VENICE DESCRIBED BY GREAT WRITERS ESTHER SINGLETON YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 1946 VENICE VIEW OF VENICE VENICE As Seen and Described by Famous Writers Edited and Translated by ESTHER SINGLETON i>< i Author of ' Turrets, Towers and Temples," "Great Pictures," and "A Guide to the Opera," and translator of "The Music Dramas of Richard Wagner " WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS Nero fork Dodd, Mead and Company 1909 Copyright, 1905, BY Dodd, Mead & Company Published March PREFACE This book consists of a collection of impressions, essays and criticisms by sympathetic travellers, historians and artists, gathered together to give a general impression of the half- submerged " Queen of the Adriatic." ) We are prepared for the peculiar charm of the fantastic floating city of dreams by Dickens's prose-poem which shows the spirit with which Venice should be visited and studied ; for the Venice of to-day, with her fallen Campanile, her fllled-up canals, and her modern life is entirely ignored in these pages, where only the picturesque and individual phases of the city are presented. The historical articles by Grant Allen on the Origins of Venice and by Ruskin on Torcello, which open and close the book, emphasize the antiquity of the " City of the Lagoons " and her simple beginnings. The growth of the Republic is clearly set forth by Green, and her power and magnificence are described in the course of various essays, notably those on The Doge and The Arsenal. The first two historical articles prepare us for our trip through Venice, before taking which, Ruskin gives a general view of the ocean-city, " set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the earth," reflecting its marble palaces upon that " green pavement " which every breeze breaks " into new fantasies of rich tesselation," or standing at ebb-tide upon its flat plain of dark green seaweed. vi PREFACE As in my similar books on London and Paris, I have fol lowed a general plan of topographical arrangement. There fore, we begin with a general view of the Lagoons and the " Outer Rim " from which we catch a distant glimpse of Venice. We then enter a gondola and float along the Grand Canal with Gautier to point out its array of palaces and monuments of fame, beauty and historical interest, pausing to learn from Molmenti of the luxurious interiors of the Patri cian's Palaces in their prime. Santa Maria della Salute, The Rialto, the Ca' d'Oro and the Fondachi claim our attention until we land and ascend the Campanile, with Henry Havard to aid us in recognising the chief buildings at our feet and the misty blue mountain peaks in the far distance. After this bird's-eye view of luminous Venice, framed by her lagoons, we enter St. Mark's to study its architecture, sculptures and mosaics, and next stop to enjoy the Piazza and learn the sig nificance of its famous columns. The Ducal Palace then claims our interest, without and within. Our travels through the city are now interrupted by the examination of some mas terpieces of Venetian painting, described by Taine; after which, we again enter our gondola to visit some of the churches of especial note, wells and squares, and side-canals, which happily for us are not yet filled up. We enjoy a few afternoon excursions to islands from Chioggia on the south to Torcello on the north, — .and thus our visit ends. In the meantime, we have noted some of the industries of old Venice, and some of her ancient customs; such as the coronation of the Doge, and his wedding of the Adriatic in PREFACE vii the Bucentaur. We have learned about the Gondoliers and their Traghetti, and enjoyed the gay life of the Piazza and Riva de' Schiavoni, and individual types of Venetians upon the Rialto and at Chioggia. We have seen the " Queen of the Adriatic " under some of her most peculiar as well as enchanting aspects; for instance, during her season of Carni val and festival of All Souls' Day; we have seen her during spring, summer, autumn and winter; in all the loveliness of dawn, sunset and night; when the fierce sirocco is approach ing, and when floods inundate the city. It must be remembered that such a rapid tour cannot be complete ; therefore, all that I have endeavored to do within the limited space at my disposal, has been to preserve the impressions and present the descriptions that the traveller best cares to retain. E. S. New York, February, 1905. CONTENTS PAGE An Italian Dream 1 Charles Dickens Origin of Venice 13 Grant Allen Venice and Rome 25 John Richard Green The City of the Lagoons 34 John Ruskin The Lagoons 45 Horatio F. Broiun The Gondola * . . 52 The'ophile Gautier The Outer Rim 55 William Sharp The Traghetti 64 Horatio F. Brontm The Grand Canal 74 Thfophile Gautier The Patricians' Palaces 85 P. Molmenti Santa Maria della Salute 91 John Ruskin The Rialto 94 Charles Yriarte TheCa' d'Oro 99 Max Doumic The Fondaco dei Turchi and The Fondaco dei Tedeschi . . 104 Charles Yriarte View from the Campanile 113 Henry Harvard ix CONTENTS PAGB St. Mark's 119 John Ruskin The Sculptures on the Facade of St. Mark's . . . .131 Jean Paul Richter The Mosaics of Venice . .... . 144 William B. Scott The Piazza .... 151 Henry Perl The Doves of St. Mark's 163 Horatio F. Bronxm The Columns of the Piazzetta 167 John Ruskin The Ducal Palace 178 John Ruskin Interior of the Ducal Palace ....... 192 Theophile Gautier The Carnival 202 Charles Yriarte Riva degli Schiavoni . . ... 206 Julia Cart-wright By Side Canals 211 Linda Villari Some Churches of Venice 217 Henry Perl All Souls' Day 224 Horatio F. Brown Canals, Wells and Squares ....... 229 Julia Cartivright Summer in Venice 235 Linda Villari Night in Venice 243 John Addington Symonds The Arsenal 246 Charles Yriarte The Doge 255 William Careiv Hazlitt CONTENTS xi PAGE Tombs of the Doges 262 Hippolyte Adolphe Tame Wealth and Industries of Old Venice 272 William B. Scott The Brides of Venice 278 John Ruskin Seasons in Venice . 287 Julia Carttvright Venetian Painting .... .... 292 Hippolyte Adolphe Taine Venice and Tintoretto 305 John Richard Green Floods in the City 314 Horatio F. Brown Venetian Melancholy 319 John Addington Symonds Afternoon Excursions (San Lazzaro, Malamocco — Fusina — The Lido) 330 John Addington Symonds Chioggia ........*•¦ 338 Henry Ecroyd Murano 343 John Ruskin St. Francis in the Desert 356 Linda Villari Torcello ....'.. ... 362 John Ruskin ILLUSTRATIONS View of Venice Bridge of Sighs . Palazzo Dario .... Torcello View of Venice Grand Canal .... Canal in Torcello . Grand Canal from the Salute Palazzo Loredan . Santa Maria della Salute The Rialto .... The Ca' D'Oro The Fondaco dei Turchi View from the Campanile St. Mark's .... Southern Fagade of St. Mark's Interior of St. Mark's . The Doves of St. Mark's The Columns of the Piazzetta The Ducal Palace The Ducal Palace Piazzetta with Corner of Doge's Palace Riva degli Schiavoni Sanudo Vanaxel Canal Church of S. Zaccaria . Church of II Santissimo Redentore S. Maria della Misericorda: Dock Frontispiece Fa. ing Page 8 *4 26 34 5256 74869294 100104 114120132144 164:68178192 202206212218 224 230 xm ILLUSTRATIONS The Lido Baths .... Island of S. Giorgio Maggiore The Arsenal Palazzo Venezia-Murano Statue of Colleoni .... Bronze Horses of St. Mark's Grand Canal Showing Vendramini lergi Palace .... Rio Albrizzi Bacchus and Ariadne Rape of Europa .... Palazzo Giustiniani Vescovi Lido: View of S. Maria Elisabetta Fish Market in Venice . San Donato, Italy .... Santa Fosca, Torcello Interior of Santa Fosca, Torcello . Ca Facing Page 236 u " 244 a ti 246 tt n 256 u u 262 u ti tt it 272 278 tt 288 u ti tt 292 302 It 306 It 330 li 338 tt tl 344 tt 356 « it 362 AN ITALIAN DREAM CHARLES DICKENS I HAD been travelling for some days ; resting very little in the night, and never in the day. The rapid and unbroken succession of novelties that had passed before me came back like half-formed dreams; and a crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion through my mind, as I travelled on by a solitary road. At intervals, some one among them would stop, as it were, in its restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to look at it quite steadily, and behold it in full distinctness. After a few moments it would dis solve, like a view in a magic lantern ; and while I saw some part of it quite plainly, and some faintly, and some not at all, would show me another of the many places I had lately seen, lingering behind it, and coming through it. This was no sooner visible than, in its turn, it melted into something else. At one moment I was standing again before the brown old rugged churches of Modena. As I recognised the curious pillars with grim monsters for their bases, I seemed to see them, standing by themselves, in the quiet square at Padua, where there were the staid old University, and the figures demurely gowned, grouped here and there in the open space about it. Then, I was strolling in the outskirts of that pleasant city, admiring the unusual neatness of the dwelling- houses, gardens, and orchards, as I had seen them a few hours 2 VENICE before. In their stead arose, immediately, the two towers of Bologna ; and the most obstinate of all these objects failed to hold its ground a minute, before the monstrous moated castle of Ferrara, which, like an illustration to a wild romance, came back again in the red sunrise, lording it over the solitary, grass-grown, withered town. In short, I had that incoher ent, but delightful jumble in my brain, which travellers are apt to have, and are indolently willing to encourage. Every shake of the coach in which I sat, half dozing, in the dark, appeared to jerk some new recollection out of its place, and to jerk some other new recollection into it ; and in this state I fell asleep. I was awakened after sometime (as I thought) by the stopping of the coach. It was now quite night, and we were at the waterside. There lay here a black boat, with a little house or cabin in it of the same mournful colour. When I had taken my seat in this, the boat was paddled, by two men, toward a great light lying in the distance on the sea. Ever and again there was a dismal sigh of wind. It ruffled the water, and rocked the boat, and sent the dark clouds flying before the stars. I could not but think how strange it was to be floating away at that hour: leaving the land behind, and going toward this light upon the sea. It soon began to burn brighter; and, from being one light, became a cluster of tapers, twinkling and shining out of the water, as the boat approached toward them by a dreamy kind of track, marked out upon the sea by posts and piles. We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark water, AN ITALIAN DREAM 3 when I heard it rippling, in my dream, against some obstruc tion near at hand. Looking out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a something black and massive — like a shore, but lying close and flat upon the water, like a raft — which we were gliding past. The chief of the two rowers said it was a burial-place. Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying out there, in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as it should recede in our path, when it was quickly shut out from my view. Before I knew by what, or how, I found that we were gliding up a street — a phantom street; the houses rising on both sides from the water, and the black boat gliding on beneath their windows. Lights were shining from some of these casements, plumbing the depth of the black stream with their reflected rays; but all was profoundly silent. So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our course through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing with water. Some of the corners where our way branched off were so acute and narrow, that it seemed im possible for the long, slender boat to turn them; but the rowers, with a low, melodious cry of warning, sent it skim ming on without a pause. Sometimes the rowers of another black boat like our own echoed the cry, and, slackening their speed (as I thought we did ours), would come flitting past us, like a dark shadow. Other boats, of the same sombre hue, were lying moored, I thought, to painted pillars, near to dark, mysterious doors that opened straight upon the water, 4 VENICE Some of these were empty; in some the rowers lay asleep; toward one I saw some figures coming down a gloomy arch way from the interior of a palace: gaily dressed, and at tended by torch-bearers. It was but a glimpse I had of them; for a bridge so low and close upon the boat that it seemed ready to fall down and crush us: one of the many bridges that perplexed the Dream: blotted them out in stantly. On we went, floating toward the heart of this strange place — with water all about us where never water was elsewhere — clusters of houses, churches, heaps of stately buildings growing out of it — and, everywhere, the same ex traordinary silence. Presently, we shot across a broad and open stream; and passing, as I thought, before a spacious paved quay where the bright lamps with which it was illuminated showed long rows of arches and pillars, of ponderous con struction and great strength, but as light to the eye as gar lands of hoar frost or gossamer — and where, for the first time, I saw people walking — arrived at a flight of steps leading from the water to a large mansion, where, having passed through corridors and galleries innumerable, I lay down to rest; listening to the black boats stealing up and down below the window on the rippling water till I fell asleep. The glory of the day that broke upon me in this Dream ; its freshness, motion, buoyancy; its sparkles of the sun in water; its clear blue sky and rustling air; no waking words can tell. But, from my window, I looked down on boats and barques; on masts, sails, cordage, flags; on groups of busy AN ITALIAN DREAM 5 sailors working at the cargoes of these vessels ; on wide quays strewn with bales, casks, merchandise of many kinds; on great ships lying near at hand in stately indolence ; on islands crowned with gorgeous domes and turrets ; and where golden crosses glittered in the light, atop of wondrous churches springing from the sea! Going down upon the margin of the green sea, rolling on before the door, and filling all the streets, I came upon a place of such surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the rest was poor and faded, in com parison with its absorbing loveliness. It was a great Piazza, as I thought ; anchored, like all the rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom was a Palace, more majestic and magnificent in its old age than all the buildings of the earth, in the high prime and fulness of their youth. Cloisters and galleries: so light, they might have been the work of fairy hands; so strong, that centuries had battered them in vain; wound round and round this palace, and enfolded it with a Cathedral, gorgeous in the wild luxuriant fancies of the East. At no great distance from its porch, a lofty tower standing by itself, and rearing its proud head, alone, into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic Sea. Near to the margin of the stream were two ill-omened pillars of red granite; one having on its top a figure with a sword and shield; the other, a winged lion. Not far from these, again, a second tower: richest of the rich in all its decora tions: even here, where all was rich: sustained aloft a great orb, gleaming with gold and deepest blue: the Twelve Signs painted on it, and a mimic sun revolving in its course around 6 VENICE them: while above, two bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding bell. An oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone, surrounded by a light and beauti ful arcade, formed part of this enchanted scene: and, here, and there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering from the pave ment of the unsubstantial ground. I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and out among its many arches ; traversing its whole extent. A grand and dreamy structure, of immense proportions; golden with old mosaics; redolent of perfumes; dim with the smoke of incense; costly in treasure of precious stones and metals, glittering through iron bars ; holy with the bodies of deceased saints; rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass; dark with carved woods and coloured marbles ; obscure in its vast heights and lengthened distance; shining with silver lamps and winking lights; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable throughout. I thought I entered the old palace; pacing silent galleries and council-chambers, where the old rulers of this mistress of the waters looked sternly out, in pictures, from the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as of old. I thought I wandered through its halls of state and triumph — bare and empty now! — and musing on its pride and might, extinct: for that was past; all past; heard a voice say, " Some tokens of its ancient rule, and some consoling reasons for its downfall, may be traced here yet! " I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms, communicating with a prison near the palace ; separated from AN ITALIAN DREAM 7 it by a lofty bridge, crossing a narrow street; and called, I dreamed, The Bridge of Sighs. But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall; the lions' mouths — now toothless — where, in the distempered horror of my sleep, I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old wicked Council had been dropped through, many a time, when the night was dark. So, when I saw the council- room to which such prisoners were taken for examination, and the door by which they passed out when they were con demned — a door that never closed upon a man with life and hope before him — my heart appeared to die within me. It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I descended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite dark. Each had a loophole in its massive wall, where, in the old time, every day, a torch was placed — I dreamed — to light the prisoner within for half an hour. The captives, by the glimmering of these brief rays had scratched and cut inscriptions in the blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labour with a rusty nail's point had outlived their agony and them, through many generations. One cell I saw, in which no man remained for more than four-and-twenty hours; being marked for dead before he entered it. Hard by, another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the confessor came — a monk brown-robed, and hooded — ghastly in the day, and free bright air, but, in the midnight of that murky prison, Hope's extinguisher, and Murder's herald. I had my foot upon the spot where, at the 8 VENICE same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was strangled; and struck my hand upon the guilty door — low-browed and stealthy— through which the lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death to cast a net. Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it : licking the rough walls without, and smearing them with damps and slime within ; stuffing dank weeds and refuse into chinks and crevices, as if the very stones and bars had mouths to stop; furnishing a smooth road for the removal of the bodies of the secret victims of the state — a road so ready that it went along with them, and ran before them like a cruel officer — flowed the same water that filled this Dream of mine, and made it seem one, even at the time. Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I thought, the Giant's — I had some imaginary recollection of an old man abdicating, coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it, when he heard the bell proclaiming his successor — I glided off, in one of the dark boats, until we came to an old arsenal guarded by four marble lions. To make my Dream more monstrous and unlikely, one of these had words and sentences upon its body, inscribed there at an unknown time, and in an unknown language; that their purport was a mystery to all men. There was little sound of hammers in this place for build ing ships, and little work in progress; for the greatness of the city was no more, as I have said. Indeed, it seemed a very wreck found drifting on the sea; a strange flag hoisted BRIDGE OF SIGHS AN ITALIAN DREAM 9 in its honourable stations, and strangers standing at its helm. A splendid barge, in which its ancient chief had gone forth, pompously, at certain periods, to wed the ocean, lay here, I thought, no more; but, in its place, there was a tiny model made from recollection like the city's greatness; and it told of what had been (so are the strong and weak confounded in the dust) almost as eloquently as the massive pillars, arches, roofs, reared to overshadow stately ships that had no other shadow now, upon the water or the earth. An armoury was there yet. Plundered and despoiled ; but an armoury. With a fierce standard taken from the Turks, drooping in the dull air of its cage. Rich suits of mail worn by great warriors were hoarded there; crossbows and bolts; quivers full of arrows; spears; swords, daggers, maces, shields, and heavy-headed axes. Plates of wrought steel and iron, to make the gallant horse a monster cased in metal scales; and one spring weapon (easy to be carried in the breast) designed to do its office noiselessly, and made for shooting men with poisoned darts. One press or case I saw full of accursed instruments of torture: horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind, and crush men's bones, and tear and twist them with the tor ment of a thousand deaths. Before it were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces; made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads of living sufferers; and fastened on to each was a small knob or anvil, where the directing devil could repose his elbow at his ease, and listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions of the wretch within. io VENICE There was that grim resemblance in them to the human shape — they were such moulds of sweating faces, pained and cramped — that it was difficult to think them empty; and terrible distortions lingering within them seemed to follow me, when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or public walk in the sea, where there were grass and trees. But I forgot them when I stood upon its furthest brink — I stood there in my dream — and looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun ; before me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush ; and behind me the whole city resolving into streaks of red and purple on the water. In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed of time, and had but little understanding of its flight. But there were days and nights in it ; and when the sun was high and when the rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still afloat, I thought; plashing the slippery walls and houses with the cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along the streets. Sometimes alighting at the doors of churches and vast palaces, I wandered on, from room to room, from aisle to aisle, through labyrinths of rich altars, ancient monuments; decayed apartments where the furniture, half awful, half grotesque, was moulding away. Pictures were there, replete with such enduring beauty and expression : with such passion, truth, and power: that they seemed so many young and fresh realities among a host of spectres. I thought these often intermingled with the old days of the city ; with its beauties, tyrants, captains, patriots, merchants, courtiers, priests: nay, AN ITALIAN DREAM n with its very stones, and bricks, and public places; all of which lived again, about me, on the walls. Then, coming down some marble staircase where the water lapped and oozed against the lower steps, I passed into my boat again, and went on in my dream. Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in the wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone green and bright, making unusual shadows on the pavement with its trembling leaves. Past quays and terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were passing and repassing, and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine, on flagstones and on flights of steps. Past bridges, where there were idlers too; loitering and looking over. Below stone balconies, erected at a giddy height, before the loftiest windows of the loftiest houses. Past plots of garden, theatres, shrines, prodigious piles of architecture — Gothic — Saracenic — fanciful with all the fancies of all times and countries. Past buildings that were high, and low, and black, and white, and straight, and crooked; mean and grand, crazy and strong. Twining among a tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out at last into a Grand Canal ! There, in the errant fancy of my dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all built upon with shops and humming with the tongues of men; a form I seemed to know for Desdemona's, leaned down through a 12 VENICE latticed blind to pluck a flower. And, in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare's spirit was abroad upon the water somewhere ; stealing through the city. At 'night, when two votive lamps burned before an image of the Virgin, in a gallery outside the great cathedral, near the roof, I fancied that the great piazza of the Winged Lion was a blaze of cheerful light, and that its whole arcade was thronged with people; while crowds were diverting them selves in splendid coffee-houses opening from it — which were never shut, I thought, but open all night long. When the bronze giants struck the hour of midnight on the bell, I thought the life and animation of the city were all centred here; and as I rowed away, abreast the silent quays, I only saw them dotted, here and there, with sleeping, boatmen wrapped up in their cloaks, and lying at full length upon the stones. But, close about the quays and churches, palaces and prisons : sucking at their walls, and welling up into the secret places of the town: crept the water always. Noiseless and watchful: coiled round and round it, in its many folds, like an old serpent : waiting for the time, I thought, when people should look down into its depths for any stone of the old city that had claimed to be its mistress. Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old Market place at Verona. I had many and many a time, thought since of this 'strange Dream upon the water: half wondering if it lie there yet, and if its name be Venice. ORIGIN OF VENICE GRANT ALLEN THE very name of Venezia, or Venice, by which we now know the city of the lagoons, is in its origin the name, not of a town, but of a country. Upon the proper comprehension of this curious fact depends a proper comprehension of much that is essential in the early history of the city and of the Republic. The rich and fertile valley of the Po had for its com mercial centre from a very remote period the town of Mediolanum or Milan. But its port for the time being, though often altered, lay always on the Adriatic. That sea derives its name, indeed, from the town of Hatria (later corrupted into Adria), which was the earliest centre of the Po valley traffic. Hatria and its sister town of Spina, how ever, gave way in imperial Roman times to Padua, and again in the days of the lower empire to Aquileia, near Trieste, and to Altinum, on the mainland just opposite Torcello. Padua in particular was a very prosperous and populous town under the early emperors ; it gathered into itself the sur plus weath of the whole Po valley. The district between Verona and the sea, known to the Romans as Venezia, seems in the most ancient times of which we have any record to have been inhabited by an Etruscan population. Later, however, it was occupied by the Veneti, 13 14 VENICE an Illyrian tribe, whose name still survives in that of Venice and in the district known as II Veneto. But much Etruscan blood must have remained in the land even after their conquest: and it is doubtless to this persistent Etruscan element that the Venetians owe their marked artistic faculty. The country of the Veneti was assimilated and Romanised (by nominal alliance with Rome), in the third century before Christ. Under the Romans, Venetia, and its capital Padua, grew extremely wealthy, and the trade of the Lombard plain (as we now call it), the ancient Gallia Cisalpina, was con centrated on this district. The Po and the other rivers of the sub-Alpine region bring down to the Adriatic a mass of silt, which forms fan-like deltas, and spreads on either side of the mouth in belts or bars (the Lido), which enclose vast lagoons of shallow water. These lagoons consist near the mainland of basking mudbanks, more or less reclaimed, and intersected by natural or artificial canals; further out towards the bars, or Lidi, they deepen somewhat, but contain in places numerous low islands. During the long troubles of the barbaric irruptions, in the Fourth, Fifth and subsequent centuries, the ports of the lagoons, better protected both by land and sea than those of the Po, began to rise into comparative importance; on the south Ravenna, on the north Altinum, acquired increased commercial value. The slow silting up of the older har bours, as well as the dangers of the political situation, brought about in part this alteration in mercantile conditions. When Attila and his Huns invaded Italy in 453, they PALAZZO DARIO ORIGIN OF VENICE 15 destroyed Padua, and also Altinum ; and though we need not suppose that those cities thereupon ceased entirely to exist, yet it is at least certain that their commercial importance was ruined for the time being. The people of Altinum took refuge on one of the islands in the lagoon, and built Tor cello, which may thus be regarded in a certain sense as the mother-city of Venice. Subsequent waves of conquest had like results. Later on, in 568, the Lombards, a German tribe, invaded Italy, and completed the ruin of Padua, Altinum and Aquileia. The relics of the Romanised and Christian Veneti then fled to the islands, to which we may suppose a constant migration of fugitives had been taking place for more than a century. The Paduans, in particular, seem to have settled at Malamocco. The subjected main land became known as Lombardy, from its Germanic con querors, and the free remnant of the Veneti, still bearing their old name, built new homes on the flat islets of Rivo Alto, Malamocco and Torcello, which were the most secure from attack in their shallow Waters. This last fringe of their territory they still knew as Venetia or Venezia; the particu lar island, or group of islands, on which modern Venice now stands, bore simply at that time its original name of Rivo Alto, or Rialto, that is to say, the Deep Channel. The Romanised semi-Etruscan Christian Republic of Venezia seems from the very first to have been governed by a Dux or Doge (that is to say, Duke), in nominal subjec tion to the Eastern Emperor at Constantinople. The Goth and the Lombard, the Frank and the Hun, never ruled this 1 6 VENICE last corner of the Roman world. The earliest of the Doges whose name has come down to us was Paulucius Anafestus, who is said to have died in 716, and whose seat of govern ment seems to have been at Torcello. Later, the Doge of the Venetians apparently resided at Malamocco> a town which no longer exists, having been destroyed by submer gence, though part of the bank of the Lido opposite still retains its name. Isolated in their island fastnesses, the Venetians, as we may now begin to call them, grew rich and powerful at a time when the rest of Western Europe was sinking lower and lower in barbarism; they kept up their intercourse with the civilised Roman east in Constan tinople, and also with Alexandria (the last then Mohamme- danised), and they acted as intermediaries between the Lom bard Kingdom and the still Christian Levant. When Charlemagne in the Eighth Century conquered the Lombards and founded the renewed (Teutonic) Roman Empire of the West, the Venetians, not yet established in modern Venice, fled from Malamocco to Rivo Alto to escape his son, King Pepin, whom they soon repelled from the lagoons. About the same time they seem to have made themselves practically independent of the eastern empire, without be coming a part of the western and essentially German one of the Carlovingians. Not long after, Malamocco was deserted, partly no doubt owing to the destruction by Pepin, but partly also perhaps because it began to be threatened with submergence: and the Venetians then determined to fix their seat of government on Rivo Alto, or Rialto, the existing ORIGIN OF VENICE 17 Venice. For a long time the new town was still spoken of as Rialto, as indeed a part of it is by its own inhabitants to the present day; but gradually the general name of Vene zia, which belonged properly to the entire Republic, grew to be confined in usage to its capital, and most of us now know the city only as Venice. Pepin was driven off in 809. The Doge's Palace was transferred to Rialto, and raised on the site of the exist ing building (according to tradition) in 819. Angelus Participotius was the first Doge to occupy it. From that period forward to the French Revolution, one palace after another housed the Duke of the Venetians on the same site. This was the real nucleus of the town of Venice, though the oldest part lay near the Rialto bridge. Malamocco did not entirely disappear, however, till 1107. The silting up of the harbour of Ravenna, the chief port of the Adriatic in late Roman times, and long an outlier of the Byzantine empire, contributed greatly, no doubt, to the rise of Venice: while the adoption of Rivo Alto with its deep navigable channel as the capital marks the gradual growth of an ex ternal commerce. The Republic which thus sprang up among the islands of the lagoons was at first confined to the little archipelago itself, though it still looked upon Aquileia and Altinum as its mother cities, and still acknowledged in ecclesiastical mat ters the supremacy of the Patriarch of Grado. After the repulse of King Pepin, however, the Republic began to recognise its own strength and the importance of its posi- 1 8 VENICE tion, and embarked slowly at first, on a career of commerce and then of conquest. Its earliest acquisitions of territory were on the opposite Slavonic coast of Istria and Dalmatia; gradually its trade with the east led it, at the beginning of the Crusades, to acquire territory in the Levant and the Greek Archipelago. This eastern extension was mainly due to the conquest of Constantinople by Doge Enrico Dandolo during the Fourth Crusade (1204), an epoch-making event in the history of Venice which must constantly be borne in mind in examining her art-treasures. The little outlying western dependency had vanquished the capital of the Chris tian Eastern Empire to which it once belonged. The great ness of Venice dates from this period; it became the chief carrier between the east and the west; its vessels exported the surplus wealth of the Lombard plain, and brought in return, not only the timber and stone of Istria and Dal matia, but the manufactured wares of Christian Constan tinople, the wines of the Greek isles, and the oriental silks, carpets and spices of Mohammedan Egypt, Arabia and Bag dad. The Crusades, which impoverished the rest of Europe, doubly enriched Venice: she had the carrying and trans port traffic in her own hands; and her conquests gave her the spoil of many eastern cities. It is important to bear in mind, also, that the Venetian Republic (down to the French Revolution), was the one part of western Europe which never at any time formed a portion of any Teutonic Empire, Gothic, Lombard, Frank, or Saxon. Alone in the west, it carried on unbroken the ORIGIN OF VENICE 19 traditions of the Roman empire, and continued its cor porate life without Teutonic adulteration. Its peculiar posi tion as the gate between the east and west made a deep im press upon its arts and its architecture. The city remained long in friendly intercourse with the Byzantine realm; and an oriental tinge is thus to be found in all its early buildings and mosaics. St. Mark's in particular is based on St. Sophia at Constantinople; the capitals of its columns in both are strikingly similar; even Arab influence and the example of Cairo (or rather of early Alexandria), are visible in many parts of the building. Another element which imparts oriental tone to Venice is the number of imported works of art from Greek churches. Some of these the Republic frankly stole; others it carried away in good faith during times of stress to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Mohammedan conquerors. The older part of Venice is thus to some extent a museum of applied antiquities; the bronze horses from Constantinople over the portal of St. Mark's, the pillars of St. John of Acre on the south fagade; the Greek lions of the Arsenal, the four porphyry emperors near the Doge's palace are cases in point; and similar in stances will meet the visitor everywhere. Many bodies of Greek or eastern saints were also carried off from Syria or Asia Minor to preserve them from desecration at the hands of the infidel ; and with these saints came their legends, unknown elsewhere in the west; so that the mosaics and sculptures based on them give a further note of orientalism to much of Venice. It may also be noted that the intense 2o VENICE Venetian love of colour, and the eye for colour which accom panies it, are rather eastern than western qualities. This peculiarity of a pure colour-sense is extremely noticeable both in Venetian architecture and Venetian painting. The first Venice with which the traveller will have to deal is thus essentially a Romanesque-Byzantine city. It rose during the decay of the Roman empire, far from barbaric influences. Its buildings are Byzantine in type; its mosaics are mostly the work of Greek or half-Greek artists; its Madonnas and saints are Greek in aspect; and even the very lettering of the inscriptions is in Greek, not in Latin. And though ecclesiastically Venice belonged to the western or Roman church, the general assemblage of her early saints (best seen in the Atrium and Baptistery of St. Mark's), is thoroughly oriental. We must remember that during all her first great period she was connected by the sea with Constantinople and the east, but cut off by the lagoons and the impenetrable marshes from all intercourse with Teu- tonised Lombardy and the rest of Italy. In front lay her highway; behind lay her moat. At this period, indeed, it is hardly too much to say that (save for the accident of language), Venice was rather a Greek than an Italian city. I strongly advise the tourist, therefore, to begin by form ing a clear conception of this early Greekish Venice of the Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, and then go on to observe how the later Italianate Venice grew slowly out of it. Mediaeval Italy was not Roman but Teu- ORIGIN OF VENICE 21 tonised: influences from the Teutonic Italy were late in affecting the outlying lagoon-land. The beginnings of the change came with the conquests of Venice on the Italian mainland. Already Gothic art from the west had feebly invaded the Republic with the rise of the great Dominican and Franciscan churches (San Giovanni e Paolo and the Frari) : the extension of Venice to the west, by the conquest of Padua and Verona (1405) completed the assimilation. Thenceforward the Renaissance began to make its mark on the city of the lagoons, though at a much later date than elsewhere in Italy. I recom mended the visitor accordingly, after he has familiarised himself with Byzantine Venice, to trace the gradual en croachment of Gothic art, and then the Renaissance move ment. It is best, then to begin with the architecture, sculpture, and mosaics of St. Mark's; in connection with which the few remaining Byzantine palaces ought to be examined. The Byzantine period is marked by the habit of sawing up precious marbles and other coloured stones (imported for the most part from earlier eastern buildings), and using them as a thin veneer for the incrustation of brick buildings ; also, by the frequent employment of decorations made by inserting ancient reliefs in the blank walls of churches or houses. The eastern conquests of Venice made oriental buildings a quarry for her architects. The Gothic period is marked by a peculiar local style, showing traces of Byzan tine and Arab influence. The early Renaissance work at 22 VENICE Venice is nobler and more dignified than elsewhere in Italy. The baroque school of the Seventeenth Century, on the other hand is nowhere so appalling. Venice was essentially a commercial Republic. Her great ness lay in her wealth. She flourished as long as she was the sole carrier between east and west; she declined rapidly after the discovery of America, and of the route to India round the Cape of Good Hope, which made the Atlantic supersede the Mediterranean as the highway of the nations. As Antwerp, Amsterdam and London rose, Venice fell. The re-opening of the Mediterranean route by the con struction of the Suez Canal has galvanised her port into a slightly increased vitality of recent years; but she is still in the main a beautiful fossil-bed of various strata, extend ing from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Centuries. Whoever enters Venice by rail at the present day ought to bear in mind that he arrives (across the lagoon), by the back door. The front door was designed for those who came by sea; there, Venice laid herself out to receive them with fitting splendour. The ambassadors or merchants who sailed up the navigable channel from the mouth of the Lido, saw first the Piazza, the Piazzetta, the two great granite columns, the campanile, St. Mark's, and the im posing fagade of the Doge's Palace, reinforced at a later date by the white front of San Giorgio Maggiore and the cupolas of the Salute. This, though not perhaps the oldest part of the town, is the nucleus of historical Venice ; and to it the traveller should devote the greater part of his atten- ORIGIN OF VENICE 23 tion. I strongly advise those whose stay is limited not to try to see all the churches and collections of the city, but to confine themselves strictly to St. Mark's, the Doge's Palace, the Academy, the Four Great Plague-Churches, and the tour of the Grand Canal, made slowly in a gondola. Those who have three or four weeks at their disposal, however, ought early in their visit to see Torcello and Mu- rano — Torcello, as perhaps the most ancient city of the lagoons, still preserved for us in something like its antique simplicity, amid picturesque desolation; Murano, as helping us to reconstruct the idea of Byzantine Venice. It is above all things important not to mix up in one whirling picture late additions like the Salute and the Ponte di Rialto with early Byzantine buildings like St. Mark's or the Palazzo Loredan, with Gothic architecture like the Doge's Palace, or the Ca' d' Oro, and with Renaissance masterpieces, like the Libreria Vecchia, or the ceilings of Paolo Veronese. Here more than anywhere else in Europe, save at Rome alone, though chronological treatment is difficult, a strictly chronological comprehension of the various stages of growth is essential to a right judgment. Walk by land as much as possible. See what you see in a very leisurely fashion. Venice is all detail; unless you read the meaning of the detail, it will be of little use to you. Of course the mere colour and strangeness and pic- turesqueness of the water-city are a joy in themselves; but if you desire to learn, you must be prepared to give many days to St. Mark's alone, and to examine it slowly. 