would, I think, puzzle anyone to name a more beautiful
one, or one half so charming. There is nothing within it so entrancing
as its exterior--always with the exception of Tintoretto's, "Bacchus and
Ariadne."
The Ducal Palace is Gothic made sprightly and sunny; Gothic without a
hint of solidity or gloom. So light and fresh is the effect, chiefly the
result of the double row of arches and especially of the upper row, but
not a little due to the zig-zagging of the brickwork and the vivid
cheerfulness of the coping fringe, that one has difficulty in believing
that the palace is of any age at all or that it will really be there
to-morrow. The other buildings in the neighbourhood--the Prison, the
Mint, the Library, the Campanile: these are rooted. But the Doges'
Palace might float away at any moment. Aladdin's lamp set it there:
another rub and why should it not vanish?
The palace as we see it now has been in existence from the middle of the
sixteenth century. Certain internal changes and rebuildings have
occurred, but its façades on the Piazzetta and lagoon, the Giants'
Stairs, the courtyard, were then as now. But before that time constant
structural modification was in progress. The original palace ran beside
the Rio del Palazzo from S. Mark's towers to the Ponte di Paglia, with a
wing along the lagoon. Its width was equal to that from the present Noah
or Vine Corner by the Ponte di Paglia to the fifth column from that
corner. Its wing extended to the Piazzetta. A wall and moat protected
it, the extent of its ramparts being practically identical with the
extent of the present building. This, the first, palace was erected in
the ninth century, after the seat of government was changed from
Malamocco to Venice proper.
[Illustration: THE PONTE OF PAGLIA AND THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, WITH A
CORNER OF THE DOGES' PALACE AND THE PRISON]
Various conflagrations, in addition to the growing needs of the State,
led to rebuilding and enlargement. The first wing was added in the
twelfth century, when the basement and first floor of the portion from
the Porta della Carta to the thick seventh column from the Adam and Eve
group, under the medallion of Venice, on the Piazzetta façade, was set
up, but not in the style which we now know. That was copied three
centuries later from the Riva or lagoon façade. In 1301 the hall above
the original portion on the Rio del Palazzo side, now called the Sala
del Senato, was added and the lagoon wing was rebuilt, the lower arches,
which are there to-day, being then established. A few years later, a
still greater hall being needed, the present Sala del Maggior Consiglio
was erected, and this was ready for use in 1423. The lagoon façade as we
see it now, with its slender arches above the sturdy arches, thus dates
from the beginning of the fifteenth century, and this design gave the
key to the builders of later Venice, as a voyage of the Grand Canal will
prove.
It was the great Doge Tommaso Mocenigo (1413-1423) who urged upon the
Senate the necessity of completing the palace. In 1424 the work was
begun. Progress was slow and was hindered by the usual fire, but
gradually the splendid stone wall on the Rio del Palazzo side went up,
and the right end of the lagoon façade, and the Giants' Stairs, and the
Piazzetta façade, reproducing the lagoon façade. The elaborately
decorated façades of the courtyard came later, and by 1550 the palace
was finished. The irregularity of the windows on the lagoon façade is
explained by this piecemeal structure. The four plain windows and the
very graceful balcony belong to the Sala del Maggior Consiglio. The two
ornate windows on the right were added when the palace was brought into
line with this portion, and they are lower because the room they light
is on a level lower than the great Council Hall's. The two ugly little
square windows (Bonington in his picture in the Louvre makes them three)
probably also were added then.
When the elegant spired cupolas at each corner of the palace roof were
built, I do not know, but they look like a happy afterthought. The
small balcony overlooking the lagoon, which is gained from the
Sala del Maggior Consiglio, and which in Canaletto and Guardi's
eighteenth-century pictures always, as now, has a few people on it, was
built in 1404. It is to be seen rightly only from the water or through
glasses. The Madonna in the circle is charming. She has one child in her
arms and two at her knees, and her lap is a favourite resting-place for
pigeons. In the morning when the day is fine the green bronze of the
sword and crown of Justice (or, as some say, Mars), who surmounts all,
is beautiful against the blue of the sky.
The Piazzetta façade balcony was built early in the sixteenth century,
but the statue of S. George is a recent addition, Canova being the
sculptor.
Now let us examine the carved capitals of the columns of the Ducal
Palace arcade, for these are extremely interesting and transform it into
something like an encyclopedia in stone. Much thought has gone to them,
the old Venetians' love of symbols being gratified often to our
perplexity. We will begin at the end by the Porta della Carta, under the
group representing the Judgment of Solomon--the Venetians' platonic
affection for the idea of Justice being here again displayed. This
group, though primitive, the work of two sculptors from Fiesole early in
the fifteenth century, has a beauty of its own which grows increasingly
attractive as one returns and returns to the Piazzetta. Above the group
is the Angel Gabriel; below it, on the richly foliated capital of this
sturdy corner column, which bears so much weight and splendour, is
Justice herself, facing Sansovino's Loggetta: a little stone lady with
scales and sword of bronze. Here also is Aristotle giving the law to
some bearded men; while other figures represent Solon, another jurist,
Scipio the chaste, Numa Pompilius building a church, Moses receiving the
tables of the law, and Trajan on horseback administering justice to a
widow. All are named in Latin.
The second capital has cherubs with fruit and birds and no lettering.
The third has cranes and no lettering.
The fourth is allegorical, representing, but without much psychology,
named virtues and vices, such as misery, cheerfulness, folly, chastity,
honesty, falsehood, injustice, abstinence.
The fifth has figures and no lettering. A cobbler faces the campanile.
It is above this fifth column that we notice in the upper row of arches
two columns of reddish stain. It was between these that malefactors were
strangled.
The sixth has symbolical figures which I do not understand. Ruskin
suggests that they typify the degradation of human instincts. A knight
in armour is here. A musician seated on a fish faces the Old Library.
There is no lettering, and as is the case throughout the figures on the
wall side are difficult to discern.
The seventh represents the vices, and names them: luxury, gluttony,
pride, anger, avarice, idleness, vanity, envy.
The eighth represents the virtues and names them: hope, faith,
fortitude, temperance, humility, charity, justice, prudence.
The ninth has virtues and vices, named and mixed: modesty, discord,
patience, constancy, infidelity, despair, obedience, liberality.
The tenth has named fruits.
Ruskin thinks that the eleventh may illustrate various phases of
idleness. It has no lettering.
The twelfth has the months and their employments, divided thus: January
(indoors) and February, March blowing his pipes, April with a lamb and
May, June (the month of cherries), July with a sheaf of corn and August,
September (the vintage), October and November, and December,
pig-sticking.
The thirteenth, on a stouter column than the others, because it has a
heavier duty, namely, to bear the party wall of the great Council Hall,
depicts the life of man. There is no lettering. The scenes represent
love (apparently at first sight), courtship, the marriage bed, and so
forth, the birth of the baby, his growth and his death. Many years ago
this column was shown to me by the captain of a tramp steamer, as the
most interesting thing in Venice; and there are others who share his
opinion. Above it on the façade is the medallion of the Queen of the
Adriatic ruling her domains.
The fourteenth capital represents national types, named: Persian, Latin,
Tartar, Turk, Hungarian, Greek, Goth, and Egyptian.
The fifteenth is more elaborate and ingenious. It represents the ages of
man and his place in the stellar system. Thus, infancy is governed by
the moon, childhood by Mercury, youth by the sun, and so forth.
The sixteenth depicts various craftsmen: the smith, the mason, the
goldsmith, the carpenter, the notary, the cobbler, the man-servant, the
husbandman. Over this are traces of a medallion, probably of porphyry,
now removed.
The seventeenth has the heads of animals: lion, bear, wolf, and so
forth, including the griffin each with its prey.
[Illustration: THE ADAM AND EVE CORNER OF THE DOGES' PALACE]
The eighteenth has eight stone-carving saints, some with a piece of
coloured marble, all named, and all at work: S. Simplicius, S.
Symphorian, who sculps a figure, S. Claudius, and others.
And now we are at the brave corner column which unconcernedly assumes a
responsibility that can hardly be surpassed in the world. For if it were
to falter all would go. Down would topple two of the loveliest façades
that man ever constructed or the centuries ever caressed into greater
beauty. This corner of the palace has an ever-increasing fascination for
me, and at all hours of the day and night this strong column below and
the slenderer one above it hold the light--whether of sun or moon or
artifice--with a peculiar grace.
The design of this capital is, fittingly enough, cosmic. It represents
the signs of the Zodiac with the addition, on the facet opposite the
Dogana, of Christ blessing a child. Facing S. Giorgio are Aquarius and
Capricornus, facing the Lido are Pisces and Sagittarius. Elsewhere are
Justice on the Bull, the Moon in a boat with a Crab, and a Virgin
reading to the Twins.
Above this capital, on the corner of the building itself, are the famous
Adam and Eve, presiding over the keystone of the structure as over the
human race. It is a naïve group, as the photograph shows, beneath the
most tactful of trees, and it has no details of beauty; and yet, like
its companions, the Judgment of Solomon and the Sin of Ham, it has a
curious charm--due not a little perhaps to the softening effect of the
winds and the rains. High above our first parents is the Angel Michael.
The first capital after the corner (we are now proceeding down the Riva)
has Tubal Cain the musician, Solomon, Priscian the grammarian, Aristotle
the logician, Euclid the geometrician, and so forth, all named and all
characteristically employed.
The second has heads of, I suppose, types. Ruskin suggests that the best
looking is a Venetian and the others the Venetians' inferiors drawn from
the rest of the world.
The third has youths and women with symbols, signifying I know not what.
All are corpulent enough to suggest gluttony. This is repeated in No. 11
on the Piazzetta side.
The fourth has various animals and no lettering.
The fifth has lions' heads and no lettering.
The sixth has virtues and vices and is repeated in the fourth on the
Piazzetta.
The seventh has cranes, and is repeated in the third on the Piazzetta.
The eighth has vices again and is repeated in the seventh on the
Piazzetta. Above it are traces of a medallion over three triangles.
The ninth has virtues and is repeated in the eighth on the Piazzetta.
The tenth has symbolical figures, and is repeated in the sixth on the
Piazzetta.
The eleventh has vices and virtues and is repeated in the ninth on the
Piazzetta.
The twelfth has female heads and no lettering.
The thirteenth has named rulers: Octavius, Titus, Trajan, Priam, Darius,
and so forth, all crowned and ruling.
The fourteenth has children and no lettering.
The fifteenth has heads, male and female, and no lettering. Above it was
once another medallion and three triangles.
The sixteenth has pelicans and no lettering.
The seventeenth and last has children with symbols and no lettering.
Above this, on the corner by the bridge, is the group representing the
Sin of Ham. Noah's two sons are very attractive figures. Above the Noah
group is the Angel Raphael.
The gateway of the palace--the Porta della Carta--was designed by
Giovanni and Bartolommeo Bon, father and son, in the fourteen thirties
and forties. Francesco Foscari (1423-1457) being then Doge, it is he who
kneels to the lion on the relief above, and again on the balcony of the
Piazzetta façade. At the summit of the portal is Justice once more, with
two attendant lions, cherubs climbing to her, and live pigeons for ever
nestling among them. I counted thirty-five lions' heads in the border of
the window and thirty-five in the border of the door, and these, with
Foscari's one and Justice's two, and those on the shields on each side
of the window, make seventy-five lions for this gateway alone. Then
there are lions' heads between the circular upper arches all along each
façade of the palace.
It would be amusing to have an exact census of the lions of Venice, both
winged and without wings. On the Grand Canal alone there must be a
hundred of the little pensive watchers that sit on the balustrades
peering down. As to which is the best lion, opinions must, of course,
differ, the range being so vast: between, say, the lion on the Molo
column and Daniele Manin's flamboyant sentinel at the foot of the statue
in his Campo. Some would choose Carpaccio's painted lion in this palace;
others might say that the lion over the Giants' Stairs is as satisfying
as any; others might prefer that fine one on the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi
by the Rialto bridge, and the Merceria clock tower's lion would not want
adherents.
Why this lovely gateway was called the Porta della Carta (paper) is not
absolutely certain: perhaps because public notices were fixed to its
door; perhaps because paper-sellers frequented it; perhaps because the
scriveners of the Republic worked hereabouts. Passing through it we have
before us the Giants' Stairs, designed by Antonio Rizzo and taking their
name from the two great figures of Mars and Neptune at the top by Jacopo
Sansovino. On the upright of each step is a delicate inlaid
pattern--where, in England, so often we read of the virtues of malted
milk or other commodity. Looking back from the foot of the stairs we see
Sansovino's Loggetta, framed by the door; looking back from the top of
the stairs we have in front of us Rizzo's statues of Adam and Eve. This
Antonio Rizzo, or Ricci, who so ably fortified Sansovino as a beautifier
of Venice, was a Veronese, of whom little is known. He flourished in the
second half of the fifteenth century.
Every opportunity of passing through the courtyard should be taken, and
during the chief hours of the day there is often--but not invariably--a
right of way between the Porta della Carta and the Riva, across the
courtyard, while the first floor gallery around it, gained by the
Giants' Stairs, is also open. For one of those capricious reasons, of
which Italian custodians everywhere hold the secret, the delightful
gallery looking on the lagoon and Piazzetta is, however, closed. I once
found my way there, but was pursued by a frantic official and scolded
back again.
The courtyard is inexhaustible in interest and beauty, from its bronze
well-heads to the grated leaden prison cells on the roof, the terrible
piombi which were so dreaded on account of their heat in summer and cold
in winter. Here in the middle of the eighteenth century that diverting
blackguard, Jacques Casanova, was imprisoned. He was "under the leads"
over the Piazzetta wing, and the account of his durance and his escape
is one of the most interesting parts, and certainly the least improper,
of his remarkably frank autobiography. Venice does not seem to have any
pride in this son of hers, but as a master of licentiousness,
effrontery, adventurousness, and unblushing candour he stands alone in
the world. Born at Venice in 1725, it was in the seminary of S. Cyprian
here that he was acquiring the education of a priest when events
occurred which made his expulsion necessary. For the history of his
utterly unprincipled but vivacious career one must seek his scandalous
and diverting pages. In 1755, on an ill-starred return visit to his
native city, he was thrown into this prison, but escaping and finding
his way to Paris, he acquired wealth and position as the Director of
State Lotteries. Casanova died in 1798, but his memories cease with
1774. His pages may be said to supply a gloss to Longhi's paintings, and
the two men together complete the picture of Venetian frivolity in their
day and night.
The well-head nearer the Giants' Stairs was the work of Alberghetti and
is signed inside. The other has the head of Doge Francesco Venier
(1554-1556) repeated in the design and is stated within to be the work
of Niccolò Conti, a son of Venice. Coryat has a passage about the wells
which shows how much more animated a scene the ducal courtyard used to
present than now. "They yeeld very pleasant water," he writes. "For I
tasted it. For which cause it is so much frequented in the Sommer time
that a man can hardly come thither at any time in the afternoone, if the
sunne shineth very hote, but he shall finde some company drawing of
water to drinke for the cooling of themselves." To-day they give water
no more, nor do the pigeons come much to the little drinking place in
the pavement here but go rather to that larger one opposite Cook's
office.
Everything that an architect can need to know--and more--may be learned
in this courtyard, which would be yet more wonderful if it had not its
two brick walls. Many styles meet and mingle here: Gothic and
Renaissance, stately and fanciful, sombre and gay. Every capital is
different. Round arches are here and pointed; invented patterns and
marble with symmetrical natural veining which is perhaps more beautiful.
Every inch has been thought out and worked upon with devotion and the
highest technical skill; and the antiseptic air of Venice and cleansing
sun have preserved its details as though it were under glass.
In the walls beneath the arcade on the Piazzetta side may be seen
various ancient letter-boxes for the reception of those accusations
against citizens, usually anonymous, in which the Venetians seem ever to
have rejoiced. One is for charges of evading taxation, another for those
who adulterate bread, and so forth.