24 VENICE The patron saints of Venice are too numerous to cata logue. A few need only be borne in mind by those who pay but a short visit of a month or so. The Venetian fleets in the early ages brought home so many bodies of saints that the city became a veritable repository of holy corpses. First and foremost, of course, comes St. Mark, whose name, whose effigy, and whose winged lion occur everywhere in the city; to the Venetian of the Middle Ages, he was almost, indeed, the embodiment of Venice. He sleeps at St. Mark's. The body of St. Theodore, the earlier patron, never entirely dispossessed, lay in the Scuola (or Guild), of St. Theodore, near the church of San Salvatore (now a furniture shop). But the chief subsidiary saints of later Venice were St. George and St. Catharine, patrons of the territories of the Republic to the first of whom many churches are dedi cated, while the second appears everywhere on numerous pictures and reliefs. The great plague saints are Sebastian, Roch and Job. These seven the tourist must remember and expect to recognise at every turn in his wanderings. The body of St. Nicholas, the sailor's saint, lay at San Niccolo di Lido, though a rival body, better authenticated or more believed in, was kept at Bari. The costume of the Doges, and the Doge's cap; the Venetian type of Justice, with sword and scales; the almost indistinguishable figure of Venezia, also with sword and scales, enthroned between lions; and many like local alle gories or symbols, the visitor should note and try to under stand from the moment of his arrival. VENICE AND ROME JOHN RICHARD GREEN IT is the strangeness and completeness of the contrast which makes one's first row from Venice to Torcello so hard to forget. Behind us the great city sinks slowly into a low line of domes and towers; around us, dotted here and there over the gleaming surface, are the orange sails of trailing market boats; we skirt the great hay-barges of Mazarbo, whose boatmen bandy lazzi and badinage with our gondolier; we glide by a lonely cypress into a broader reach and, in front, across a waste of brown sedge and brushwood, the tower of Torcello rises sharply against the sky. There is something weird and unearthly in the suddenness with which one passes from the bright, luminous waters of the lagoon, barred with soft lines of violet light and broken with reflections of wall and bell- tower, into this presence of desolation and death. A whole world seems to part those dreary flats broken with lifeless inlets, those patches of sodden fields flung shapelessly among sheets of sullen water from the life and joy of the Grand Canal. And yet, really to understand the origin of Venice, those ages of terror and flight and exile in which the Republic took its birth, we must study them at Torcello. It was from the vast Alpine chain, which hangs in the haze of mid day like a long, dim cloud-line to the north, that the hordes 25 26 VENICE of Hun and Goth burst on the Roman world. Their path lay along the coast, trending round to the west, where, lost among little villages that stand out white in the distant shadow, lie the sites of Heraclea and Altinum. Across these grey shallows, cut by the blue serpentine windings of deeper channels, the Romans of the older province of Venetia on the mainland fled before Attila or Theodoric or Alboin, to found the new Venetia of the lagoon. East ward, over Lido, the glimmer of the Adriatic recalls the long centuries of the Pirate War, that struggle for life which shaped into their after-form the government and destinies of the infant State. Venice itself, the crown and end of struggle and of flight, lies, over shining miles of water, to the south. But it is here that one can best study the story of its birth; it is easier to realise those centuries of exile and buffeting for life amidst the dreary flats, the solitude, the poverty of Torcello, than beneath the gleam ing front of the Ducal Palace or the mosaics of St. Mark. Here, in fact, lies the secret of Venetian history, the one key by which it is possible to understand the strange riddle of the Republic. For thirteen centuries Venice lay moored, as it were, off the coast of Western Europe, without politi cal analogue or social parallel. Its patriciate, its people, its government, were not what government or people or patri ciate were in other countries of Western Christendom. The difference lay not in any peculiar institutions which it had developed, or in any novel form of social or administrative order which it had invented, but in the very origin of the TORCELLO VENICE AND ROME 27 state itself. We see this the better if we turn from Venice to our own homeland. The same age saw the birth of the two great maritime powers of modern Europe; for the settlements of the English in Britain cover the same cen tury with those of the Roman exiles in the Venetian lagoon. But the English colonisation was the establishment of a purely Teutonic state on the wreck of Rome, while the Venetian was the establishment of a purely Roman state in the face of the Teuton. Venice, in its origin, was simply the imperial province of Venetia floated across to the islands of the shore. Before the successive waves of the Northern inroad, the citizens of the coast fled to the sand-banks which had long served them as gardens or merchant-ports. The " Chair of Atilla," the rough stone seat beside the Church of San Fosco, preserves the memory of one destroyer before whom a third part of the people of Altinum fled to Tor cello and the islands around. Their city — even materially — passed with them. The new houses were built from ruins of the old. The very stones of Altinum served for the " New Altinum " which arose on the desolate isle, and inscriptions, pillars, capitals came, in the track of the exiles across the lagoon, to be worked into the fabric of its cathedral. Neither citizens nor city was changed even in name. They had put out, for security, a few miles to sea, but the sand-banks on which they landed were still Venetia. The fugitive patricians were neither more nor less citizens of the imperial province because they had fled from Padua or 28 VENICE Altinum or Malamocco or Torcello. Their political alle giance was still due to the Empire. Their social organi sation remained unaffected by the flight. So far were they from being severed from Rome, so far from entertaining any dreams of starting afresh in the " new democracy " which exists in the imagination of Daru and his followers, that the one boast of their annalists is that they are more Roman than the Romans themselves. Their nobles looked with contempt on the barbaric blood which had tainted that of the Colonnas or the Orsini; nor did any Isaurian peasant ever break the Roman line of doges as Leo broke the line of Roman emperors. Venice — as she proudly styled herself in aftertime — was " the legitimate daughter of Rome." The strip of sea-board from the Brenta to the Isonzo was the one spot in the Empire, from the Caspian to the Atlantic, where foot of barbarian never trod. And as it rose, so it set. From that older world of which it was a part, the history of Venice stretched on to the French Revolution, untouched by Teutonic influences. The old Roman life, which became strange even to the Capitol, lingered, unaltered, unimpaired, beside the palace of the duke. The strange ducal cap, the red ducal slippers, the fan of bright feathers borne before the ducal chair, all came unchanged from ages when they were the distinctions of every great officer of the Imperial State. It is startling to think that almost within the memory of living men Venice brought Rome — the Rome of Ambrose and Theo- dosius — to the very doors of the Western world; that the VENICE AND ROME 29 living and unchanged tradition of the Empire passed away only with the last of the doges. On the tomb of Manin could men write truthfully, " Hie jacet ultimus Roman- orum." It is this simple continuance of the old social organisa tion, which the barbarians elsewhere overthrew, that ex plains the peculiar character of the Venetian patriciate. In all other countries of the West, the new feudal aristocracy sprung from the Teutonic invaders. In Italy itself, the nobles were descendants of Lombard conquerors, or of the barons who followed emperor after emperor across the Alps. Even when their names and characters had alike been moulded into Southern form, the " Seven Houses " of Pisa boasted of their descent from the seven barons of Emperor Otto. But the older genealogies of the senators, whose names stood written in the Golden Book of Venice, ran, truly or falsely, not to Teutonic, but to Roman origins. The Par- ticipazzii, the Dandoli, the Falieri, the Foscari, told of the flight of their Roman fathers before the barbarian sword from Pavia, Gaeta, Fano, Messina. Every quarter of Italy had given its exiles, but, above all, the coast round the head of the Gulf from Ravenna to Trieste. It was especially a flight and settlement of nobles. As soon as the barbaric hordes had swept away to the South, the farmer or the peasant would creep back to his fields and his cabin, and submit to the German master whom the conquest had left behind it. But the patrician had filled too great a place in the old social order to stoop easily to the new. He 30 VENICE remained camped as before in the island-refuge, among a crowd of dependents, his fishermen, his dock-labourers. Throughout the long ages which followed this original form of Venetian society remained unchanged. The populace of dependents never grew into a people. To the last, fisher man and gondolier clung to the great houses of which they were the clients, as the fishers of Torcello had clung to the great nobles of Altinum. No difference of tradition or language or blood parted them. Tradition, on the con trary, bound them together. No democratic agitator could appeal from the present to the past, as Rienzi invoked the memories of the Tribunate against the feudal tyranny of the Colonnas. In Venice the past and present were one. The patrician of Venice simply governed the State as his fathers, the curials of Padua or Aquileia, had governed the State ten centuries before him. It is this unity of Venetian society which makes Venetian history so unlike the history of other Italian towns, and to which Venice owes the peculiar picturesqueness and bright ness which charm us still in its decay. Elsewhere the his tory of mediaeval Italy sprung from the difference of race and tradition between conquered and conquerors, between Lombard noble and Italian serf. The communal revolt of the Twelfth Century, the democratic constitution of Milan or of Bologna, were in effect a rising of race against race, the awakening of a new people in the effort to throw off the yoke of the stranger. The huge embattled piles which flung their dark shadows over the streets of Florence tell VENICE AND ROME 31 of the ceaseless war between baronage and people. The famous penalty by which some of the democratic communes condemned a recreant cobbler or tinker to " descend," as his worse punishment, " into the order of the noblesse," tells of the hate and issue of the struggle between them. But no trace of a struggle or hate breaks the annals of Venice. There is no people, no democratic Broletto, no Hall of the Commune. And as there was no " people," so in the mediaeval sense of the word there was no " baron age." The nobles of Venice were not Lombard barons, but Roman patricians, untouched by feudal traditions, or by the strong instinct of personal independence which created feudalism. The shadow of the Empire is always over them ; they look for greatness not to independent power or strife, but to joint co-operation in the government of the State. Their instinct is administrative; they shrink from disorder as from a barbaric thing; they are citizens, and nobles only because they are citizens. Of this political atti tude of its patricians, Venice is itself the type. The pal aces of Torcello or Rialto were houses not of war but of peace; no dark masses of tower and wall, but bright with marbles and frescoes, and broken with arcades of fretted masonry. Venice, in a word, to her very close was a city of nobles, the one place in the modern world where the old sena torial houses of the Fifth Century lived and ruled as of old. But it was a city of Roman nobles. Like the Teutonic passion for war, the Teutonic scorn of commerce was strange 32 VENICE and unknown to the curial houses of the Italian munici palities, as it had been strange and unknown to the greatest houses of Rome. The senator of Padua or Aquileia, of Concordia, Altinum, or Ravenna, had always been a mer chant, and in his new refuge he remained a merchant still. Venice was no " crowd of poor fishermen," as it has been sometimes described, who were gradually drawn to wider ventures and a larger commerce. The port of Aqui leia had long been the emporium of a trade which reached northward to the Danube and eastward to Byzantine. What the Roman merchants of Venetia had been at Aquileia, they remained at Grado. The commerce of Altinum simply transferred itself to Torcello. The Paduan merchants passed to their old port of Rialto. Vague and rhetorical as is the letter of Cassiodorus, it shows how keen was the mercantile activity of the State from its beginning. Nothing could be more natural, more continuous in its his torical development; nothing was more startling, more in comprehensible to the new world which had grown up in German moulds. The nobles of Henry VIII.'s court could not restrain their sneer at " the fishermen of Venice," the stately patricians who could look back from merchant noble to merchant noble through ages when the mushroom houses of England were unheard of. Only the genius of Shake speare seized the grandeur of a social organisation which was still one with that of Rome and Athens and Tyre. The merchant of Venice is with him " a royal merchant." His " argosies o'ertop the petty traffickers," At the moment VENICE AND ROME 33 when feudalism was about to vanish away, the poet com prehended the grandeur of that commerce which it scorned, and the grandeur of the one State which had carried the nobler classic tradition across ages of brutality and ignor ance. The great commercial state whose merchants are nobles, whose nobles are Romans, rises in all its majesty before us in the Merchant of Venice. THE CITY OF THE LAGOONS JOHN RUSKIN IN the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long hoped for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset — hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps, not always, or to all men an equivalent, — in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveller than that which brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great 34 s I Iill III ir- * •¦¦"ti teaman ¦i^^gottH miinii VIEW OF VENICE THE CITY OF LAGOONS 35 towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the mind or eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moan ing sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and dis appearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes beneath the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rock of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our own north ern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named " St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-coloured line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole 3 6 VENICE horizon to the north, a wall of jagged blue here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself ris ing and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and the outermost of its untrodden streets was entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet be tween two rocks of coral in the Indian Sea; when first upon the traveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces, — each with its black boat moored at the portal, — each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fan tasies of rich tesselation ; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the Palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gon dolier's cry, " Ah ! Stali," struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water THE CITY OF LAGOONS 37 followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation,1 it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply entranced by the vision ary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her naked ness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless, — Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests, — had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on Venice than the five hundred that pre ceded them; though the noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though many of her palaces are forever defaced, and many in dese crated ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has been worn away, may still 1 Santa Maria della Salute. 3 8 VENICE be led to forget the humility of her origin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before us. The im potent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the objects to which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name is Worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed that " Bridge of Sighs," which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breath less interest: the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as one of his great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after Faliero's death; and the THE CITY OF LAGOONS 39 most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries, that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the Grand Canal, that renowned en trance, the painter's favourite subject, the novelist's favour ite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of the Church of La Salute, — the mighty Doges would not know in what spot of the world they stood, would literally not recognise one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their grey hairs had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of their Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city; more gorgeous a thousand fold than that which now exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor the osten tation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank in quiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion. 40 VENICE From the mouths of the Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the true shore consists of the sedimentary de posits from these and other rivers, a great plain of calcare ous mud, covered, in the neighbourhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and wind ing channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built upon, or fruit ful enough to be cultivated; in others, on the contrary, it has not reached the sea level; so that, at the average low water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly ex posed fields of seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a crowded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at dif ferent periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the metropolis. THE CITY OF LAGOONS 41 The average rise and fall of the tides is about three feet (varying considerably with the seasons) ; but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill-stream. At high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages: there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet 42 VENICE deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair build ing : but, in order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some unfre quented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture and sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lives in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt rivulets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of the heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the mud, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful THE CITY OF LAGOONS 43 wilderness, let it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence and for tune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges beaten their shores, all the riches and refinement of the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible; even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. Eighteen inches more of difference be tween the level of the flood and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of water- carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily inter course, must have been done away with. The streets of the city would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed 44 VENICE The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the life less, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most dis tressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruit less banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and the only preparation possible, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her his tory on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in world wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendour. THE LAGOONS HORATIO F. BROWN THE lagoons of Venice are a large basin, covering an area of one hundred and eighty-four square miles, and composed of shoal banks, intersected in all directions by deep channels. The form of the lagoons, roughly speaking, is that of a bent bow, a segment of a circle and the line that cuts it. The curved line follows the shore of the mainland ; the straight line is composed of a number of long narrow islands, or lidi, which close the lagoons on the sea side, and shut out the Adriatic. It is these lidi, these sandy islands which are the important fact in the structure of the lagoons; without them the lagoons would not exist, and their surface would simply be added to the sea, which, in that case, would find its real shore not, as at present, on the outer side of these islands, but upon the mainland itself. The lagoons are the result of overflowing by the sea and by the rivers which used to discharge their waters into them. But partly to avoid the danger from spring and autumn floods, partly on account of the malaria produced by the mingling of salt water and fresh, the Sile and Piave were connected at their mouths, and now empty themselves directly into the sea. The Brenta alone sends very con siderable volume of fresh water into the lagoon. It is from 45 46 VENICE the Adriatic that these waters come which twice a day flood all the shallows of this basin, and sweep through the canals of Venice, cleansing the water streets, and performing the task of " pure ablution," round her ancient walls. The lidi are not only intimately connected with the origin and general structure of the lagoons, but they are now the bulwark of Venice against the sea. That narrow strip of sandy dune, never more than half a mile in width, alone stands between Venice and the Adriatic, which would other wise break in upon the lagoons and sweep the city down. When the sirocco is thundering on the sands of the Lido, and its boom is borne high in the air, one cannot help picturing the ruin that would follow should the slender barrier of sand give way beneath the battery of the stormy sea. Once or twice the sea has broken through this frail defence, and threatened the city; and almost the last im portant work undertaken by the Republic was the fortifica tion of the lidi, at their weakest points by the Murazzi, great sea-walls, some formed by rough blocks of Istrian stone piled anyhow along the shore, others built up of solid and cemented masonry. The lagoon of Venice is not a semi-stagnant marsh, but a water basin where the activity of the currents and tides is un ceasing. Nor is the lagoon, in spite of its apparent unity, to be considered as one large tidal lake. It is, in fact, a complex of four water systems, quite distinct from one another, each with its main channels and tributary streams. It is the lidi that determine this peculiar internal struc- THE LAGOONS 47 ture of the lagoon basin, which distinguishes it from other bodies of water, and makes it neither marsh nor lake nor sea, but something different from any of these. In the line of the lidi there are four breaches or ports, which give passage to the water between the lagoon and the open sea; they are the ports of Chioggia, Malamocco, Lido, and Tre Porti. There used to be a fifth, the port of Sant' Erasmo, but that was closed in 1474, in order to increase the volume of water at the Lido port. Only a very small body of water now passes through its mouth; and for all purposes of under standing the internal economy of the lagoons, we have to deal with the four ports above mentioned. It is through these four mouths that the sea comes flooding in upon the lagoons at the flow, and passes out at the ebb ; and it is upon these ports that the whole system of currents and tides, which vivify the lagoons, is dependent. The surface of the lagoons is traversed by five main chan nels, or water highways; and all of them centre in Venice. The course of these channels is marked by groups of posts, driven into the mud at regular intervals. But besides these principal thoroughfares there is a network of smaller canals, many of them ending nowhere, lost in the shoals, undis tinguished by any sign-posts and known only to fishermen, smugglers, and those who have the practice of the lagoons. The five main channels are — first, that of the Lido, familiar to every one who knows Venice; it conducts to the sea by way of San Nicoletto and Sant' Andrea. This was the great port of the Venetian Republic. By the Lido mouth 4 8 VENICE her galleys sailed to war; her argosies came laden home, and, every festival of the Ascension, the Doge in the Bucentoro passed out to wed the Adriatic. The great eastern canal leads by Murano, Burano, Mazzorbo, and Torcello to the mainland near Altino. The northern channel, between Mestre and Venice, was once the usual approach to the sea- city before the railway bridge was built. A fourth canal leads to Fusina, also on the mainland, where the Brenta, or rather part of the Brenta, flows into the lagoon. And last, and most important of all, there is the canal to Malamocco and Chioggia, by which all the large shipping reaches Venice, now that the older port of the Lido has been allowed to silt up. Any one who wishes to see the lagoons might do worse than take these five canals in turn. From each of them he would obtain a different view of Venice, a fresh idea of the singular foundations from which the city rises, a varied composition of campanili and domes against the constant background of sky and Alps. There are few great surfaces of water which are as sensi tive as the lagoons of Venice. And this sensitiveness is the cause of constant change, change which surprises even those who know the lagoons best. The picturesque charm of the lagoon resides in its two main features — the water and sky; and the secret of their fascination is their endless variety secured by the vastness of the space which they include. The city itself and its attendant isles are always present, like the gems that grace the setting ; but the setting changes infinitely, The islands and the stationary Alps that bound the vision, THE LAGOONS 49 alone remain immovable; all else in the landscape of the lagoons is shifting continually. In the water there is the perpetual flux and reflux of the tides in endless operation; now revealing large tracts of green or brown upon the shoals, now cloaking all beneath one wide unbroken mantle of grey sea. The colour of the water surface itself is continually undergoing a prismatic change. The prevailing tone is grey, but grey of every hue — grey haze suffused by the low winter sun, blue grey, grey warmed with yellow or with pink, soft and delicious, the result of sirocco grey that is hard and cold under the sun or pure and silvery white beneath the moon. Grey is the dominant tone of colour, but at sunset and sunrise, there are the more gorgeous hues of rose and crimson, of orange, of purple, and of bronze. It would be impossible to discover any place where the pageantry of colour is more certain and more varied than it is upon the lagoons. Not only on the water surface is there manifold change, but the same is happening hourly in the water body ; the one is felt in the wide sweep of vision over the lagoon level, the other in the minute section which lies below our boat. These changes of tone in the water body depend upon action of wind, tide, and weather. If the sirocco has stirred the sands on the Lido, then the incoming tide will be opaquely green and mottled here and there with yellow stains such as are sometimes seen in jade; or if the sea be calm, the flowing tide will sweep through the canals clear and pale as aqua marine, or clear and dark as the rare stone, the tourmaline, So VENICE The prevailing tone upon the water surface is grey, the pre vailing tone in the water body is green. And if that green be transparent, the forestry of water-weeds which clothe the bed of the lagoon, with all its finny denizens, the waver ing of the seaweed tips beneath the current, the variety of colour upon the long streamers, make the few square feet below the boat as beautiful to contemplate as all the miles of water surface that stretch away on every side. But the sky, even more than the water, is the glory of the Venetian lagoon. Nowhere, except at sea, could the eye master so vast an arc. And thus there is laid open to the contemplation nature busied in various occupations, for what is going on in the far east stands apart from that which engages wind and sunshine in the west; and sea and moun tains, to the south and north, have different tasks allotted them. The heavens display the manifold workmanship of nature in unceasing activity. The clouds, moulded at their borders by the opposing atmosphere, mass their ponies and pinnacles and mountainous buttresses under the compulsion of some internal force desiring to expand, until their edges are frayed and torn, and the storm-clouds burst and sweep across the sky. The premonition of the coming wind is given by the lifted clouds upon the far horizon, the long straight line below, the billowing vanguard above, as the whole cloud-wall is buoyed and driven before the gale. There are quiet skies, with fields of pearly grey and cirrus flecked above the tranquil misty veils that part and leave interspaces of pure blue. There are the thunder-clouds that THE LAGOONS 51 hang upon the hills and cool and melt away as night wears on. Above all there is the splendour of Venetian sunsets, and more especially the stormy ones, outflaming any painters canvas. The ominous masses of dun cloud, blown from the eastward ; the rainbow that rises and spans the city, high and brilliant against sombre clouds urged so violently for ward by the wind that their foremost battalions curve like the arc of a bow, and are kindled to tawny purple by the setting sun. Then the bursting of the storm; the riving of the cloud strata revealing behind them steel-blue layers, and further still behind, a hand's breadth of serene blue sky. And all the while the sun is going down, to westward in heavens that are calm and suffused with limpid golden light, unheeding of the tempest that sweeps towards the hills. These operations of nature are so immense and so aloof, that personal human emotion seems to fall away before them, retiring to the vanishing point, and the spirit is left naked and alone, facing the radical forces of the universe. THE GONDOLA THEOPHILE GAUTIER THE gondola has suffered much abuse in comic opera, novels and romances. That is no reason why it should not be better known. We will give a detailed description of it. The gondola is a natural production of Venice, an animated being with a special and local life, a kind of fish that can exist only in the water of a canal. The lagoon and the gondola are inseparable, and one is the complement of the other. Without the gondola, Venice would be impossible. The city is a madrepore, the mollusc of which is the gondola. It alone can wind in and out among the inextricable network and capillary system of the aquatic streets. The narrow and long gondola, raised at both ends, and drawing little water, has the form of a skate. Its prow is armed with a flat and polished piece of iron which vaguely recalls the curved neck of a swan, or rather the neck of a violin with its pegs. Six teeth, the interstices of which are sometimes filled with pierced work, contribute to this re semblance. This piece of iron serves for decoration, for defense and for counterpoise, the craft being more heavily weighted behind. On the bulwark of the gondola, close to the prow and the stern, are fixed two pieces of wood, curved like ox-horns, in which the gondolier rests his oar while he 52 < 2 < u QZ< o THE GONDOLA 53 stands on a little platform with his heel wedged in a little socket. The whole visible gondola is coated with tar, or painted black. A more or less rich carpet covers the bottom. In the centre, the cabin is placed, the felce, which is easily removed if we want to substitute an awning, a modern degeneracy at which every good Venetian groans. The felce is entirely made of black cloth and furnished with two soft cushions covered with morocco of the same hue, back to back; moreover, there are two bracket seats at the sides so that it will accommodate four. On each lateral face two windows are pierced. These are usually left open, but may be closed in three ways: first, by a bevelled square of Venetian glass, or a frame with flowers cut in the crystal; secondly, by a Venetian slat blind, so as to see with out being seen ; and thirdly, by a cloth shade, over which, for the sake of more mystery, one can lower the outside covering of the felce. These different systems of blind slide in a transverse groove. The door, by which we enter backwards, since it would be difficult to turn around in this narrow space, has simply a window and a panel. The wooden por tion is carved with more or less elegance according to the wealth of the owner, or the taste of the gondolier. On the left doorcase shines a copper shield surmounted by a crown. Here one has one's arms or monogram engraved. Above it a little frame with a glass contains the image for which the host or the gondolier cherishes a special devotion: the Holy Virgin, St. Mark, St. Theodore, or St. George. It is on that side also that the lantern is fixed, a custom 54 VENICE that is somewhat falling into disuse, for many gondolas are navigated without having this star on their brow. Because of the coat-of-arms, the saint and the lantern, the left is the place of honour; it is there that women, and aged or impor tant persons sit. At the back, a movable panel enables one to speak to the gondolier posted on the stern, the only one who really manages the boat, his paddle being an oar and a rudder at the same time. Two cords of silk with two handles help you to rise when you want to go out, for the seats are very low. The cloth of the felce is embellished on the outside by tufts of silk similar to those of priests' hoods, and when we want to shut ourselves up completely, it falls over the back of the cabin like too long a pall over a coffin. To conclude the description, let us say that on the inside of the bulwarks a sort of arabesque in white is traced upon the black ground of the wood. All this has not a great air of gaiety; and yet, if we may believe Lord Byron's Beppo, as amusing scenes take place in these black gondolas as in funeral coaches. Madame Malibran, who did not like to go into these little catafalques, unsuccessfully tried to get their hue altered. This tint, which strikes us as lugubrious, does not seem so to the Venetians, who are ac customed to black by the sumptuary edicts of the ancient republic, and among whom the water hearses, mutes and shrouds are red. THE OUTER RIM WILLIAM SHARP NO one to whom Venice means something more than a merely unique city because of its water ways, a place of resort because to go there is one of the things to do, could spend any length of time within its magic influence without visiting, or at least endeavouring to visit, two places that once rivalled the " sea-queen " herself in stir of life and natural beauty. One of these is Chioggia, many miles to the south, past the islands of S. Lazzaro and S. Spirito, past La Grazia and Poveglia, past Malamocco and low-lying Pelestrina, past those three miles of great walls of Istrain stone, those murazzi which, like the dykes of Holland, offer an unvanquished front to the tidal rush and ceaseless wash of the sea. Venice is discrowned, if not of all her beauty, at least of her ancient power, her long-surviving splendour; but Chioggia is more than discrowned — she is humbled like a slave that can never again escape from the slough of long degradation. The fate of Tyre is better: no longer to see the galleys of the East and the Phoenician ships pass by in disdain, but to have perished and be as utterly unknown as the golden Ophir of still more ancient days. Visiting Chioggia, one sees a deserted and decayed town, a listless fisherfolk, indolent women who have yet, here and there, something of that typical Venetian beauty beloved of 55 5 6 VENICE Titian and Paul Veronese ; and one cannot well refrain from thinking that that terrible six months' duel, that life-and- death struggle between the Republics of St. George and St. Mark, which took place five hundred years ago, exhausted for ever the vital energy of this southern Venice. The con quering foot of Daria, and the relentless grip of Pisani, must between them have left Chioggia with small remnant of its pristine power. But six miles north of the Lion of St. Mark, amid shallow and sluggish lagoons, lies the dead body of a city greater than Chioggia, — Torcello, the " mother of Venice." Scarcely, indeed, can it be said that even the dead body of what was once a populous town still rests here; it is as though only a few bleached bones yet lay exposed to the scorching sun of summer, to the salt and bitter sea-winds of winter, to the miasmic mists of desolate autumn. Habita tions there are none: only the deserted fanes of Santa Fosca and the Duomo, a lifeless Palazzo Pubblico, a lonely and silent Campanile. In the words of Ruskin, these " lie like a little company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea." The day was an exceptionally bright one, warm, but not oppressive, with a cool wind that blew joyously without be coming too fresh for pleasant sailing in the open lagoons to the north ; then we had gone by a longer way for the sake of the pleasure of such voyaging — eastward past S. Maria della Salute, and close under the shadows of the great church upon the Isola di S. Giorgio Maggiore, with the busy Riva degli Schiavoni on our left reaching on to the green and CANAL IN TORCELLO THE OUTER RIM 57 practically deserted promontory of the Public Gardens. Then rounding the Punta della Motta, our gondolier rowed us swiftly northward amid the unique loveliness of the Venetian lagoons. A soft sirocco blew, not indeed with that virulent breath from the south-east, which the term is apt to suggest, but still with such enervating mildness as to determine us to reach our destination by the shortest way possible. We soon found ourselves gliding past the Campo S. Angelo, then into the Grand Canal once more by the timeworn Palazzo Corner Spinelli, past the Palazzi Grimani, Bembo, and Manin, under the Rialto, and so out again into the open — after gliding through many narrow canals, and rounding in some magic way seemingly impossible corners — out beyond the Fondamenta Nuova, with the great square opening of the Lucca della Misericordia on our left. On the right we leave behind us a square white house, as lovely in appearance, and as deserted in actual fact, as though it stood in the midst of the rank swamps of the Laguna Morta to the south of Fusina. This is the Casa degli Spiriti, a place of ghostly repute, where no Italian would rest overnight on any consideration. For in this " House of Spirits," it was once the custom to leave the coffined dead over night, interment taking place next day at the neighbouring island of San Michele. No wonder this half-way house between the living and the dead should remain uninhabited, retaining as it does in the imagination of the Venetians an unpleasant savour of the supernatural. As we were swiftly urged upon our way, had it not been 5 8 VENICE for the stalwart figure of Luigi in the forepart of the gon dola, we might have imagined we were drifting through the Sea of the Magic Isles, that all before us was as unreal as the mirage that with its illusive beauty haunts at times the weary gaze upon inland seas of sand. More fair, indeed, than any mirage was the scene that we beheld ; yet wonder fully mirage-like was it by reason of the palpitating haze that dwelt like the visible breath of the sirocco upon main land, isle and lagoon. Far to the right some thickly clustered and windless trees rose from the quivering sea-line, or rather seemed to hover just above the lagoon, — the acacias, namely, in whose shadowy mist the Fort of S. Nicolo guards the " Gates of the Lido." Northwest of this dimly defined island-wood we espied Sant' Elena and San Michele; in the lee of the latter three funeral gondolas skirting the high wall that pro tects the graves from the imperative tides; while before us lay Murano, a denser and darker mist above it from the furnaces of the glass manufactories, for which it is so famous. Northwestward we looked towards Mestre, and south ward from thence along the Laguna Morta towards Fusina — a long line of shadowy trees apparently rising from the sea, with spaces here and there between as though a slow tide were imperceptibly rising and flooding a long strip of land, at