[Illustration: S. TRIFONIO AND THE BASILISK
FROM THE PAINTING BY CARPACCIO
_At S. Giorgio dei Schiavoni_]
The upper gallery running round the courtyard has been converted into a
Venetian--almost an Italian--Valhalla. Here are busts of the greatest
men, and of one woman, Catherine Cornaro, who gave Cyprus to the
Republic and whom Titian painted. Among the first busts that I
noted--ascending the stairs close to the Porta della Carta--was that of
Ugo Foscolo, the poet, patriot, and miscellaneous writer, who spent the
last years of his life in London and became a contributor to English
periodicals. One of his most popular works in Italy was his translation
of Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_. He died at Turnham Green in 1827, but
his remains, many years after, were moved to Santa Croce in Florence.
Others are Carlo Zeno, the soldier; Goldoni, the dramatist; Paolo Sarpi,
the monkish diplomatist; Galileo Galilei, the astronomer and
mathematician; the two Cabots, the explorers, and Marco Polo, their
predecessor; Niccolò Tommaseo, the patriot and associate of Daniele
Manin, looking very like a blend of Walt Whitman and Tennyson; Dante; a
small selection of Doges, of whom the great Andrea Dandolo is the most
striking; Tintoretto, Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Paul Veronese;
Tiepolo, a big-faced man in a wig whom the inscription credits with
having "renewed the glory" of the two last named; Canova, the sculptor;
Daniele Manin, rather like John Bright; Lazzaro Mocenigo, commander in
chief of the Venetian forces, rather like Buffalo Bill; and flanking the
entrance to the palace Vittorio Pisani and Carlo Zeno, the two patriots
and warriors who together saved the Republic in the Chioggian war with
the Genoese in the fourteenth century.
This collection of great men makes no effort to be complete, but it is
rather surprising not to find such very loyal sons of Venice as
Canaletto, Guardi and Longhi among the artists, and Giorgione is of
course a grievous omission.
CHAPTER VII
THE PIAZZETTA
The two columns--An ingenious engineer--S. Mark's lion--S.
Theodore of Heraclea--The Old Library--Jacopo Sansovino--The
Venetian Brunelleschi--Vasari's life--A Venetian library--Early
printed books--The Grimani breviary--A pageant of the
Seasons--The Loggetta--Coryat again--The view from the Molo--The
gondolier--Alessandro and Ferdinando--The danger of the
traghetto--Indomitable talkers--The fair and the fare--A proud
father--The rampino.
The Piazzetta is more remarkable in its architectural riches than the
Piazza. S. Mark's main façade is of course beyond words wonderful; but
after this the Piazza has only the Merceria clock and the Old and the
New Procuratie, whereas the Piazzetta has S. Mark's small façade, the
Porta della Carta and lovely west façade of the Doges' Palace, the
columns bearing S. Mark's lion and S. Theodore, Sansovino's Old Library
and Loggetta; while the Campanile is common to both. The Piazzetta has a
café too, although it is not on an equality either with Florian's or the
Quadri, and on three nights a week a band plays.
The famous Piazzetta columns, with S. Theodore and his crocodile (or
dragon) on one and the lion of S. Mark on the other, which have become
as much a symbol of Venice as the façade of S. Mark's itself, were
brought from Syria after the conquest of Tyre. Three were brought in
all, but one fell into the water and was never recovered. The others
lay on the quay here for half a century waiting to be set up, a task
beyond human skill until an engineer from Lombardy volunteered to do it
on condition that he was to have any request granted. His request was to
be allowed the right of establishing a gaming-table between the columns;
and the authorities had to comply, although gambling was hateful to
them. A few centuries later the gallows were placed here too. Now there
is neither gambling nor hanging; but all day long loafers sit on the
steps of the columns and discuss pronto and subito and cinque and all
the other topics of Venetian conversation.
I wonder how many visitors to Venice, asked whether S. Theodore on his
column and the Lion of S. Mark on his, face the lagoon or the Merceria
clock, would give the right answer. The faces of both are turned towards
the clock; their backs to the lagoon. The lion, which is of bronze with
white agates for his eyes, has known many vicissitudes. Where he came
from originally, no one knows, but it is extremely probable that he
began as a pagan and was pressed into the service of the Evangelist much
later. Napoleon took him to Paris, together with the bronze horses, and
while there he was broken. He came back in 1815 and was restored, and
twenty years ago he was restored again. S. Theodore was also
strengthened at the same time, being moved into the Doges' Palace
courtyard for that purpose.
There are several saints named Theodore, but the protector and patron of
the Venetians in the early days before Mark's body was stolen from
Alexandria, is S. Theodore of Heraclea. S. Theodore, surnamed
Stretelates, or general of the army, was a famous soldier and the
governor of the country of the Mariandyni, whose capital was Heraclea.
Accepting and professing the Christian faith, he was beheaded by the
Emperor Licinius on February 7, 319. On June 8 in the same year his
remains were translated to Euchaia, the burial-place of the family, and
the town at once became so famous as a shrine that its name was changed
to Theodoropolis. As late as 970 the patronage of the Saint gave the
Emperor John I a victory over the Saracens, and in gratitude the emperor
rebuilt the church where Theodore's relics were preserved. Subsequently
they were moved to Mesembria and then to Constantinople, from which city
the great Doge Dandolo brought them to Venice. They now repose in S.
Salvatore beneath an altar.
The west side of the Piazzetta consists of the quiet and beautiful
façade of Sansovino's Old Library. To see it properly one should sit
down at ease under the Doge's arcade or mount to the quadriga gallery of
S. Mark's. Its proportions seem to me perfect, but Baedeker's
description of it as the most magnificent secular edifice in Italy seems
odd with the Ducal Palace so near. They do not, however, conflict, for
the Ducal Palace is so gay and light, and this so serious and stately.
The cherubs with their garlands are a relaxation, like a smile on a
grave face; yet the total effect is rather calm thoughtfulness than
sternness. The living statues on the coping help to lighten the
structure, and if one steps back along the Riva one sees a brilliant
column of white stone--a chimney perhaps--which is another inspiriting
touch. In the early morning, with the sun on them, these statues are the
whitest things imaginable.
The end building, the Zecca, or mint, is also Sansovino's, as are the
fascinating little Loggetta beneath the campanile, together with much of
its statuary, the giants at the head of Ricco's staircase opposite, and
the chancel bronzes in S. Mark's, so that altogether this is peculiarly
the place to inquire into what manner of man the Brunelleschi of Venice
was. For Jacopo Sansovino stands to Venice much as that great architect
to Florence. He found it lacking certain essential things, and,
supplying them, made it far more beautiful and impressive; and whatever
he did seems inevitable and right.
Vasari wrote a very full life of Sansovino, not included among his other
Lives but separately published. In this we learn that Jacopo was born in
Florence in 1477, the son of a mattress-maker named Tatti; but
apparently 1486 is the right date. Appreciating his natural bent towards
art, his mother had him secretly taught to draw, hoping that he might
become a great sculptor like Michael Angelo, and he was put as
apprentice to the sculptor Andrea Contucci of Monte Sansovino, who had
recently set up in Florence and was at work on two figures for San
Giovanni; and Jacopo so attached himself to the older man that he became
known as Sansovino too. Another of his friends as a youth was Andrea del
Sarto.
From Florence he passed to Rome, where he came under the patronage of
the Pope Julius II, of Bramante, the architect, and of Perugino, the
painter, and learned much by his studies there. Returning to Florence,
he became one of the most desired of sculptors and executed that superb
modern-antique, the Bacchus in the Bargello. Taking to architecture, he
continued his successful progress, chiefly again in Rome, but when the
sack of that city occurred in 1527 he fled and to the great good fortune
of Venice took refuge here. The Doge, Andrea Gritti, welcomed so
distinguished a fugitive and at once set him to work on the restoration
of S. Mark's cupolas, and this task he completed with such skill that
he was made a Senior Procurator and given a fine house and salary.
As a Procurator he seems to have been tactful and active, and Vasari
gives various examples of his reforming zeal by which the annual income
of the Procuranzia was increased by two thousand ducats. When, however,
one of the arches of Sansovino's beautiful library fell, owing to a
subsidence of the foundations, neither his eminent position nor ability
prevented the authorities from throwing him into prison as a bad
workman; nor was he liberated, for all his powerful friends, without a
heavy fine. He built also several fine palaces, the mint, and various
churches, but still kept time for his early love, sculpture, as his
perfect little Loggetta, and the giants on the Staircase, and such a
tomb as that in S. Salvatore, show.