intervals dinted with hollows already washed over by the grey-green water. The silvery sirocco mist hid from us the shapes of Alps to the north, or Euganeans to the west. We could just descry, indeed, that part of the Laguna THE OUTER RIM 59 Morta which stretches from beneath the long railway-bridge towards Fusina — those low banks of slimy ooze or mud, which collectively are called the " Dead Lagoon," a strange and desolate region haunted only by the sea-mew, the wild snipe, and the bittern, the newt that loves the slimy ooze, and the sea-adder amongst the rank grasses that rise from the shallow brackish water clarified by no urgent tide. As we left Murano behind us, and glided along the grey- green of the open lagoon between it and Burano, still more did the fancy grow upon us that we were adrift upon dream land waters, and it was difficult to tell, looking around and beyond us, where the sea-line and sky-line met, for the breath of the sirocco made sea and sky, islands and shadowy trees and dim mainland outlines alike unsubstantial. That a change was more or less imminent, even if we had not heard Luigi draw Francesco's attention to the fact, we both ere long perceived, for at frequent intervals a sudden but transitory shimmer quivered in the misty atmosphere to the north, seemingly, as though behind a veil of silvery gauze a current of air were passing by. Now and again the shrouded sun seemed to gather fresh power, and to lighten for a few minutes with its dimly diffused gleams the strange scene, wholly aerial in appearance that met our gaze. It was in some such vivifying interval as this that we passed the islands of Burano and Mazzorbo, and saw before us tht dreary and desolate shores of Torcello. Looking backward we saw the lagoons shining with a dull metallic glitter, and the intense heat brooding in haze upon distant Venice, and, 60 VENICE like a mirage within a mirage, the islanded coast-line of the Laguna Morta from Mestre to Fusina shining dimly blue above the intensely bright but sparkless silver of the inflowing tide. When our gondola glided alongside of the wave-worn and irregular stones that form the pier, and we stepped from it on to the salt grasses that lead up to the so-called piazza, we again realised to the full the absoluteness of the sense of desolation. When we had last been at Torcello, there had been some cattle in the green meadow beyond the Duomo, tended by a dark-haired shepherd youth, who seemed some thing between a water-god, a faun, and a young David ; but now no living thing met our gaze, save a sea-bird that screamed harshly as it rose from a reedy morass and sailed round and round the lonely square tower of the Campanile. The soft lapping of the water against the gondola and faint rustle of the tide against the numerous marshy inlets ac centuated instead of relieving the deathly stillness. We ascended the Campanile, though as far as my friend was concerned there was no longer any necessity to sketch elsewhere than in the meadows at our feet. But neither by words nor the painter's brush could the ever-varying and ever-wonderful beauty and strangeness of the scene be ad- quately rendered, nor would it be easy to say what times and seasons surpass each other in supreme fascination — probably in the hour of sunset in summer with a breeze from the north, and the atmosphere intensely clear; or at moonrise in August or September, when the skies above are of deepest THE OUTER RIM 61 purple, and the planets and stars are like gold lamps and silver-shining globes, and over the stagnant morasses wander ing marsh-lights flit to-and-fro like the ghosts of those deadly fires which so long ago embraced in a long death-agony the cities of Altinum and Aquileia, whose neighbouring sites now abide in the same desolation as Torcello. But even in the misty noon of this day of our visit, the beauty was at once memorable and strangely impressive. Below us were the salt creeks and dreary morasses of the Torcellan shore, the Duomo, the ancient church of Santa Fosca, and the anything but palatial Palazzo Pubblico; beyond these, occasional short meadows of brilliant green, with purple orchis and tall gamboge-tinted hellebore, and even some sprays of pink gladiolus interspersed among the seeded grasses, and at frequent intervals upon the sandy ridges small bands of poppies ; beyond these ridges again the misty blue of the Adriatic washing onward past the long line of Malamocco. To the north and west we could just descry the dim outlines of the Friulian Alps and the shadowy Euganeans; while southward in every direction the wings of the sirocco spread a silvery haze, through whose shifting veil glimpses only at intervals were to be caught of the domes and palaces of Venice, the islands of Burano, Murano, San Michele, Sant' Elena, and the wooded promontory of San Nicoletto — to the west, Mestre and the unreal islands beyond the Canale di Brenta. Later on we sought that rough stone seat which legend declares, on very dubious grounds, to have been the throne of 62 VENICE Attila when he watched the blaze of burning Altinum red dening the sky. Here my friend sketched, and so the pleas ant and dreamy hours passed on till late in the afternoon. Suddenly a lark's song rose clear and strong, like a swift uprising fountain in a desert place; and, looking up to descry the welcome singer, I noticed that the wind had fallen wholly from its previous slight breath to absolute stillness. " And skyward yearning from the sea there rose, And seaward yearning from the sky there fell, A spirit of deep content unspeakable." — William Watson. In a few minutes, like a mist before sunrise, the silvery gauze of the sirocco gradually dispelled or retreated, first leaving Venice clear in the golden sunlight, then the blue waters of the lagoon to the west of the Lido of Sant' Elisa betta, and then finally passed away by the sea-washed Malamocco, along the distant narrow strand of Pelestrina, and onwards towards unseen Chioggia thirty miles or more away to the south. As we left Torcello, already looking far more desolate, and almost as though it were awakening from a dream, a cool slight wind from the far-off Carnic Alps stole forth, and by the time that Burano was passed the deep blue waters were here and there curled with white foam, lightly tossed from short wave to wave. As Murano came under our lee, about half a mile to the east, we saw Venice as she can only be seen half a dozen times in a year. Each dome and palace THE OUTER RIM 63 and fretted spire was outlined in purple-black against a cir cumambient halo of wild-rose pink, shading to a gorgeous carmine, and thence to an undescribably soft and beautiful crimson; through these, great streaks and innumerable islets of translucent amethyst spread and shone, while every here and there bars and narrow shafts of absolute gold pierced the azure and purple and crimson, like promontories in a rain bow-coloured sea. As these again, like fronds of a gigantic fan, six or seven great streamers of pale saffron stretched from the setting sun to the depths of the sky, and it seemed for a moment as though the whole visible world, without motion, without sound, were dissolving away in a glory and splendour of light and ineffable colour. THE TRAGHETTI HORATIO F. BROWN THE traghetti of Venice, the ferries that cross the Grand Canal, or ply from point to point on the Giudecca, are a feature no less peculiar to the city than are the gondolas themselves, and they are quite as an cient. There are as many as sixteen of the ferries across the Grand Canal and the Giudecca: and each of them has its own history, its own archives and documents. For from its foundation each traghetto was a guild, a close corporation with a limited number of members, with its own particular rules, or mariegole, inscribed on parchment, in Gothic char acters, " lettere di forma," as the gondoliers called them, and adorned with capitals painted in vermilion, and here and there an illuminated page showing the patron saint of the traghetto, or the Assumption of Madonna into heaven. The mariegole of the various traghetti, in their old Venetian bind ings of morocco and gold, may still be seen in the archives of the Frari: and a singular fascination attaches to the ancient, time-stained parchment which contains the history of that system of self-government which was developed by the gondoliers during five centuries of Venetian story, and whose rules are expresssed in rich and vigorous dialect. The earliest of these mariegole belongs to the traghetto of Santa Sofia, near the Rialto, and dates from the year 1344: the THE TRAGHETTI 65 traghetto itself, however, was probably much older. Yet the same regulations and customs which governed the gon doliers in the Fourteenth Century, hold good in the Nine teenth. A traghetto of to-day closely resembles a traghetto of 1300, though the years have overlaid its lines with dust: it is still a corporation, with property and endowments of its own: the same officers, under the same titles, still keep order among the brothers: only the whole institution has a somewhat ancient air, is marred by symptoms of decay, and we fear that it may not last much longer. Indeed, the his tory and internal arrangement of the traghetti offer the best example of that which makes the subject of gondolier life interesting to the student of antiquity: for the traghetti are, in fact, a genuine part of the Venetian Republic imbedded in United Italy; a fossil survival unique in the history of the country, and perhaps in that of the world. The date at which the first traghetto was established, that is when the gondoliers plying for hire first formed them selves into a guild at their ferry, is not known: but such a guild was certainly in existence before the middle of the Fourteenth Century. A corporation of this nature was called a scuola at Venice: and from the very first these schools of the gondoliers were of a religious character, ded icated to a patron saint, and in close connection with the church of the parish where the ferry was situated. This is the way in which the scuola of Santa Maria Zobenigo opens its book of rules: " Io the name of God, the Eternal Father, and of His Son 66 VENICE Misser Jesu Cristo, and of His glorious mother, the Virgin Mary, and of the thrice-blessed patron Misser San Marco, and of Misser San Gregorio, who are the guardians of us the boatmen at the traghetto of San Gregorio and Santa Maria Zobenigo: may they help each and all of us brothers to live in fear of the Lord God and with peace and brotherly love between us, first in health and prosperity and then to salva tion of our souls and the remission of our sins." And in their parish church the brothers of each scuola had a special place appointed for them, usually under the organ, where they sat in a body on Sundays, their officers at the head of each bench. The first section of the rules which governed the schools invariably applies to Church observance: "The school pledges itself to keep a lamp burning day and night before the altar. . . . Every second Sunday in the month they shall cause a solemn mass to be sung. . . . Every Monday an ordinary mass. . . . Every brother shall be obliged to confess twice a year, or at least once, and if, after a warning, he remain impenitent he shall be ex pelled. A brother who made the pilgrimage to Loretto, for the good of his soul, or of his body, was entitled to one cen- tesimo a day while his journey lasted." Those brothers who " continue to live publicly in any deadly sin, shall be admonished, and expelled unless they amend." The fines for disobedience and quarrelsomeness were " applicate alia Madonna," that is, they formed a fund for keeping an oil lamp burning at the shrine of the Madonna, " per luminar la Madonna." And the first fare taken at the traghetto each THE TRAGHETTI 67 morning was dedicated to the same purpose and was called the " parada della Madonna." The advantages conferred by these schools were so con siderable and so obvious that, not only did every traghetto established one, but other classes of boatmen — the burchieri, or bargees, for example — applied for leave to found a school. The petition of the burchieri is a curious document. It is addressed to the Council of Ten, and sets forth that " this glorious lagoon is constantly in need of dredging, and should Your Excellencies ' grant out prayer, you will always have barges at your disposal for this purpose. Moreover, if we be allowed to found a school, we shall put an end to the dirt and noise on the Grand Canal under your windows. And we promise to pay eighty ducats yearly to the Water Com missioners. And, on the festival of the Ascension, we will make a triumph with our barges, to accompany the Doge when he goes to wed the sea." There is a fact about the nationality of the gondoliers in the Fifteenth Century which is worth noticing in passing. From the lists of the members of each traghetto, it appears that less than half were natives of Venice. Some hail from Treviso, from Ravenna, Padua, Bergamo, Brescia, or Vicenza; very many from Salo, on the lake of Garda; but by far the largest number come from the Dalmatian coast, from Sobenico, Zara, Segna, Traii, Spalato. A century later, these foreign names had disappeared. The gondoliers had either become, for the most part, Venetians proper, or, more probably, the foreign names had been dropped, as the 68 VENICE families took root in their new home. However that may be, the men who first established these schools with their admirable system of government, were chiefly foreigners and not Venetians. Every gondolier who worked at a traghetto belonged, ipso facto, to the scuola of that traghetto; and his title was barcariol del traghetto, to distinguish him from his natural enemy, the barcariol toso, or loose gondolier, who went about poaching on the confines of the various ferries, and stealing a fare whenever he could. The scuole, it is true, exist no longer in all their clearly defined constitution; the passage of time has broken down this structure of the early gondoliers. But the traghetti still survive and each is governed by its ancient officials, its gas- taldo and bancali. The latter are still responsible for the good order of the men; they arrange the rotations of service; they see to the cleanness and safety of the landing-places; they retain their powers of trying, fining, or suspending a refractory brother; if the city authorities have any orders to issue, they communicate with the gastaldo and bancali; these officers are a true survival of the Fourteenth Century, with their duties, character and powers undiminished by the lapse of years. And the arrangements which these officers made of old for the good government of their traghetti retain their force in the Venice of to-day. In no profession are antique words more frequently to be found than in that of gondolier ; the customs and phrases of their trade seem to have become hereditary in the blood of the gondoliers, -though it is only THE TRAGHETTI 69 when modern regulations are imposed upon them that the men discover how deeply seated is their attachment to their ancient art. The arrangements of the traghetti are simple and efficient to maintain order; for though the noise is often great and a stranger might well believe that the men spent the larger part of their time in quarrelling, yet, as a matter of fact, a serious quarrel between two brothers, while on duty rarely occurs. The internal arrangement of a traghetto will be most easily understood by taking a typical instance, the traghetto of Santa Maria Zobenigo. This has one other traghetto, that of San Maurizio, and one station, that of the Ponte delle Ostreghi, attached to it, and worked by the men of Santa Maria. Besides serving these three posts, the gondoliers have duty at the neighbouring hotel, and lastly there is the patula, or night service. All the members of the traghetto, forty-two in all, are divided into six companies, each of which works in rotation as follows : One day at San Maurizio, one day at Santa Maria Zobenigo, one day at the Ponte delle Ostreghi ; then come the two most important and profitable days for work, at the hotel Alia Locanda, and the patula. One of the companies is on duty at the hotel each day, and the men answer in turn to the hotel porter's summons of poppe a uno, or a due, as one or two rowers are required. It is well to remember that should one wish to secure a particular gondolier, he must be called by his num ber; the rules of the traghetto forbid him to answer to his name. After the service at the hotel comes the pa-tula^ or jo VENICE service of twenty-four hours at the principal ferry. The fares for the parada, or passage, from one side to the other, is five centesimi during the day, and ten after the great bell of St. Mark's has sounded at evening. The reason why this service of the patula is so profitable is the following: the service lasts from 9 A. M. till the following 9 A. M. ; at 4 p. M. all the men except those belonging to the company on duty, leave the traghetto, thus reducing the numbers to a sixth, and increasing the gains. From 4 p. M. till 9 A. m. the men on the patula have the ferry all to themselves, and take all the hire that comes, both for services of an hour or more, as well as the fares for the parada, the only restriction being that the ferry must never be left with less than two men to attend to it. Their dinner is brought down to the ferry by the gondoliers' wives or children, and, in the summer, one may often see a whole family party supping together in the bows of a gondola. In the hot weather, the men sleep in their gondolas, and in winter, as many of them as can find room crowd into the little wooden hut which stands at the traghetto — the only remnant now of their chapter-house — where the bancali meet to settle the affairs of the fraternity. Sometimes the men on the patula club together, and divide the whole gains for the night in equal portions; sometimes each works on his own account. The ordinary profits of the traghetto used formerly to be so great that the gondoliers neglected the service of the patula, preferring to spend their nights at home, or in the wine-shops. But now a gondolier will tell you that his THE TRAGHETTI 71 largest permanent gains each week come from the patula; and, at a good traghetto, he may count upon making four lire one night in every six, and frequently makes much more. At 9 A. m. those who have been on the patula the previous night, leave the traghetto for the whole of that day. The rotation of six days, three at the three posts, one at the hotel, one on the patula, and one off-day, makes up the diurnal life of the gondolier, unless he should be fortunate enough to have found a padrone, in which case he is free from all the rules and service of the traghetto. While on duty at the ferry, a few excellent rules suffice to keep order among the men. Those on duty are arranged numerically; and, when a passenger comes to the ferry, no one may call to him but the gondolier whose turn it is ; the only exception to this rule being that if a friar wishes to cross the ferry, the boat last in the order is bound to serve him, and for nothing. This cus tom is, however, falling into disuse. No gondolier on duty may tie his boat to the pali, or posts, of the traghetto, nor may he wash his boat in cavana, the spaces between the posts where the gondola's bows run in. While on service, he is forbidden to go to the wine-shops; if he does, he loses his turn, and when he comes back he takes his place last on the list. At the opening of the Seventeenth Century, the govern ment was obliged to revolutionise the whole character of the traghetti by taking away their property in the liberties. Hitherto there had been five modes by which a man might become a member of a traghetto — either by election in chapter 72 VENICE of the school; or by the renunciation of a brother in his favour; or by exchange between two members of different ferries; or by the order of the Proveditori as filling a vacancy unfilled by the school ; or by order of the Prove ditori as a reward for good naval service. Now, all the liber ties, as soon as they fell vacant, were put up to auction in the office of the Milizia da Mar, and knocked down to the highest bidder. From this time forward, till the close of the Republic, purchase at auction from the government became the only way in which a man could obtain a license as gon dolier. The government undertook the supervision of the registers, and any liberty that remained unoccupied through neglect, ill health, or death, was sold immediately. Thus the traghetti lost the control over their liberties; and with that control disappeared the most important part of their functions and powers as a corporation. From that date to this, the government of the day has been the virtual owner of the liberties, and the final resort in all questions affecting their management. Until quite recently, a young gondolier might buy an old one out of his place at a good traghetto, for about three hundred lire; and the municipality readily sanctioned such exchanges. But the present town- council desire to put an end to this remnant of ancient priv ilege, and insist that they alone shall appoint and transfer, and that the gondoliers have no claim to initiative in the matter. The regulations of the government on the subject of liberties restored comparative order to the traghetti, though THE TRAGHETTI 73 they could not alter human nature, and we come across oc casional outbursts of the riotous spirit among the young gondoliers, who still bullied their passengers, and exacted more than their due centesimo for the fare across the ferry. In the year 1702, the censors threaten the whip, and other tortures, for those who carry pistols or knives in their boats ; and, as late as 1800, one Francesco Pelizzari; distinguished himself by crowding twenty-nine unfortunate people into his gondola, and refusing to land them till they had paid a modo suo. For this exploit, however, he was banished from Venice. The corporate life of the traghetti was closed by the action of the government in the Sixteenth Century. The schools survived, though with diminished vitality, until the extinc tion of the Republic ; and even now certain of their functions are still performed by the modern traghetti. The traghetti are still friendly societies. A brother who falls ill receives a certain sum daily from the fraternity as long as his illness lasts; and the gastaldo and four brothers attend his funeral with torches, and accompany him to his last home at San Michele when he dies. The bancali are still the recognised heads of the traghetti, and hold their sittings in the wooden shelter huts at each ferry's end. But this is all that remains of an institution which was once among the most remarkable and complete of those that flourished under the Venetian Republic THE GRAND CANAL THtOPHILE GAUTIER THE Grand Canal is in Venice what the Strand is in London, the Rue Saint Honore in Paris, and the Calle d'Alcala in Madrid, — the principal artery of the city's circulation. It is in the form of an S, the top curve of which sweeps through the city at St. Mark's, ter minating at the island of St. Chiara, while the lower curve ends at the Custom House near the Giudecca canal. About the middle, this S is cut by the Rialto bridge. The Grand Canal of Venice is the most wonderful thing in the world. No other town can afford such a beautiful, strange and fairy-like spectacle: perhaps equally remarkable specimens of architecture may be found elsewhere, but they never occur under such picturesque conditions. There every palace has a mirror to admire its beauty in, like a coquettish woman. The superb reality is doubled by a charming re flection. The waters lovingly caress the feet of those beauti ful faqades whose brows are kissed by white sunlight, and cradle them in a double sky. The little buildings and the big ships that can get so far seem to be moored expressly as a set-off, or as foregrounds for the convenience of decorators and water-colourists. When passing the Custom House, which, with the Giu- stiniani palace, now the Hotel de I'Europe, forms the entrance 74 il GRAND CANAL FROM THE SALUTE THE GRAND CANAL j$ of the Grand Canal, cast a glance at those fleshless horses' heads carved on the square and heavy cornice that supports the globe of Fortune: does this singular ornament signify that the horse being of no use in Venice people part with it at the Custom House, or is it rather merely a caprice of ornament? The latter explanation seems to us the best, for we are un willing to fall into the symbolical refinings with which we have reproached others. The Custom House is a fine building with rustic columns adorned with bossages and supporting a square tower ter minated with two kneeling figures of Hercules back to back supporting on their robust shoulders a terrestrial globe upon which turns a nude figure of Fortune with hair hanging loose in front and bald behind, and holding in her hands the two ends of a veil that forms a vane and yields to the faintest breeze: for this figure is hollow, like the Giralda in Seville. Close to the Dogana rises the white cupola of Santa Maria della Salute with its twisted volutes, its pentagonal staircase and its population of statues. An Eve in most gallant un dress smiled upon us from the top of a cornice bathed in sun light. We immediately recognised the Salute from Can- aletto's fine picture in the Louvre. Every stretch of wall tells a story; every house is a palace; every palace is a masterpiece and a legend. With every stroke of his oar, the gondolier mentions a name that was as well known at the time of the Crusades as it is to-day ; and this is true both on the right and left for more than half a league. We wrote down a list of these palaces, not all, 76 VENICE but the most noteworthy of them; and we dare not copy it on account of its length. It fills five or six pages: Pietro Lombardi, Scamozzi, Vittoria, Longhena, Andrea Tre- mignano, Giorgio Massari, Sansovino, Sebastiano Mazzoni, Sammichelli the great Veronese architect, Selva, Domenico Rossi, and Visentini drew the designs and directed the con struction of these princely dwellings, without counting the wonderful unknown Mediaeval artists who built the most romantic and picturesque ones, those that set the seal of originality upon Venice. On both banks altogether charming fagades of diversified beauty follow one another uninterruptedly. After one of Renaissance architecture, with its columns and superimposed orders, comes a Mediaeval palace of Arabian-Gothic style, the prototype of which is the Ducal Palace, with its open bal conies, its ogives, its trefoils, and its indented acroterium. Farther on is a fagade plated with coloured marbles, and or namented with medallions and consoles; then comes a great rose wall pierced with a wide window with little columns. Everything is to be found here: Byzantine, Saracen, Lom bard, Gothic, Roman, Greek, and even Rococo; the column large and small, the ogive and the round arch, the capricious capital full of birds and flowers that has been brought from Acre or Jaffa; the Greek capital that was found among the ruins of Athens, the mosaic and the bas-relief, Classical severity and the elegant fancies of the Renaissance. It is an immense gallery open to the sky wherein one may study the art of seven or eight centuries from the interior of one's THE GRAND CANAL y7 gondola. What genius, talent and money have been ex pended in this space that we traverse in less than an hour! What prodigious artists, but also what intelligent and mag nificent lords! What a pity it is that the patricians who knew how to get such beautiful things executed only exist now on the canvases of Titian, Tintoretto and II Moro! Before even arriving at the Rialto, you have on your left, going up the canal, the Dario palace, in the Gothic style; the Venier palace, which stands at angle, with its ornaments, its precious marbles and its medallions, in the Lombard style ; the Fine Arts, a Classic fagade coupled to the ancient Scuola della Carita surmounted by a Venice riding a lion ; the Con- tarini palace, the architect of which was Scamozzi; the Rezzonico palace, with three superimposed orders; the triple Giustiniani palace in the Mediaeval taste ; the Foscari palace, which is recognisable by its low door, two stages of little columns supporting ogives and trefoils, in which the sover eigns who visited Venice were formerly lodged; the Balbi palace, over the balcony of which princes leaned to watch the regattas held on the Grand Canal with so much pomp and splendour in the halcyon days of the Republic; the Pisani palace, in the German style of the beginning of the Fifteenth Century; and the Tiepolo palace, which is relatively quite spruce and modern, with its two elegant pyramidions. On the right, close to the Hotel de I'Europe, between two big buildings is a delicious little palace which is chiefly composed of a window and a balcony ; but what a window and what a balcony! A gimp of stonework, scrolls, guilloches and 78 VENICE pierced work that one would think impossible to produce except with a punch on one of those pieces of paper that are placed over lamp-globes. Continuing up the canal, we find the following palaces: Corner della Ca' Grande, which dates from 1532, one of Sansovino's best; Grassi; Corner-Spinelli ; Grimani, in the robust and strong architecture of Sammicheli, the marble base of which is surrounded by a Greek course of very fine effect; and Farsetti with a columned peristyle and a long gallery of little columns that occupies its whole front. We might say, as Don Ruy Gomez da Silva said to Charles the Fifth, in Hernani, when he is showing him the portraits of his ancestors: " I pass them by, and better ones too." We will, however, request favour for the Loredan palace and the ancient dwelling of Enrico Dandolo, the conqueror of Constantinople. Between these palaces there are houses that set them off, whose chimneys shaped like turbans, turrets and vases of flowers very happily break up the great archi tectural lines. Sometimes a traghetto, or a piazzetta, such as the campo San Vitali, for example, which faces the Academy, appro priately cuts this long suite of monuments. This campo, lined with rough-coated houses of a strong and lively red, forms the happiest contrast with its vine branches of an inn arbour; this vermeil spot in this line of fagades that have been more or less browned by time rests and delights the eye; some painter is always found established here with his pal ette on his thumb and his box on his knees. The gondoliers THE GRAND CANAL 79 and pretty girls who are attracted by the presence of these strange beings always pose naturally, and from admirers become professional models. The Rialto, which is the finest bridge in Venice, has a very grandiose and monumental appearance: it spans the canal with a single arch of an elegant and bold curve. It was built by Antonio da Ponte, in 1691, when Pasquale Cigogna was Doge, and replaces the ancient wooden draw bridge in Albert Diirer's plan of the city. Two rows of shops, separated in the middle by an arcaded portico, giving a glimpse of the sky, occupy the sides of the bridge that may be crossed by three ways : a central one and two outside path ways adorned with marble balustrades. About the Rialto bridge, which is one of the most picturesque points of the Grand Canal, are piled the oldest houses in Venice, with their flat roofs with poles for awnings, their tall chimneys, their bulging balconies, their staircases with disjointed steps, and their wide spaces of red plaster that have scaled off in places and left bare the brick wall, and the foundations that are green from the contact of the water. Near the Rialto, there is always a tumult of shipping and gondolas, and stag nant islets of moored small crafts drying their tawny sails that sometimes bear a great cross. Beyond the Rialto on the two banks are grouped the old Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the walls of which tinted with un certain hues enable us to divine the frescoes of Titian and Tintoretto, like dreams that are about to take flight; the Fish Market, the Herb Market, and the old and new con- 80 VENICE structions of Scarpagnino and Sansovino. These reddened and degraded buildings, admirably toned and tinted by time and neglect, must constitute the despair of the municipality and the delight of painters. Beneath their arcades swarms an active and noisy population, that mounts and descends, comes and goes, buys and sells, laughs and bawls. There fresh tunny is sold in red slices; and mussels, oysters, crabs and lobsters are carried away in baskets. Under the arch of the bridge, where the noisiest echoes resound all around, the gondoliers sleep sheltered from the sun while waiting to be hired. Still going up the Grand Canal, we see on the left the Corner della Regina palace, thus named after the queen Cornaro of Cyprus. The architecture by Domenico Rossi is of great elegance. The sumptuous abode of Queen Cornaro is now a pawn-shop, and the humble tatters of misery and the jewels of improvidence at the last extremity are piled up here beneath the rich ceilings that are indebted to them for not falling into ruins: for to-day it does not suffice to be beauti ful, it is necessary to be useful as well. The Armenian college, not very far away, is an admir able edifice, by Paldassare de Longhena of rich, solid and imposing architecture. It is the old Pesaro palace. To the right rises the Ca' d'Oro palace — one of the most charming on the Grand Canal. It belonged to Mile. Taglioni, who had it restored with the most intelligent care. It is all em broidered and laced with open stonework in a mixed taste of Greek, Gothic and Barbarian; and is so fantastic, so light, THE GRAND CANAL 81 so aerial, that it might be said to have been made expressly for the nest of a sylph. The old Vendramin Calergi palace, the most beautiful in Venice, is an architectural masterpiece, and its carvings are of marvellous fineness. Nothing can be prettier than the groups of children who hold shields over the arches of the windows. The interior is full of precious marbles: two porphyry columns of such rare beauty that their value would pay for the rest of the palace are particularly admired. Although we have taken a long time, we have not yet said all. We notice that we have not spoken of the Mo- cenigo palace, where the great Byron lived. The Barberigo palace also deserves mention. It contains a number of beau tiful pictures, and a carved and gilded cradle intended for the heir of the noble family, a cradle that might be made into a tomb, for the Barberigos are extinct as well as the major ity of the old Venetian families. Of nine hundred patrician families inscribed in the Golden Book, scarcely fifty remain. A few strokes of the oar soon brought into view one of the most marvellous spectacles that were ever given for the human eye to contemplate: the Piazzetta seen from the water. Standing on the prow of the stationary gondola, we looked for some time in mute ecstasy at this picture for which the world has no rival, — perhaps the only one that cannot be surpassed by the imagination. On the left we see first the trees of the Royal garden that traces a green line above a white terrace; then the Zecca (the Mint) a building of robust architecture; and the old 82 VENICE library, (Sansovino's work) with its elegant arcades and crown of mythological statues. On the right, separated by the space that forms the Piaz zetta, the vestibule of St. Mark's Square, the Ducal Palace presents its vermeil fagade lozenged with white and rose marble, its massive columns supporting a gallery of little pillars the ribs of which contain quatrefoils, with six ogival windows, and its monumental balcony ornamented with con- solas, niches, bell-turrets and statuettes dominated by a Holy Virgin; its acroterium standing out against the blue of the sky in alternate acanthus leaves and points, and the spiral listel that binds its angles and ends in an open-work pinnacle. At the end of the Piazzetta, besides the Library, the Campanile rises to a great height; this is an immense brick tower with a pointed roof surmounted by a golden angel. On the Ducal Palace side, St. Mark's, viewed sideways, shows a corner of its porch which faces the Piazzetta. The view is closed by a few arcades of ancient Procurators' offices and the Clock Tower with its bronze figures for striking the hours, its Lion of St. Mark on a starry blue blackground and its great blue dial on which the four and twenty hours are inscribed. In the foreground, facing the gondola landing-place, be tween the Library and the Ducal Palace are two enormous columns of African granite, each in a single piece, that were formerly rose but have been washed into colder tones by rain and Time. On the one to the left, coming from the sea, stands in a THE GRAND CANAL 83 triumphant attitude, with his brow encircled by a metal nim bus, his sword by his side and lance in hand, his hand resting on his shield, a finely proportioned St. Theodore slaying a crocodile. On the column to the right, the Lion of St. Mark in bronze, with outspread wings, claw on his Gospel, and with scowling face turns his tail on St. Theodore's crocodile with the most sour and sullen air that can be expressed by a heraldic animal. It is said not to be of good augury to land between these two columns, where executions formerly took place, and so we begged the gondolier to put us ashore at the Zecca stairs or the Paille bridge, as we did not want to end like Marino Faliero, whose misfortune it was to be cast ashore by a tem pest at the foot of these dread pillars. Beyond the Ducal Palace the new prisons are visible, joined to it by the Bridge of Sighs, a sort of cenotaph sus pended above the Paille canal, then comes a curved line of palaces, houses, churches and buildings of all kinds that form the Riva dei Schiavoni (the Slave Quay), and is ended by the verdant clump of the public gardens, the point of which juts into the water. Near the Zecca is the mouth of the Grand Canal and the front of the Custom House, which, with the public gardens, forms the two ends of this panoramic arc over which Venice extends, like a marine Venus drying on the shore the pearls salted by their natal element. We have indicated as exactly as possible the principal 84 VENICE lineaments of the picture ; but what should be rendered is the effect, the colour, the movement, the shiver in the air and water; life, in fact. How can one express those rose tones of the Ducal Palace that look as lifelike as flesh; those snowy whitenesses of the statues tracing their contours in the azure of Veronese and Titian; those reds of the Campanile caressed by the sun; those gleams of distant gold; those thousand aspects of the sea, sometimes clear as a mirror, sometimes scintillating with spangles, like the skirt of a dancer? Who can paint that vague and luminous atmosphere full of rays and vapours from which the sun does not exclude all shadows; that going and coming of gondolas, barks, and galliots; those red or white sails; those boats familiarly leaning their cutwaters against the quay, with their thousand picturesque accidents of flags, ropes and drying nets; the sailors loading and unloading the ships, carrying cases and rolling barrels, and the motley strollers on the wharf. Dal matians, Greek, Levantines and others whom Canaletto would indicate with a single touch : how can one make it all visible simultaneously as it occurs in Nature, with a succes sive procedure? For the poet, less fortunate than the painter or the musician has only a single line at his disposal: the former has a whole palette, the latter an entire orchestra. THE PATRICIANS' PALACES P. MOLMENTI THE elegances of art have a great influence upon private manners. Towards the end of the Fifteenth Century the manifestations of taste were everywhere in evidence, and it might be said that even cos tume borrowed its forms from Art, which reigned every where, — in the modest dwelling of the poor as well as in the Doge's palace. Along with wealth was augmented the magnificence of the palaces that sprang from the waters as if by enchantment. In his Voyage, Constant says: "I do not speak of the multitude of great and beautiful and rich palaces, one of a hundred, another of fifty, and a third of thirty thousand ducats, nor of their owners, for it would be too hard a task for me, and one fitted only for a man who had to stay a long time in the said city of Venice." The annual rent of houses for the use of nobles was from fifty to one hundred and twenty gold ducats. The interior of these mansions was in no way inferior to the exterior. The graceful twines of the arches and the spiral columns that support the ogives of the marble fagades were reproduced in the interior ornamentation and in the furniture of the apartments that were not very spacious, but painted and decorated with severe elegance. The commonest utensil and the furniture of even the most trifling importance 85 86 VENICE had an artistic value. Splendid friezes ran around the upper portions of the rooms the ceilings of which " remarkable for their mouldings," as Sansovino says, and their arabesques, were sometimes of carved wood, gilded and coloured, and sometimes, after the style of the Thirteenth Century, with long and thick beams painted and carved in the style called intelaradure alia tedesca. The walls covered with tanned, gilded or silvered leather, with ornaments and figures (cuori d'oro), or with silken hangings, sometimes embroidered with precious stones or striped with thin plates of gold ; the folding doors, the jambs and lintels, all carved or incrusted; the chimney-pieces dec orated with fantastic interfacings of foliage, chimeras, sirens and cupids in the Lombard taste : — everything was admirable for its richness or its exquisite form. Among other examples, there still exists in the Ducal Palace a wonderful model of Fifteenth Century mural decoration in the room degli Scar latti, which at first was the Doge's room, and afterwards the place where the Twelve nobles, who wore scarlet robes, met. Around the ceiling, decorated with golden rose-work on a blue ground, runs an elegant frieze carved throughout ; the chimney-piece, a work by Lombardo executed when Au- gustino Barbarigo was Doge, that is to say, between i486 and 1 501, is a masterpiece for the marvellous delicacy of its ornamentation, which twines in and out with supple elegance. But what we have fewest examples of are the furniture and hangings, Time having consumed the greater part of these, and the mercantile spirit of the age having relinquished the PALAZZO LOREDAN PATRICIANS' PALACES 87 remainder to foreigners. We will nevertheless endeavour to the best of our ability to reconstruct in imagination the in terior of a patrician mansion of the Fifteenth Century. In the middle of the room usually occupied by the nobles were to be seen on the walnut table of chastened style, and along •the walls or on brackets, in charming disorder, amphorae, ce ramics, gold and silver vases, great swords, medals, cymbals, lutes, and books bound in guilloched leather. The taste for the antique was already in the ascendant, and in glass cases were assembled the statuettes and other objects discovered in the excavations. Hanging from the ceilings, or fixed to the walls, gleamed lamps of Oriental style in gilded copper or bronze enamelled, inlaid, chased, and ornamented with crystal of a thousand hues; or lanterns adorned with little wreathed columns, closed with mirrors of various forms, which on the walls produced an effect of painting in chiaros curo; or again lanterns of hammered iron with the most elegant volutes and open-work. In the libraries were pre served those precious parchment manuscripts whose pages painted with miniatures, with infinite patience in the silence of the cloisters, still breathe forth the amiable ingenuity of that period. The table-service was of gold and silver; the glasses and flasks of Murano had an individual transparence and elegance; even the copper vases used to cool the drinks were covered with strange damaskeening. The bedrooms served also as reception rooms. Around the mirrors, and magnificently hung beds, and alcoves supported by gilded caryatides, were framings of carved open woodwork, border- 88 VENICE ing panels, marquetry work and other ornaments of extreme delicacy. During the early years of the Sixteenth Century, the Doge's bed was covered with gold, and Contarini says, in describing the palace, that in the ducal chamber he saw the lettiera coperta de aurea maiestate. Beside the bed was placed the Prie Dieu, beneath those diptychs or little wooden altars with little open spires, and with saints with golden aureoles ; — beautiful works on which the carver often cut his name beside that of Vivarini and others who had painted the images. The presses, coffers, trousseaux chests, jewel caskets for wedding presents (which on that account were justly called marriages), were carved or painted with domestic and battle scenes. People ran into such wild expenditure for the furnishings of an apartment that a law of 1476 ordered not more than 150 ducats of gold were to be spent on wood, gold and painting. The Venetian palaces had several doors that did not all lead into the vestibule (entrada), but sometimes into vast courtyards surrounded with walls battlemented in the Arab fashion.1 In these courtyards were wells with artistically sculptured curbs; and here were found those picturesque stairways without carcass that we still admire in the Sanudo Palace of St. Mary of the Miracles, the Capello Palace at St. John Lateran, the Centenni Palace at San Toma, etc., etc.2 1 The Foscari palace, for instance. 