[Illustration: S. JEROME IN HIS CELL
FROM THE PAINTING BY CARPACCIO
_At S. Giorgio dei Schiavoni_]
This is Vasari's description of the man: "Jacopo Sansovino, as to his
person, was of the middle height, but rather slender than otherwise, and
his carriage was remarkably upright; he was fair, with a red beard, and
in his youth was of a goodly presence, wherefore he did not fail to be
loved, and that by dames of no small importance. In his age he had an
exceedingly venerable appearance; with his beautiful white beard, he
still retained the carriage of his youth: he was strong and healthy even
to his ninety-third year, and could see the smallest object, at whatever
distance, without glasses, even then. When writing, he sat with his head
up, not supporting himself in any manner, as it is usual for men to do.
He liked to be handsomely dressed, and was singularly nice in his
person. The society of ladies was acceptable to Sansovino, even to the
extremity of age, and he always enjoyed conversing with or of them. He
had not been particularly healthy in his youth, yet in his old age he
suffered from no malady whatever, in-so-much that, for a period of fifty
years, he would never consult any physician even when he did feel
himself indisposed. Nay, when he was once attacked by apoplexy, he would
still have nothing to do with physic, but cured himself by keeping in
bed for two months in a dark and well-warmed chamber. His digestion was
so good that he could eat all things without distinction: during the
summer he lived almost entirely on fruits, and in the very extremity of
his age would frequently eat three cucumbers and half a lemon at one
time.
"With respect to the qualities of his mind, Sansovino was very prudent;
he foresaw readily the coming events, and sagaciously compared the
present with the past. Attentive to his duties, he shunned no labour in
the fulfilment of the same, and never neglected his business for his
pleasure. He spoke well and largely on such subjects as he understood,
giving appropriate illustrations of his thoughts with infinite grace of
manner. This rendered him acceptable to high and low alike, as well as
to his own friends. In his greatest age his memory continued excellent;
he remembered all the events of his childhood, and could minutely refer
to the sack of Rome and all the other occurrences, fortunate or
otherwise, of his youth and early manhood. He was very courageous, and
delighted from his boyhood in contending with those who were greater
than himself, affirming that he who struggles with the great may become
greater, but he who disputes with the little must become less. He
esteemed honour above all else in the world, and was so upright a man of
his word, that no temptation could induce him to break it, of which he
gave frequent proof to his lords, who, for that as well as other
qualities, considered him rather as a father or brother than as their
agent or steward, honouring in him an excellence that was no pretence,
but his true nature."
Sansovino died in 1570, and he was buried at San Gimignano, in a church
that he himself had built. In 1807, this church being demolished, his
remains were transferred to the Seminario della Salute in Venice, where
they now are.
Adjoining the Old Library is the Mint, now S. Mark's Library, which may
be both seen and used by strangers. It is not exactly a British Museum
Reading-room, for there are but twelve tables with six seats at each,
but judging by its usually empty state, it more than suffices for the
scholarly needs of Venice. Upstairs you are shown various treasures
brought together by Cardinal Bessarione: MSS., autographs, illuminated
books, and incunabula. A fourteenth-century Dante lies open, with
coloured pictures: the poet very short on one page and very tall on the
next, and Virgil, at his side, very like Christ. A _Relazione della
Morte de Anna Regina de Francia_, a fifteenth-century work, has a
curious picture of the queen's burial. The first book ever printed in
Venice is here: Cicero's _Epistolæ_, 1469, from the press of Johannes di
Spira, which was followed by an edition of Pliny the Younger. A fine
Venetian _Hypnerotomachia_, 1499, is here, and a very beautiful
Herodotus with lovely type from the press of Gregorius of Venice in
1494. Old bindings may be seen too, among them a lavish Byzantine
example with enamels and mosaics. The exhibited autographs include
Titian's hand large and forcible; Leopardi's, very neat; Goldoni's,
delicate and self-conscious; Galileo's, much in earnest; and a poem by
Tasso with myriad afterthoughts.
But the one idea of the custodian is to get you to admire the famous
Grimani Breviary--not alas! in the original, which is not shown, but in
a coloured reproduction. Very well, you say; and then discover that the
privilege of displaying it is the perquisite of a rusty old colleague.
That is to say, one custodian extols the work in order that another may
reap a second harvest by turning its leaves. This delightful book dates
from the early sixteenth century and is the work of some ingenious and
masterly Flemish miniaturist with a fine sense of the open air and the
movement of the seasons. But it is hard to be put off with an ordinary
bookseller's traveller's specimen instead of the real thing. If one may
be so near Titian's autograph and the illuminated _Divine Comedy_, why
not this treasure too? January reveals a rich man at his table, dining
alone, with his servitors and dogs about him; February's scene is white
with snow--a small farm with the wife at the spinning-wheel, seen
through the door, and various indications of cold, without; March shows
the revival of field labours; April, a love scene among lords and
ladies; May, a courtly festival; June, haymaking outside a fascinating
city; July, sheep-shearing and reaping; August, the departure for the
chase; September, grape-picking for the vintage; October, sowing seeds
in a field near another fascinating city--a busy scene of various
activities; November, beating oak-trees to bring down acorns for the
pigs; and December, a boar hunt--the death. And all most gaily coloured,
with the signs of the Zodiac added.
The little building under the campanile is Sansovino's Loggetta, which
he seems to have set there as a proof of his wonderful catholicity--to
demonstrate that he was not only severe as in the Old Library, and
Titanic as in the Giants, but that he had his gentler, sweeter thoughts
too. The Loggetta was destroyed by the fall of the campanile; but it
has risen from its ruins with a freshness and vivacity that are
bewildering. It is possible indeed to think of its revivification as
being more of a miracle than the new campanile: for the new campanile
was a straight-forward building feat, whereas to reconstruct Sansovino's
charm and delicacy required peculiar and very unusual gifts. Yet there
it is: not what it was, of course, for the softening quality of old age
has left it, yet very beautiful, and in a niche within a wonderful
restoration of Sansovino's group of the Madonna and Child with S. John.
The reliefs outside have been pieced together too, and though here and
there a nose has gone, the effect remains admirable. The glory of Venice
is the subject of all.
The most superb of the external bronzes is the "Mercury" on the left of
the façade. To the patience and genius of Signor Giacomo Boni is the
restored statuary of the Loggetta due; Cav. Munaretti was responsible
for the bronzes, and Signor Moretti for the building. All honour to
them!
Old Coryat's enthusiasm for the Loggetta is very hearty. "There is," he
says, "adjoyned unto this tower [the campanile] a most glorious little
roome that is very worthy to be spoken of, namely the Logetto, which is
a place where some of the Procurators of Saint Markes doe use to sit in
judgement, and discusse matters of controversies. This place is indeed
but little, yet of that singular and incomparable beauty, being made all
of Corinthian worke, that I never saw the like before for the quantity
thereof."
Where the Piazzetta especially gains over the Piazza is in its lagoon
view. From its shore you look directly over the water to the church and
island of S. Giorgio Maggiore, which are beautiful from every point and
at every hour, so happily do dome and white façade, red campanile and
green roof, windowed houses and little white towers, compose. But then,
in Venice everything composes: an artist has but to paint what he sees.
From the Piazzetta's shore you look diagonally to the right to the
Dogana and the vast Salute and all the masts in the Giudecca canal;
diagonally to the left is the Lido with a mile of dancing water between
us and it.
The shore of the Piazzetta, or more correctly the Molo, is of course the
spot where the gondolas most do congregate, apparently inextricably
wedged between the twisted trees of this marine forest, although when
the time comes--that is, when the gondolier is at last secured--easily
enough detached. For there is a bewildering rule which seems to prevent
the gondolier who hails you from being your oarsman, and if you think
that the gondolier whom you hail is the one who is going to row you, you
are greatly mistaken. It is always another. The wise traveller in Venice
having chanced upon a good gondolier takes his name and number and makes
further arrangements with him. This being done, on arriving at the Molo
he asks if his man is there, and the name--let us say Alessandro Grossi,
No. 91 (for he is a capital old fellow, powerful and cheerful, with a
useful supply of French)--is passed up and down like a bucket at a fire.