2 A marvellous staircase, but one with a carcass, is the spiral staircase of the Contarini Palace at San Paterniano, known to-day under the name of Scala a bovolo de Minelli. PATRICIANS' PALACES 89 In the Sixteenth Century the change from the ideas of the Middle Ages to those of renascent Antiquity is already ac complished. Pagan grandeur revives in all its splendour. The demand for luxury grows more marked from day to day and in the interiors furniture becomes richer and less simple. Sansovino writes, towards the end of the Sixteenth Century: " As for the apartments, furniture and incredible riches, one cannot even imagine them, far less describe them clearly. . And although our elders were economical, they grew magnificent in the adornment of their dwellings. There are innumerable edifices with the ceilings of the chambers and other rooms gilded and painted, and covered with his torical pictures and excellent fancies." Franco, also, in his turn, says: " The buildings of this city offer an admirable spectacle to one who looks at them from the outside. But when one sees the interiors, they are still more astonishing and wonderful, for they are adorned with very beautiful paintings, carvings, mouldings, tapestries, gold and silver and such a quantity of other precious ornaments, that, if a man wanted to enumerate them, those who have not seen them would take him for a liar." Riches, nevertheless, were never separated from beauty; and, moreover, there was no cessation in the invention of new forms of presses, credences, tables, chairs, doors and stools. Sansovino says : " In fact, nowhere else are to be seen more commodious, more con centrated, or more fit for man's use than these." The private life of that century was written in the pictures, tapestries and furniture; just as the public life was written in the monu- go VENICE ments. With time, luxury constantly became more external and was displayed principally in the state and reception rooms, each one of which could contain a whole modern apartment. From the vestibules, ornamented with mouldings and bas- reliefs, household goods gradually disappeared and the an cient arms were replaced by gigantic show halberds with handles covered with crimson velvet, studded with yellow leather and ornamented with red silk fringes and shining steel on which are engraved fruits, victories and trophies. On the landings of the staircases are statues, and fragments of antique columns with inscriptions. Even in the hall (or portico), are hung precious trophies of arms, gemmed shields and flags. The doors with casings of rare marble lead into great rooms where gold, velvet and silk reflect the light in a thousand ways upon the walls adorned with pictures by celebrated Venetian masters. The notices on the works of design of the first half of the Sixteenth Century, by an anon ymous author believed to be Marc Antoine Michiel, and published by Morelli, show us the quantity of admirable works with which the walls then had to be hung. SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE JOHN RUSKIN SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE," Our Lady of Health, or of Safety, would be a more literal trans lation, yet not perhaps fully expressing the force of the Italian word in this case. The church was built between 1630 and 1680, in acknowledgment of the cessation of the plague: — of course to the Virgin, to whom the modern Italian has recourse in all his principal distresses, and who receives his gratitude for all principal deliverances. The hasty traveller is usually enthusiastic in his admiration of this building; but there is a notable lesson to be derived from it which is not often read. On the opposite side of the broad canal of the Giudecca is a small church celebrated among Renaissance architects as of Palladean design, but which would hardly attract the notice of the general observer, unless on account of the pictures by John Bellini which it contains, in order to see which the traveller may perhaps remember having been taken across the Giudecca to the Church of the " Redentore." But he ought carefully to compare these two buildings with each other, the one built " to the Virgin," the other " to the Redeemer," also a votive offering after the cessation of the plague of 1576: the one, the most conspicuous church in Venice, its dome, the principal one by which she is first discerned, rising out of the distant 91 92 VENICE sea ; the other, small and contemptible, on a suburban island, and only becoming an object of interest, because it contains three small pictures! For in relative magnitude and con- spicuousness of these two buildings, we have an accurate index of the relative importance of the ideas of the Madonna and of Christ in the modern Italian mind. The Church of Santa Maria della Salute on the Grand Canal, one of the earliest buildings of the Grotesque Renais sance, is rendered impressive by its position, size, and general proportions. These latter are exceedingly good ; the grace of the whole building being chiefly dependent on the inequality of size in its cupolas, and pretty grouping of the two cam paniles behind them. It is to be generally observed that the proportions of buildings have nothing whatever to do with the style or general merits of their architecture. An arch itect trained in the worst schools, and utterly devoid of all meaning or purpose in his work, may yet have such a natural gift of massing and grouping as will render all his structures effective when seen from a distance: such a gift is very gen eral with late Italian builders, so that many of the most contemptible edifices in the country have good stage effect so long as we do not approach them. The Church of the Salute is farther assisted by the beautiful flight of steps in front of it down to the Canal ; and its fagade is rich and beautiful of its kind, and was chosen by Turner for the principal object in his well-known view of the Grand Canal. The principal faults of the building are the meagre windows in the sides of the cupola, and the ridiculous disguise of the SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE 93 buttresses under the form of colossal scrolls; the buttresses themselves being originally a hypocrisy, for the cupola is stated by Lanzi to be of timber, and therefore needs none. The sacristy contains several precious pictures: the three on its roof by Titian, much vaunted, are indeed as feeble as they are monstrous; but the small Titian, St. Mark, with Sts. Cosmo and Damian, was, when I first saw it, to my judg ment, by far the first work' of Titian's in Venice. It has since been restored by the Academy, and it seemed to me en tirely destroyed, but I had not time to examine it carefully. At the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated the tomb of the Doge Francesco Dandolo; and at the side of it, one of the most highy finished Tintorets in Venice, namely The Marriage in Carta, an immense picture, some twenty-five feet long by fifteen feet high, and said by Lanzi to be one of the few which Tintoret signed with his THE RIALTO CHARLES YRIARTE THE Rialto is one of the most popular names of Venice, and the one that, with the Lido, recurs most frequently in her history and popular songs. Originally, the spot where the Rialto rises was the heart of Venice, one of those islets of that group of islands which at a later period were to form Venice (Rivo- Alto) ; and the Rialto, as the old chronicles say, designated in a general way the site of the city. It was for a long time the only bridge thrown across the Grand Canal, serving as communication between the two large groups of islands divided by this Canal. From time immemorial (at least from the Twelfth Century), there was a wooden foot-bridge there, constantly repaired, until the day when the Signory, deciding to make the Rialto harmonise with the beautiful monuments of Venice, resolved to call the aid of the great architects and engineers of the time. I have had the curiosity to search in the archives of Venice for sketches relating to the Rialto ; the documents are extremely numerous, but do not go back further than the beginning of the Sixteenth Century; they give, however, most interesting details upon the construction of the bridge that exists to-day and original matter enough to gather the 94 oH < wIh THE RIALTO 95 history of the construction. For everything concerning the state of the building, or the history of the spot itself before the Sixteenth Century, recourse must be had to the Venetian chroniclers, and first of all to Sansovino. It is thought that from the Eighth Century, the necessity was felt for a more rapid means of passage between the groups of islands than by means of boats, and that, at a period which naturally remains uncertain but which must have been contemporary with the building of St. Mark's, a bridge composed of flat boats called soleole was formed at the Rialto. In 1 180, an engineer, Barattieri, whose name has been preserved, made of this temporary bridge a permanent one, and in 1 260, the system of boats being definitively suppressed, piles were driven in and abutments constructed to bear, not a stone bridge, as some historians say, but a draw-bridge ; and this is the bridge represented in Carpaccio's famous picture, The Patriarch of Grado healing one possessed by an Evil Spirit, which is in the Academy of Venice. In 1310, on the occasion of the conspiracy of Bajamonte Tiepolo, at the moment when the conspirators were about to seize the Ducal Palace, having found St. Mark's Place guarded, they fled precipitately to the other side of the Canal, and cut the bridge behind them to make their flight sure. Naturally, the bridge had to be rebuilt at once, but the Work was done too rapidly, and a little more than a century later, on the occasion of the marriage of the Marquis of Ferrara, the festival was so uproarious that the bridge gave way under the crowd and serious injuries resulted. This being the only passage it was 96 VENICE too useful to remain interrupted for long; and they sub stituted for the broken bridge a large edifice filled up with shops on either side of the footway, and a water-passage for the large boats. It is very interesting to see the real appearance of the Rialto of that time in the fine canvas of Carpaccio that I have just mentioned ; here is an invaluable bit of evidence for the history of Venetian architecture. One might have ex pected the reconstructed bridge to be permanent ; but any one who knows Venice and her history intimately will under stand that the perpetual traffic demanded a still more sub stantial construction. The Fondaco dei Tedeschi rises on the right, the palaces of Camerlenghi on the left; the Fabbriche nuove, and the jewellers who have their shops there and the fish and vegetable vendors who are collected on either bank create such a continual going and coming that a very strong bridge is required to resist the strain. From 1525, nothing but complaints were heard about the precarious condition of this important bridge, and promises were made to substitute a durable edifice. Nothing was done till 1587 ; Fra Giocondo, the designer of Gaillon and the bridge of Notre-Dame, had once submitted a plan; Palladio had also made one in his turn; at last, on the 6th of December, 1587, the Senate invited a competition. As customary in Venice, a commission of inquiry was nominated, composed of three personages, all senators, whose especial task was to collect in formation and look for the anterior plans signed by Giorgio Spaventi, Fra Giocondo, Scarpa Guino, Jacopo Sansovino, THE RIALTO 97 Andrea Palladio, Jacopo Barroccio da Vignola, and, it is said, by the great Michelangelo. The best proof of the truth of the assertion that Michel angelo submitted a plan for this bridge, is furnished by the subject of a painting that adorns the Casa Buonarroti at Flor ence and which represents Michelangelo being received with honour by the Doge Andrea Gritti, and presenting to him a drawing for the Bridge of the Rialto. Of the twenty-four plans of architects and engineers the committee pointed out to the Senate and Grand Council, the three that seemed most worthy, Scamozzi, Antonio da Ponte and Albisio Baldu. The work was entrusted to Da Ponte; it took three years to build and cost two hundred and fifty thousand ducats, or thirty thousand pounds of English money, which, at that time, was a considerable sum. Sansovino says that ten thousand pounds of elm timber would have to be driven in to a depth of sixteen feet; a large armed galley should be able to pass under the keystone of the arch with lowered mast, and withal the height of the bridge should not be great enough to render the communication between the two quarters of the town difficult. The platform of the bridge is about twenty-four metres long; it is reached by an easy ascent of steps, and is wide enough to hold a row of shops under arcades, so that in reality it is a kind of suspended street, as lively as a market. The central arcade is left clear and forms an open gallery over the keystone of the bridge; between the parapet and the shops runs a balustraded passage supported on strongly pro- 9 8 VENICE jecting corbels. The span of the arch is twenty-seven metres, fifty centimetres, and its rise, from the usual level of the waters of the Grand Canal, measures seven metres. The traveller who delights to linger on St. Mark's Place in the Basilica, at the Ducal Palace, and in the museums and churches should also halt long and frequently upon the Rialto; for it is certainly a unique corner: here crowd together, laden with fruit and vegetables, the black boats that come from the islands to provision Venice, the great hulls laden with cocomeri, angurie, with gourds and watermelons piled in coloured mountains; here, the gondolas jostle and the gondoliers chatter like birds in their Venetian idiom; here, too, are the fishermen in their busy, noisy, black market, an assemblage of strange craft and types of humanity; and as a pleasant contrast, on the steps of the bridge and stopping before the jewellers' shops are the girls, from the different quarters of Venice, from Canareggio, Dorso Duro, San Marco and Santa Croce, and from every quarter of the town, come to buy the coloured neckerchiefs with which they deck themselves, and jewellery of delicately worked gold, bright glass beads. from Murano, or glass balls iridescent with green, blue and rose; while, wrapped in their old grey shawls that allow their wrinkled profiles and silvery locks to be seen, the old women of the Rialto drag their sandals over the steps and slip into the crowd, hiding under the folds of their aprons the strange food they have just bought from the open air vendors who sell their wares on the borders of the Rialto. THE CA' D'ORO MAX DOUMIC THIS little palace on the Grand Canal known as the Ca' d'Oro1 is one of the most charming buildings in Venice. It is one of the most striking speci mens of that Venetian architecture which is the result of so many different influences that you can find neither laws nor principles, and which, though often disconcerting, always charms, perhaps indeed because it is subject to neither laws nor principles and permits the eye to be fascinated idly by the harmony of the design and the colour. The history of the Ca' d'Oro is very obscure, at least its early history. It is thought that it received its name from the fact that its ornaments were originally gilded, traces of gilding being still found on the little lions that decorate the corners of the roof. Then others have attributed this ap pellation to the admiring tribute of a people possessed of a lively and poetic imagination. It seems far more probable, however, that this palace was built by the Doro family, and that this family becoming extinct in 1355 with Nicola Doro, condemned to death for having been concerned in Marino Faliero's conspiracy, popular tradition, while preserving the name of the palace, changed the origin of the name. This hypothesis seems to be confirmed by those golden lions which *Ca d'Oro is the abbreviation of Casa d'Oro, the golden house, 99 ioo VENICE ornament the fagade, for the arms of the Doro family was a golden lion on a silver field. After the sentence of Nicola Doro, his palace was con fiscated by the Republic. It is supposed that it was given as a present to Pandolfe Malatesta, lord of Rimini, for it is well known that the Senate gave him a palace after he had ceded his seigniory to the Republic, and moreover, Pandolfe's shield is found over a stairway leading to the second floor in the Ca' d'Oro. Official deeds tell us that this palace be longed to the Contarini and then to the Marcello, and about the middle of the Seventeenth Century it passed to the Betti- gnoli family. In the Nineteenth Century the celebrated Taglioni lived in it. The architecture of the Ca' d'Oro has afforded much play to the imagination of archaeologists, who, finding so many styles and influences here are too puzzled to classify it and dare not assign a date. In truth it is better not to fix a date for it and not to try to classify it at all. It is one of those old buildings that have been successively transformed by differ ent generations: Time has covered these changes with its marvellous rust made of sunshine and dew and has harmon ised them into a magnificent spectacle, and we ought to ad mire this spectacle as we admire a landscape without inquiring how it is made, and as we admire flowers without asking the age of the tree that bears them nor the tissues of which they are composed. The Ca' d'Oro is of this class, and we will now see how we are reduced to hypotheses as soon as we begin to analyse it. B f -nns i*i-g'*s^yj*,'g-y*y.»j*L-iA>ai*nAl'iii****4»ia* THE CA' D'ORO THE CA' D'ORO 101 We are struck by the lack of symmetry in this little palace composed of two parts in juxtaposition, one of which is all open-work and the other gives the impression of a solid wall ; we seek for an axis and it has been supposed that in the orig inal plan the doors were intended to be in the centre of the composition and should be flanked on the left by a wing simi lar to that which exists on the right, and that on account of lack of money or difficulties with the neighbours, this wing was never built. This is hardly possible. It is difficult to admit