If Alessandro chances to be there and available, all is well; but if
not, to acquire a substitute even among so many obviously disengaged
mariners, is no joke.
Old Grossi is getting on in years, although still powerful. A younger
Herculean fellow whom I can recommend is Ferdinando, No. 88. Ferdinando
is immense and untiring, with a stentorian voice in which to announce
his approach around the corners of canals; and his acquaintanceship
with every soul in Venice makes a voyage with him an amusing
experience. And he often sings and is always good-humoured.
All gondoliers are not so. A gondolier with a grudge can be a most
dismal companion, for he talks to himself. What he says, you cannot
comprehend, for it is muttered and acutely foreign, but there is no
doubt whatever that it is criticism detrimental to you, to some other
equally objectionable person, or to the world at large.
The gondolier does not differ noticeably from any other man whose
business it is to convey his fellow creatures from one spot to another.
The continual practice of assisting richer people than oneself to do
things that oneself never does except for a livelihood would seem to
engender a sardonic cast of mind. Where the gondolier chiefly differs
from, say, the London cabman, is in his gift of speech. Cabmen can be
caustic, sceptical, critical, censorious, but they do occasionally stop
for breath. There is no need for a gondolier ever to do so either by day
or night; while when he is not talking he is accompanying every movement
by a grunt.
It is this habit of talking and bickering which should make one very
careful in choosing a lodging. Never let it be near a traghetto; for at
traghetti there is talk incessant, day and night: argument, abuse, and
raillery. The prevailing tone is that of men with a grievance. The only
sound you never hear there is laughter.
The passion for bickering belongs to watermen, although loquacity is
shared by the whole city. The right to the back answer is one which the
Venetian cherishes as jealously, I should say, as any; so much so that
the gondolier whom your generosity struck dumb would be an unhappy man
in spite of his windfall.
[Illustration: THE DOGANA (WITH S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE JUST VISIBLE)]
The gondolier assimilates to the cabman also in his liking to be
overpaid. The English and Americans have been overpaying him for so many
years that to receive now an exact fare from foreigners fills him with
dismay. From Venetians, who, however, do not much use gondolas except as
ferry boats, he expects it; but not from us, especially if there is a
lady on board, for she is always his ally (as he knows) when it comes to
pay time. A cabman who sits on a box and whips his horse, or a chauffeur
who turns a wheel, is that and nothing more; but a gondolier is a
romantic figure, and a gondola is a romantic craft, and the poor fellow
has had to do it all himself, and did you hear how he was panting? and
do look at those dark eyes! And there you are! Writing, however,
strictly for unattended male passengers, or for strong-minded ladies,
let me say (having no illusions as to the gondolier) that every gondola
has its tariff, in several languages, on board, and no direct trip,
within the city, for one or two persons, need cost more than one franc
and a half. If one knows this and makes the additional tip sufficient,
one is always in the right and the gondolier knows it.
One of the prettiest sights that I remember in Venice was, one Sunday
morning, a gondolier in his shirt sleeves, carefully dressed in his
best, with a very long cigar and a very black moustache and a flashing
gold ring, lolling back in his own gondola while his small son, aged
about nine, was rowing him up the Grand Canal. Occasionally a word of
praise or caution was uttered, but for the most part they went along
silently, the father receiving more warmth from the consciousness of
successful paternity than we from the sun itself.
Gondoliers can have pride: but there is no pride about a rampino, the
old scaramouch who hooks the gondola at the steps. Since he too was
once a gondolier this is odd. But pride and he are strangers now. His
hat is ever in his hand for a copper, and the transference of your still
burning cigar-end to his lips is one of the most natural actions in the
world.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GRAND CANAL. I: FROM THE DOGANA TO THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, LOOKING TO
THE LEFT
The river of Venice--Canal steamers--Motor boats--Venetian nobility
to-day--The great architects--A desirable enactment--The custom house
vane--The Seminario and Giorgione--S. Maria della Salute--Tintoretto's
"Marriage in Cana"--The lost blue curtain--San Gregorio--The Palazzo
Dario--Porphyry--The story of S. Vio--Delectable homes--Browning in
Venice--S. Maria della Carità.
To me the Grand Canal is the river of Venice--its Thames, its Seine, its
Arno. I think of it as "the river." The rest are canals. And yet as a
matter of fact to the Venetians the rest are rivers--Rio this and Rio
that--and this the canal.
During a stay in Venice of however short a time one is so often on the
Grand Canal that a knowledge of its palaces should come early. For
fifteen centimes one may travel its whole length in a steamboat, and
back again for another fifteen, and there is no more interesting
half-hour's voyage in the world. The guide books, as a rule, describe
both banks from the same starting-point, which is usually the Molo. This
seems to me to be a mistake, for two reasons. One is that even in a
leisurely gondola "all'ora" one cannot keep pace with literature bearing
on both sides at once, and the other is that since one enters Venice at
the railway station it is interesting to begin forthwith to learn
something of the city from that point and one ought not to be asked to
read backwards to do this. In this book therefore the left bank, from
the custom house to the railway station, is described first, and then
the other side returning from the station to the Molo.
The Grand Canal has for long had its steamers, and when they were
installed there was a desperate outcry, led by Ruskin. To-day a similar
outcry is being made against motor-boats, with, I think, more reason, as
I hope to show later. But the steamer is useful and practically
unnoticeable except when it whistles. None the less it was an
interesting experience in April of this year (1914) to be living on the
Grand Canal during a steamer strike which lasted for several days. It
gave one the quieter Venice of the past and incidentally turned the
gondoliers into plutocrats.
But there is a great difference between the steamers and the motor-boat.
The steamer does not leave the Grand Canal except to enter the lagoon;
and therefore the injustice that it does to the gondolier is limited to
depriving him of his Grand Canal fares. The motor-boat can supersede the
gondola on the small canals too. It may be urged that the gondolier has
only to become an engineer and his position will be as secure. That may
be true; but we all know how insidious is the deteriorating influence of
petrol on the human character. The gondolier even now is not always a
model of courtesy and content; what will he be when the poison of
machinery is in him?
But there are graver reasons why the motor-boat should be viewed by the
city fathers with suspicion. One is purely æsthetic, yet not the less
weighty for that, since the prosperity of Venice in her decay resides in
her romantic beauty and associations. The symbol of these is the gondola
and gondolier, indivisible, and the only conditions under which they can
be preserved are quietude and leisure. The motor-boat, which is always
in a hurry and which as it multiplies will multiply hooters and
whistles, must necessarily destroy the last vestige of Venetian calm. A
second reason is that a small motor-boat makes a bigger wash than a
crowded Grand Canal steamer, and this wash, continually increasing as
the number of boats increases, must weaken and undermine the foundations
of the houses on each side of the canals through which they pass. The
action of water is irresistible. No natural law is sterner than that
which decrees that restless water shall prevail.
Enjoyment of voyages up and down the Grand Canal is immensely increased
by some knowledge of architecture; but that subject is so vast that in
such a _hors d'oeuvre_ to the Venetian banquet as the present book
nothing of value can be said. Let it not be forgotten that Ruskin gave
years of his life to the study. The most I can do is to name the
architects of the most famous of the palaces and draw the reader's
attention to the frequency with which the lovely Ducal gallery pattern
recurs, like a theme in a fugue, until one comes to think the symbol of
the city not the winged lion but a row of Gothic curved and pointed
arches surmounted by circles containing equilateral crosses. The
greatest names in Venetian architecture are Polifilo, who wrote the
_Hypnerotomachia_, the two Bons, Rizzo, Sansovino, the Lombardis,
Scarpagnino, Leopardi, Palladio, Sammicheli, and Longhena.
In the following notes I have tried to mention the place of practically
every rio and every calle so that the identification of the buildings
may be the more simple. The names of the palaces usually given are those
by which the Venetians know them; but many, if not more, have changed
ownership more than once since those names were fixed.
Although for the most part the palaces of the Grand Canal have declined
from their original status as the homes of the nobility and aristocracy
and are now hotels, antiquity stores, offices, and tenements, it not
seldom happens that the modern representative of the great family
retains the top floor for an annual Venetian sojourn, living for the
rest of the year in the country.
I wish it could be made compulsory for the posts before the palaces to
be repainted every year.
And so begins the voyage. The white stone building which forms the thin
end of the wedge dividing the Grand Canal from the Canale della Giudecca
is the Dogana or Customs House, and the cape is called the Punta della
Salute. The figure on the Dogana ball, which from certain points has
almost as much lightness as Gian Bologna's famous Mercury, represents
Fortune and turns with the wind. The next building (with a green and
shady garden on the Giudecca side) is the Seminario Patriarcale, a great
bare schoolhouse, in which a few pictures are preserved, and,
downstairs, a collection of ancient sculpture. Among the pictures is a
much dam-aged classical scene supposed to represent Apollo and Daphne in
a romantic landscape. Giorgione's name is often associated with it; I
know not with what accuracy, but Signor Paoli, who has written so well
upon Venice, is convinced, and the figure of Apollo is certainly free
and fair as from a master's hand. Another picture, a Madonna and Child
with two companions, is called a Leonardo da Vinci; but Baedeker gives
it to Marco d'Oggiano. There is also a Filippino Lippi which one likes
to find in Venice, where the prevailing art is so different from his.
One of the most charming things here is a little relief of the manger;
as pretty a rendering as one could wish for. Downstairs is the tomb of
the great Jacopo Sansovino.
And now rises the imposing church of S. Maria della Salute which,
although younger than most of the Venetian churches, has taken the next
place to S. Mark's as an ecclesiastical symbol of the city. To me it is
a building attractive only when seen in its place as a Venetian detail;
although it must always have the impressiveness of size and accumulation
and the beauty that white stone in such an air as this can hardly
escape. Seen from the Grand Canal or from a window opposite, it is
pretentious and an interloper, particularly if the slender and
distinguished Gothic windows of the apse of S. Gregorio are also
visible; seen from any distant enough spot, its dome and towers fall
with equal naturalness into the majestic Venetian pageant of full light,
or the fairy Venetian mirage of the crepuscle.
The church was decreed in 1630 as a thankoffering to the Virgin for
staying the plague of that year. Hence the name--S. Mary of Salvation.
It was designed by Baldassarre Longhena, a Venetian architect who worked
during the first half of the seventeenth century and whose masterpiece
this is.
Within, the Salute is notable for possessing Tintoretto's "Marriage in
Cana," one of the few pictures painted by him in which he allowed
himself an interval (so to speak) of perfect calm. It is, as it was
bound to be in his hands and no doubt was in reality, a busy scene. The
guests are all animated; the servitors are bustling about; a number of
spectators talk together at the back; a woman in the foreground holds
out a vessel to the men opposite to show them the remarkable change
which the water has undergone. But it is in the centre of his picture
(which is reproduced on the opposite page) that the painter has
achieved one of his pleasantest effects, for here is a row of pretty
women sitting side by side at the banquetting table, with a soft light
upon them, who make together one of the most charming of those rare
oases of pure sweetness in all Tintoretto's work. The chief light is
theirs and they shine most graciously in it.
Among other pictures are a S. Sebastian by Basaiti, with a good
landscape; a glowing altar-piece by Titian, in his Giorgionesque manner,
representing S. Mark and four saints; a "Descent of the Holy Ghost," by
the same hand but under no such influence; and a spirited if rather
theatrical "Nativity of the Virgin" by Lucia Giordano. In the outer
sacristy the kneeling figure of Doge Agostino Barbarigo should be looked
for.
The Salute in Guardi's day seems to have had the most entrancing light
blue curtains at its main entrance, if we may take the artist as our
authority. See No. 2098 in the National Gallery, and also No. 503 at the
Wallace collection. But now only a tiny side door is opened.
[Illustration: THE MARRIAGE AT CANA
FROM THE PAINTING BY TINTORETTO
_In the Church of the Salute_]
A steamboat station, used almost wholly by visitors, is here, and then a
canal, and then the fourteenth-century abbey of S. Gregorio, whose
cloisters now form an antiquity store and whose severe and simple apse
is such a rebuke to Longhena's Renaissance floridity. Next is a
delightful little house with one of the old cup-chimneys, forming one of
the most desirable residences in Venice. It has a glazed loggia looking
down to the Riva. We next come to a brand new spacious building divided
into apartments, then a tiny house, and then the rather squalid Palazzo
Martinengo. The calle and traghetto of S. Gregorio, and two or three old
palaces and the new building which now holds Salviati's glass business,
follow. After the Rio del Formase is a common little house, and then
the Palazzo Volkoff, once Eleonora Duse's Venetian home.
Next is the splendid fifteenth-century Palazzo Dario, to my eyes perhaps
the most satisfying of all, with its rich colouring, leaning walls,
ancient chimneys and porphyry decorations. Readers of Henri de Régnier's
Venetian novel _La Peur de l'Amour_ may like to know that much of it was
written in this palace. We shall see porphyry all along the Canal on
both sides, always enriching in its effect. This stone is a red or
purple volcanic rock which comes from Egypt, on the west coast of the
Red Sea. The Romans first detected its beauty and made great use of it
to decorate their buildings.
Another rio, the Torreselle, some wine stores, and then the foundations
of what was to have been the Palazzo Venier, which never was built.
Instead there are walls and a very delectable garden--a riot of lovely
wistaria in the spring--into which fortunate people are assisted from
gondolas by superior men-servants. A dull house comes next; then a
_stoffe_ factory; and then the Mula Palace, with fine dark blue poles
before it surmounted by a Doge's cap, and good Gothic windows. Again we
find trade where once was aristocracy, for the next palace, which is now
a glass-works' show-room, was once the home of Pietro Barbarigo,
Patriarch of Venice.
The tiny church of S. Vio, now closed, which gives the name to the Campo
and Rio opposite which we now are, has a pretty history attached to it.
It seems that one of the most devoted worshippers in this minute temple
was the little Contessa Tagliapietra, whose home was on the other side
of the Grand Canal. Her one pleasure was to retire to this church and
make her devotions: a habit which so exasperated her father that one day
he issued a decree to the gondoliers forbidding them to ferry her
across. On arriving at the traghetto and learning this decision, the
girl calmly walked over the water, sustained by her purity and piety.
The next palace, at the corner, is the Palazzo Loredan where the widow
of Don Carlos of Madrid now lives. The posts have Spanish colours and a
magnificent man-servant in a scarlet waistcoat often suns himself on the
steps. Next is the comfortable Balbi Valier, with a motor launch called
"The Rose of Devon" moored to its posts, and a pleasant garden where the
Palazzo Paradiso once stood; and then the great and splendid Contarini
del Zaffo, or Manzoni, with its good ironwork and medallions and a
charming loggia at the side. Robert Browning tried to buy this palace
for his son. Indeed he thought he had bought it; but there was a hitch.
He describes it in a letter as "the most beautiful house in Venice." The
next, the Brandolin Rota, which adjoins it, was, as a hotel, under the
name Albergo dell'Universo, Browning's first Venetian home. Later he
moved to the Zattere and after that to the Palazzo Rezzonico, to which
we are soon coming, where he died.
Next we reach the church, convent and Scuola of S. Maria della Carità,
opposite the iron bridge, which under rearrangement and restoration now
forms the Accademia, or Gallery of Fine Arts, famous throughout the
world for its Titians, Tintorettos, Bellinis, and Carpaccios. The
church, which dates from the fifteenth century, is a most beautiful
brown brick building with delicate corbelling under the eaves. Once
there was a campanile too, but it fell into the Grand Canal some hundred
and seventy years ago, causing a tidal wave which flung gondolas clean
out of the water. We shall return to the Accademia in later chapters:
here it is enough to say that the lion on the top of the entrance wall
is the most foolish in Venice, turned, as it has been, into a lady's
hack.
The first house after the Accademia is negligible--newish and dull with
an enclosed garden; the next is the Querini; the next the dull Mocenigo
Gambara; and then we come to the solid Bloomsbury-blackened stone
Palazzo Contarini degli Scrigni and its neighbours of the same
ownership. Then the Rio S. Trovaso, with a pretty garden visible a
little way up, and then a gay new little home, very attractive, with a
strip of garden, and next it the fifteenth-century Loredan. A tiny
calle, and then the low Dolfin. Then the Rio Malpaga and after it a very
delectable new residence with a terrace. A calle and traghetto, with a
wall shrine at the corner, come next, and two dull Contarini palaces,
one of which is now an antiquity store, and then the Rio S. Barnaba and
the majestic sombre Rezzonico with its posts of blue and faded pink.
This for long was the home of Robert Browning, and here, as a tablet on
the side wall states, he died. "Browning, Browning," exclaim the
gondoliers as they point to it; but what the word means to them I cannot
say.
CHAPTER IX
THE GRAND CANAL. II: BROWNING AND WAGNER
The Palazzo Rezzonico--Mr. and Mrs. Browning--Browning's Venetian
routine--In praise of Goldoni--Browning's death--A funeral service--Love
of Italy--The Giustiniani family--A last resource--Wagner in
Venice--_Tristan und Isolde_--Plays and Music--The Austrians in
power--The gondoliers' chorus--The Foscari Palace.
The Rezzonico palace and one of the Giustiniani palaces which are its
neighbours have such interesting artistic associations that they demand
a chapter to themselves.
Browning is more intimately associated with Florence and Asolo than with
Venice; but he enjoyed his later Venetian days to the full. His first
visit here in 1851, with his wife, was however marred by illness. Mrs.
Browning loved the city, as her letters tell. "I have been," she wrote,
"between heaven and earth since our arrival at Venice. The heaven of it
is ineffable. Never had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place.
The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between
all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting silence, the
moonlight, the music, the gondolas--I mix it all up together, and
maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second
Venice in the world."
Browning left Florence for ever after his wife's death, and to Venice he
came again in 1878, with his sister, and thereafter for some years they
returned regularly. Until 1881 their home was at the Brandolin Rota.
After that they stayed with Mrs. Arthur Bronson, to whom he dedicated
_Asolando_, his last book, and who has written a record of his habits in
the city of the sea. She tells us that he delighted in walking and was a
great frequenter of old curiosity shops. His especial triumph was to
discover a calle so narrow that he could not put up an umbrella in it.
Every morning he visited the Giardini Pubblici to feed certain of the
animals; and on every disengaged afternoon he went over to the Lido, to
walk there, or, as Byron had done, to ride. On being asked by his
gondolier where he would like to be rowed, he always said, "Towards the
Lido," and after his failure to acquire the Palazzo Manzoni he thought
seriously for a while of buying an unfinished Lido villa which had been
begun for Victor Emmanuel. Browning's desire was to see sunsets from it.
Mrs. Bronson tells us that the poet delighted in the seagulls, which in
stormy weather come into the city waters. He used to wonder that no
books referred to them. "They are more interesting," he said, "than the
doves of St. Mark." Venice did not inspire the poet to much verse. There
is of course that poignant little drama entitled "In a Gondola," but not
much else, and for some reason the collected works omit the sonnet in
honour of Goldoni which was written for the ceremonies attaching to the
erection of the dramatist's statue near the Rialto. Mrs. Orr tells us
that this sonnet, which had been promised for an album in praise of
Goldoni, was forgotten until the messenger from the editor arrived for
the copy. Browning wrote it while the boy waited. The day was November
27, 1883.
Goldoni--good, gay, sunniest of souls--
Glassing half Venice in that verse of thine--
What though it just reflect the shade and shine
Of common life, nor render, as it rolls,
Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient for thy shoals
Was Carnival: Parini's depths enshrine
Secrets unsuited to that opaline
Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls.
There throng the people: how they come and go,
Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb,--see,--
On Piazza, Calle, under Portico
And over Bridge! Dear king of Comedy,
Be honoured! Thou that did'st love Venice so,
Venice, and we who love her, all love thee.
The Rezzonico is the house most intimately associated with Browning in
the public mind, although most of his Venetian life was spent elsewhere.
It was here, on his last visit to his son, that the poet died. He had
not been very well for some time, but he insisted on taking his daily
walk on the Lido even although it was foggy. The fog struck in--it was
November--and the poet gradually grew weaker until on December 12, 1889,
the end came. At first he had lain in the left-hand corner room on the
ground floor; he died in the corresponding room on the top floor, where
there was more light.
[Illustration: VENICE WITH HERCULES AND CERES
FROM THE PAINTING BY VERONESE
_In the Accademia_]
Browning was buried in Westminster Abbey, but a funeral service was held
first in Venice. In his son's words, "a public funeral was offered by
the Municipality, which in a modified form was gratefully accepted. A
private service, conducted by the British Chaplain, was held in one of
the halls of the Rezzonico. It was attended by the Syndic of Venice and
the chief City authorities, as well as by officers of the Army and Navy.
Municipal Guards lined the entrance of the Palace, and a Guard of
Honour, consisting of City firemen in full dress, stood flanking the
coffin during the service, which was attended by friends and many
residents. The subsequent passage to the mortuary island of San Michele
was organized by the City, and when the service had been performed the
coffin was carried by firemen to the massive and highly decorated
funeral barge, on which it was guarded during the transit by four
'Uscieri' in gala dress, two sergeants of the Municipal Guard, and two
firemen bearing torches. The remainder of these followed in their boats.
The funeral barge was slowly towed by a steam launch of the Royal Navy.
The chief officers of the Municipality, the family, and many others in a
crowd of gondolas, completed the procession. San Michele was reached as
the sun was setting, when the firemen again received their burden and
bore it to the principal mortuary chapel."
Later the municipality of Venice fixed the memorial tablet to the wall
of the palace. The quotation, from the poet, cut under his name, runs
thus:--
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, Italy.
The tablet is a graceful recognition of the devotion of Browning and his
wife to their adopted country. Did the authorities, I wonder, know that
Browning's love of their city led him always to wear on his watch-chain
a coin struck by Manin in 1848 commemorating the overthrow of Austrian
power in Venice?
The Rezzonico was built by Longhena, the architect of the Salute. Carlo
Rezzonico, afterwards Pope Clement XIII, lived here. The Emperor Joseph
II stayed here. So much for fact. I like far more to remember the
Christmas dinner eaten here--only, alas, in fancy, yet with all the
illusion of fact--by Browning and a Scandinavian dramatist named Ibsen,
brought together for the purpose by the assiduous Mr. Gosse, as related
with such skill and mischief by Mr. Max Beerbohm.
Next the Rezzonico is the commonplace Nani; then a tiny calle; and then
an antiquity store, one of the three adjoining palaces of the great
Giustiniani family, in the second of which once lived Richard Wagner.
But first a word as to the Giustiniani's great feat, in the twelfth
century, of giving every male member to the Republic. It happened that
in 1171 nearly all the Venetians in Constantinople were massacred. An
expedition was quickly despatched to demand satisfaction for such a
deed, but, while anchored at Scio, the plague broke out and practically
demolished this too, among those who perished being the Giustiniani to a
man. In order that the family might persist, the sole surviving son, a
monk named Niccolò, was temporarily released from his vows to be
espoused to the daughter of the Doge, Vitale Michiel. Sufficient sons
having been born to them, the father returned to his monastery and the
mother sought a convent for herself.
In the first of the three Giustiniani palaces Mr. Howells, moving from
the Casa Falier across the way, wrote his _Venetian Life_. In the next
Wagner wrote part of _Tristan and Isolda_.
Needing solitude for this task, the composer came to Venice in the
autumn of 1858, and put up first at Danieli's. Needing a more private
abode he came here. From his _Autobiography_ I take the story. "I heard
that one of the three Giustiniani palaces, situated not far from the
Palazzo Foscari, was at present very little patronized by visitors, on
account of its situation, which in the winter is somewhat unfavourable.
I found some very spacious and imposing apartments there, all of which
they told me would remain uninhabited. I here engaged a large stately
room with a spacious bedroom adjoining. I had my luggage quickly
transferred there, and on the evening of the 30th August I said to
myself, 'At last I am living in Venice.'
"My leading idea was that I could work here undisturbed. I immediately
wrote to Zürich asking for my Erard 'Grand' and my bed to be sent on to
me, as, with regard to the latter, I felt that I should find out what
cold meant in Venice. In addition to this, the grey-washed walls of my
large room soon annoyed me, as they were so little suited to the
ceiling, which was covered with a fresco which I thought was rather
tasteful. I decided to have the walls of the large room covered with
hangings of a dark-red shade, even if they were of quite common quality.
This immediately caused much trouble; but it seemed to me that it was
well worth surmounting, when I gazed down from my balcony with growing
satisfaction on the wonderful canal, and said to myself that here I
would complete _Tristan_."
The composer's life was very simple. "I worked," he says, "till two
o'clock, then I got into the gondola that was always in waiting, and was
taken along the solemn Grand Canal to the bright Piazzetta, the peculiar
charm of which always had a cheerful effect on me. After this I made for
my restaurant in the Piazza San Marco, and when I had finished my meal I
walked alone or with Karl along the Riva to the Giardini Pubblici, the
only pleasure-ground in Venice where there are any trees, and at
nightfall I came back in the gondola down the canal, then more sombre
and silent, till I reached the spot where I could see my solitary lamp
shining from the night-shrouded façade of the old Palazzo Giustiniani.
"After I had worked a little longer Karl, heralded by the swish of the
gondola, would come in regularly at eight o'clock for a few hours chat
over our tea. Very rarely did I vary this routine by a visit to one of
the theatres. When I did, I preferred the performances at the Camploi
Theatre, where Goldoni's pieces were very well played; but I seldom went
to the opera, and when I did go it was merely out of curiosity. More
frequently, when bad weather deprived us of our walk, we patronized the
popular drama at the Malibran Theatre, where the performances were given
in the daytime. The admission cost us six kreutzers. The audiences were
excellent, the majority being in their shirt-sleeves, and the pieces
given were generally of the ultra-melodramatic type. However, one day to
my great astonishment and intense delight I saw there _Le Baruffe
Chioggiote_, the grotesque comedy that had appealed so strongly to
Goethe in his days at this very theatre. So true to nature was this
performance that it surpassed anything of the kind I have ever
witnessed."
Wagner's impressions of Venice, where, some twenty-four years later, he
was to end his anxious and marvellous life, seem to me so interesting
that I quote a little more: "There was little else that attracted my
attention in the oppressed and degenerate life of the Venetian people,
and the only impression I derived from the exquisite ruin of this
wonderful city as far as human interest is concerned was that of a
watering-place kept up for the benefit of visitors. Strangely enough, it
was the thoroughly German element of good military music, to which so
much attention is paid in the Austrian army, that brought me into touch
with public life in Venice. The conductors in the two Austrian regiments
quartered there began playing overtures of mine, _Rienzi_ and
_Tannhäuser_ for instance, and invited me to attend their practices in
their barracks. There I also met the whole staff of officers, and was
treated by them with great respect. These bands played on alternate
evenings amid brilliant illuminations in the middle of the Piazza San
Marco, whose acoustic properties for this class of production were
really excellent. I was often suddenly startled towards the end of my
meal by the sound of my own overtures; then as I sat at the restaurant
window giving myself up to impressions of the music, I did not know
which dazzled me most, the incomparable Piazza magnificently illuminated
and filled with countless numbers of moving people, or the music that
seemed to be borne away in rustling glory to the winds. Only one thing
was wanting that might certainly have been expected from an Italian
audience: the people were gathered round the band in thousands listening
most intently, but no two hands ever forgot themselves so far as to
applaud, as the least sign of approbation of Austrian military music
would have been looked upon as treason to the Italian Fatherland. All
public life in Venice also suffered by this extraordinary rift between
the general public and the authorities; this was peculiarly apparent in
the relations of the population to the Austrian officers, who floated
about publicly in Venice like oil on water. The populace, too, behaved
with no less reserve, or one might even say hostility, to the clergy,
who were for the most part of Italian origin. I saw a procession of
clerics in their vestments passing along the Piazza San Marco
accompanied by the people with unconcealed derision.
"It was very difficult for Ritter to induce me to interrupt my daily
arrangements even to visit a gallery or a church, though, whenever we
had to pass through the town, the exceedingly varied architectonic
peculiarities and beauties always delighted me afresh. But the frequent
gondola trips towards the Lido constituted my chief enjoyment during
practically the whole of my stay in Venice. It was more especially on
our homeward journeys at sunset that I was always over-powered by unique
impressions. During the first part of our stay in the September of that
year we saw on one of these occasions the marvellous apparition of the
great comet, which at that time was at its highest brilliancy, and was
generally said to portend an imminent catastrophe.
"The singing of a popular choral society, trained by an official of the
Venetian arsenal, seemed like a real lagoon idyll. They generally sang
only three-part naturally harmonized folk-songs. It was new to me not to
hear the higher voice rise above the compass of the alto, that is to
say, without touching the soprano, thereby imparting to the sound of the
chorus a manly youthfulness hitherto unknown to me. On fine evenings
they glided down the Grand Canal in a large illuminated gondola,
stopping before a few palaces as if to serenade (when requested and paid
for doing so, be it understood), and generally attracted a number of
other gondolas in their wake.
"During one sleepless night, when I felt impelled to go out on to my
balcony in the small hours, I heard for the first time the famous old
folk-song of the _gondolieri_. I seemed to hear the first call, in the
stillness of the night, proceeding from the Rialto, about a mile away
like a rough lament, and answered in the same tone from a yet further
distance in another direction. This melancholy dialogue, which was
repeated at longer intervals, affected me so much that I could not fix
the very simple musical component parts in my memory. However on a
subsequent occasion I was told that this folk-song was of great poetic
interest. As I was returning home late one night on the gloomy canal,
the moon appeared suddenly and illuminated the marvellous palaces and
the tall figure of my gondolier towering above the stern of the gondola,
slowly moving his huge sweep. Suddenly he uttered a deep wail, not
unlike the cry of an animal; the cry gradually gained in strength, and
formed itself, after a long-drawn 'Oh!' into the simple musical
exclamation 'Venezia!' This was followed by other sounds of which I have
no distinct recollection, as I was so much moved at the time. Such were
the impressions that to me appeared the most characteristic of Venice
during my stay there, and they remained with me until the completion of
the second act of _Tristan_, and possibly even suggested to me the
long-drawn wail of the shepherd's horn at the beginning of the third
act."
Later we shall see the palace where Wagner died, which also is on the
Grand Canal.
Now comes the great and splendid Foscari Palace, once also a Giustiniani
home and once also the lodging of a king of France--Henry III, certain
of whose sumptuous Venetian experiences we saw depicted on the walls of
the Doges' Palace. The Foscari is very splendid with its golden borders
to the windows, its rich reliefs and pretty effects of red brickwork,
and more than most it brings to mind the lost aristocratic glories of
Venice. To-day it is a commercial school, with a courtyard at the back
full of weeds. The fine lamp at its corner must give as useful a light
as any in Venice.
CHAPTER X
THE GRAND CANAL. III: FROM THE RIO FOSCARI TO S. SIMEONE, LOOKING TO THE
LEFT
Napoleon _s'amuse_--Paul Veronese--The Layard collection--The Palazzo
Papadopoli--The Rialto Bridge--The keystone--Carpaccio--The "Uncle" of
Venice--Modern painting--English artists in Venice--The Civic
Museum--Pictures and curiosities--Carnival costumes--Carpaccio and
Ruskin--Historical scenes--A pleasant garden.
The big palace on the other side of the Rio Foscari, next the shabby
brown, deserted house which might be made so desirable with its view
down the Canal, is the Balbi, and it has the distinction that Napoleon
stood in one of its windows to see a Grand Canal regatta, the races in
which ended at this point. Next it is the Angaran, and then a nice
little place with lions guarding the terrace gate, at the corner of the
Rio della Frescada, one of the prettiest of the side canals. Next we
come to another large and solid but very dull house, the Civran
(afterwards Grimani); then the forsaken Dandolo, and we are at the
steamboat station of S. Toma, where the passengers for the Frari and S.
Rocco land.
Her
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/16705