that such a palace would have been constructed until all the necessary ground was acquired. If we hold to the idea that the plan was originally a symmetrical conception, we may suppose, on the contrary, that it originally had two wings. We know that the Contarini sold one part of their palace to Alvise Loredano and another part to the Marcello; the left wing would therefore be separated, and, passing to other owners, might have disappeared in the Seventeenth Century to make room for a new building. These, however, are only conjectures made according to modern ideas. In the Middle Ages, in Venice, as in France, they never thought of com posing a fagade according to any determined order; every body planned his house according to his individual needs, and the fagade was the natural expression of the interior arrangement. Examples are not lacking in Venice ; the large windows that ornament the fagades of the Doge's Palace on the Piazzetta and on the Riva degli Schiavoni have no axis and the other bays are not symmetrically disposed. There is every reason to believe that the Ca' d'Oro never was sym- 102 VENICE metrical, and that its architects did not consider its lack of symmetry a defect. And now what style shall we connect it with? At the first glance we discover that the ground floor is of the Twelfth Century; the first of the Thirteenth, and the second of the Fourteenth ; but this division is far from being clear. The composition will not permit us to admit that the palace is made of scraps of all kinds; we feel a style subsisting under all the changes; however, it is certain that the arches of the ground floor are not of the character as the capital they surmount, and the same thing occurs on the loggia of the second floor. In fact, this palace must date from the Twelfth Century, perhaps the Eleventh, but it was altered and almost entirely remodelled in the suc ceeding centuries. Of the original building only a few bits are left; the capitals of the loggia on the ground floor, some of the balustrades and certain details of sculpture that are imbedded in the walls of the wing. As for the shafts of the columns, they must have come from older buildings, to judge by the diversity of marbles they exhibit: marbles from Greece, brocatello and paronazzetto. The gallery of the first floor, dating from the Thirteenth Century, is the most perfect part, but it has been changed; the corners of the mouldings instead of turning round naturally, as they do in the upper part, are brusquely and awkwardly cut, and are spoiled by the neighbouring windows which seem to have been enlarged. The columns of the gallery on the second floor are crowned by arches that are thin in design, dry THE CA' D'ORO 103 and out of scale. The old cornice has been mutilated, but the few traces that remain of it show that it was made under the Arab influence, in imitation of the stalactitic cornices. And so the architecture of the Ca' d'Oro has followed the history of Venetian architecture itself. It is certain that this palace was in its full splendour in the Thirteenth Century, and if we have the right to regret anything at all, it is that it has not survived as it was during this period. Is it necessary to add that here, as elsewhere, the most recent transformations have been the most unhappy? These are the projecting balconies that cut the ensemble and dis figure it, and the two twin windows with which the ground floor of the wing has been pierced. THE FONDACO DEI TURCHI AND THE FONDACO DEI TEDESCHI CHARLES YRIARTE FROM the Thirteenth Century, the Venetians had acquired such progress in commerce and had made such numerous treaties with the peoples of Europe and Asia that at certain periods the city was filled with strangers, attracted by exchange and commerce and who were entertained by their business acquaintances. The Sen ate anxious to develop everything that might contribute to the glory or wealth of Venice wished to facilitate the sojourn of all these strangers by establishing fondachi, or caravanserais, where they might be lodged gratuitously by presenting themselves to special magistrates, whose duty was to establish their identity and importance. The Ger mans were the first to have their Fondaco, which was situated on the Rialto itself and many times rebuilt, and of which, unfortunately only a mass of modern and characterless appearance is now to be seen. Three nobles, with the title of Vis Domini, presided over the administration of establishments of this kind; there was a public weigher who took note of the weights and nature of the merchandise and classified it in the warehouses that belonged to the Fondaco. This was on the same principle as our docks with the exception that the owners of the 104 THE FONDACO DEI TURCHI FONDACO DEI TURCHI 105 cargo were lodged in the building itself at the expense of the State. Next in importance to the weigher came the Fon- ticaio, or keeper of the building. In this same Thirteenth Century the Armenians were also favoured by the govern ment; but a certain Marco Ziani, nephew of the Doge Sebastian, who had a deep affection for them, because his family had lived in Armenia for a long time, bequeathed to them his palace, the Ziani Palace, in the street of San Giuliano. The Moors also had their Fondaco, near the Madonna del Orto on the Campo dei Mori, where a number of houses enriched with carvings of camels bearing merchandise and figures in Moorish costume may yet be seen. The Turks, in the Seventeenth Century received for their share that superb palace on the Grand Canal which still bears the name Fondaco dei Turchi, and which the city has restored as the civic Correr Museum; this palace, one of the oldest and most curious in Venice, and which must be contemporary with the Ducal Palace and the fagade of St. Mark's facing the lagoon, belonged to the Duke of Ferrara; but long before this, from the Fourteenth Cen tury, the Turks had been provided for by the State in the street called Canareggio, and later in that of San Giovanni e Paolo, near the statue of Colleoni, one of the most beau tiful spots in Venice, where the wonderful church of San Giovanni e Paolo stands. But it must not be forgotten that these Turks, so useful from a commercial point of view, were infidels, therefore the windows of their fondaco were or- 106 VENICE dered to be walled up; the rooms were lighted from an interior patio; an enclosing wall was erected, the two corner turrets, which might serve for defence, were razed, and a Catholic warder was stationed there who shut the doors at sunset. Women and children were forbidden to cross the threshold, arms and powder were deposited in a safe place in front of the entrance; and finally, to complete this series of prohibitions, it was forbidden to lodge an Ottoman in the city. The Tuscans, who, as every one knows, were great mer chants, and had become very wealthy by means of their banks and counting-houses, had their Fondaco on the Rialto; and the people of Lucca had theirs in the Via Bissa, in that part of town lying between the Rialto and San Giovanni Crisostomo. The Greeks and Syrians were so numerous and on such good terms with the Venetians, that they lived all over the city. As for the Jews, who could not be excluded because of their peculiar aptitude for trade, they had been subjected to innumerable restrictions. As early as the Sixth Century they had arrogated the monopoly of money-changing, and the greater number of the princes, considering their own interests, encouraged them to live in their cities. In the Thirteenth Century, the Lombards and the Florentines had in their turn succeeded in getting the monopoly of large trans actions; envy arose against those who were amassing and preserving such immense wealth; and finally the spirit of the Crusades, in awaking Christian sentiment, had also FONDACO DEI TURCHI 107 excited public animosity against the Jews; Venice remained open to them and in profiting from this they perhaps abused this privilege, for we soon find them forced to take refuge at Mestre, the little country where to-day the railways from the north and south converge to enter Venice. But banks properly speaking did not yet exist; pawn-shops were not known, and, consequently, with a view to developing petty as well as large commercial interests and of encour aging business generally, the Senate decided to re-admit the Jews to the city. The time of their sojourn was limited, and they were compelled to wear a mark by which they could be recognised, which at first consisted of a piece of yellow material sewn on the breast, for which afterwards a yellow bonnet was substituted and later a bonnet the upper part of which was covered with red. They were for bidden to buy houses, lands or even furniture, or to practice noble arts (except, indeed, medicine). Cruel to these men, whom they sought out for their proverbial intelligence and by whose abilities they profited, the Senate assigned them, as at Rome, a special district to live in, the Corte delle Galli, between the streets of San Girolamo and San Geremia ; they also gave it the customary name of Ghetto. They were obliged to pay dearly even for this unhealthy abode, and a wall was built around it to separate them from other citizens; they were exactly in the position that the Jews of Morocco are in to-day, forced to close their doors from sunrise to sunset, and with two Catholic warders paid out of their own money to keep watch over the place. On 108 VENICE holidays they were strictly forbidden to go out. Two armed ships guarded their outlets to the sea. They could not have a synagogue in Venice and were forced to go to Mestre, and for their burial-ground, they were grudgingly accorded an arid strip of beach on the lagoon. We are, however, not concerned with the condition of the Jews in Venice, but merely with their commercial rela tions towards the subjects of the Republic; let us, therefore, return to the fondachi, or residences granted by the State to the representatives of foreign trade. Two fondachi have become famous and still remain in existence: that of the Turks and that of the Germans. The Fondaco dei Turchi still stands to-day on the Grand Canal, at San Giacomo dell' Orio. Those who visited Venice thirty years ago, must have noticed, when going along the Grand Canal, this ancient building with its open loggia on the first story, ornamented with marble columns having Byzantine capitals. This an tique fagade, entirely covered with slabs of Greek marble and encrusted with circular escutcheons, was falling into ruin, and earth and moss were filling the interstices. During the long hours of the day, the Turkish custodian who still lived there, might be seen silently leaning against the last arch of the loggia in Oriental immobility, indifferent to the gondolas passing and repassing and upon which his eye rested without noticing them. A poet, unac quainted with that Oriental indifference, which looks like reverie and which does not engender a single dream, would FONDACO DEI TURCHI 109 have said that his eyes were full of sorrow, and that he was musing on the Past and of the ancient glory of Venice. This building, known by the name of Fondaco dei Turchi, was built in the Thirteenth Century by the family of the Palmieri of Pesaro. Pietro Pesaro, the last embassador of the Venetian Republic at Rome and the last of his name, could not bear to see the downfall of his country, and died in exile. The Pesaro were not always masters of this build ing. In 1 33 1, it was bought by the Republic and given to the Marquises of Este, lords of Briare. Later, when they became the Dukes of Este, they gave in this building those splendid fetes in which Ariosto and Tasso figured. Pope Clement VIII. took possession of the beautiful do mains of the Dukes of Ferrara, and gave them to his nephew, Cardinal Aldobrandini, who, in 1618, sold them to Antonio Priuli, Doge of Venice. The Republic, seeking a favour able locality for the sale of Turkish merchandise, hired Antonio Priuli's palace, which thus became the residence of the Turks and the depot of their merchandise. Extremely severe laws regulated its establishment. Finally, the Fon daco came back into the possession of the Pesaro, Maria Prioli having bought it as a dowry to her husband Leonardo Pesaro, Procurator of St. Mark's. The last descendant of the Pesaro bequeathed the Fondaco dei Turchi to the Count Leonardo Marini, his nephew, who sold it in 1828 to a contractor, who, in his turn, ceded it in 1859 to the city of Venice, which is now the owner. Count Sagredo, a Senator, was the first to become interested in this palace. no VENICE He wrote an excellent monograph upon it, in which the portions relating to art were treated by the skilful architect Frederic Berchet, who with great care and true feeling, proposed plans for restoring it. The commission under the direction of the first Count Alessandro Marcello, and then of Count Luigi Benito, welcomed the project; the latter began the execution of it, which was carried on with precision and promptitude. In addition to the Chevalier Berchet, who made a great reputation for himself by this work, we should mention the superintendent of the work, Sebastian Cadet, and the sculptor, Jacopo Spura, who re stored the ancient marbles and preserved all their artistic distinction. After so many vicissitudes, this ancient build ing, so intelligently restored, is now to remain forever the Museum of Venice. The Fondaco of the Germans (Fondaco dei Tedeschi), has been so disfigured by successive restorations that it is necessary to consult history and also to make an effort of the imagination, before you can bring yourself to give atten tion to this large and massive palace, deprived of ornamen tation, without elegance of form and without proportion, that rises on the left of the Rialto Bridge coming from the railway. Tradition says that at the beginning of the Six teenth Century, its exterior was splendidly decorated with frescoes from the brushes of Giorgione and Titian. This is the first we hear of Giorgione's name as the decorator of the exterior of a palace; but as the Senate d'ordine pub- blico had decided to ornament the fondaco, it is quite certain FONDACO DEI TURCHI in that the famous Barbarelli, that great poet of colour and form, would have been employed. It would be interesting to search the official records in the archives of the Frari for the financial accounts of the Fondaco, which should certainly be there, and learn if really these great lords and politicians employed Giorgione's genius for this work. But without turning over the leaves of the archives, we may accept the assertions of the great writers and the mono graphs on Venice, that speak of having still in their time seen this splendid decoration, defaced and ruined indeed, but still showing the incontestable marks of this master's genius. Selvatico has left an account of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi; he attributes this building to Fra Giocondo, the famous Dominican who built the Consular Palace at Verona, and the Chateau de Gaillon in Normandy, one fagade of which has been transported to the court of the ficole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It seems that from time immemorial the Fondaco existed on its present site, and when, in 1540, a considerable fire destroyed the building, the Senate, anx ious to show its interest in the cause of commerce in general, and also for a nation to which Venice had been bound by close commercial relations for many centuries, ordered that a new building of a regular form should be rebuilt. But, if Selvatico pretends that Fra Giocondo was the architect chosen by the Signory, other documents show that Giro- lamo Tedesco was given the order. After describing the building and its position on the Grand Canal, with its en trance to the sea and its flight of stairs on the water for 112 VENICE unloading the merchandise, Selvatico expresses himself in words that leave no doubt as to the richness of the decora tion : " The profile of the windows is poor, but they are arranged symmetrically enough to produce a simple and noble effect; and indeed they needed no further ornament, since all the plain parts of the walls were covered with splendid frescoes by Giorgione and Titian, frescoes that have been almost entirely destroyed by the hand of man and the agency of time together. At the two angles of the fagade overlooking the canal, there once stood two towers, upon which might be read two important inscriptions. But a few years ago, when the building was restored, the two towers were overthrown, the inscriptions effaced, and what is still more irreparable, two magnificent figures by Gior gione which might be regarded as the best preserved of all, were destroyed." VIEW FROM THE CAMPANILE HENRY HAVARD IET us ascend the Campanile. This has its one entrance on the Piazza opposite the Procuratie -* Vecchie. Formerly this entrance was carefully guarded, for the Campanile was to some degree the belfry of the city. The great bells at its summit, which we shall presently see, were charged with calling the citizens to arms, to announce danger to the troops and to inform the arsenalotti to mount guard. The possession of the Cam panile was a guarantee of the security of the Ducal govern ment. Therefore, during every conspiracy that broke out in Venice, the conspirators tried to seize it: some, like Querini, Tiepolo and Marino Faliero, so as to ring the bells; others, like the Count of Bedemar, to be assured of their silence. But, it is quite remarkable that neither one nor the other was able to succeed in this plan: the Cam panile remained ever faithful to those whom its mission was to protect. The first platform, the one in which the bells are found, is eighty metres high. But do not be alarmed; the ascent is not very fatiguing. The Campanile in reality is com posed of two square towers placed one upon another joined by a flight of stairs of easy slope and which has but one step at each turn. It is a passage of slight inclination upon "3 114 VENICE which you could mount on horseback and climb up to the very top by this means more easily and with less risks than the gondolier Santo. However, let us hasten to re mark that it is hardly out of consideration for those quad rupeds almost unknown in Venice, that the Campanile was thus constructed. Neither was it for the poor ecclesiastics who had to expiate their crimes midway up the monument, for they never went by this path to their aerial prison. They were shut up in a wooden cage at the foot of the tower and thence hoisted half way up to the summit. Ac customed to all kinds of intemperance, they now had no provision but bread and water, and were left for long months in this place to meditate upon the fragility of human dignity and to contemplate at their pleasure the splendours of nature. Then they were brought down to receive some fresh provisions and taken back again until they had ex piated their transgressions. But while chattering, we have reached the first platform. Attention now! First we are dazzled ! This is certainly one of the most marvellous panoramas in the whole world that suddenly breaks upon us. Let us first look at the Adriatic side: at our feet is the Ducal Palace, the old Library, the Riva degli Schiavoni, and the Zecca; all these are embraced in one glance, but so small indeed that the buildings look like marble coffers whose covers are plated with lead, and the large columns of the Piazzetta, with the lion and saint sur mounting them, appear to be two granite ninepins, or still better two pieces borrowed from a huge chess-board. All VIEW FROM THE CAMPANILE VIEW FROM CAMPANILE 115 around us we perceive restless movement like a swarm of ants, — these are the promenaders enjoying the freshness of the morning; then on the water black blots with red cen tres, — these are the barks that are crowding each other the whole length of the Piazzetta. Farther away the gondolas spin over the emerald sea leaving a silvery track behind them, and from this height you would say that they are insects that are skimming over the surface of the water. Still further away, the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, with its elegant church and its heavy barracks, has the look of ship stranded at the port of entrance. Its marble fagade, its round dome, and its rose-coloured walls com placently reflect themselves in the transparent waves which come to leave the print of their wet green kisses upon its white steps. To the right, the Giudecca winds majestically, display ing its granite quays, its variegated roofs, its houses and its churches. Nearer the Dogana di Mare advances proudly into the sea. Its columns, its statues and its golden dome which glitters in the sunshine gloriously mark the entrance to the Grand Canal; and behind it, the Salute, with its elegant dome, its enormous volutes and its marble steps, seems to watch over the health of the city. To the left is that marvellous horn that we have admired when coming in from the Adriatic. Formed by the Riva degli Schiavoni and the palaces that border it, then by the Ca di Dio and San Bragio quays, with their picturesque dwellings, it is terminated by the public garden which lifts 116 VENICE up its great round masses of foliage and its green cones behind a marble balustrade. This mass of verdure worthily ends this superb promontory and majestically shuts out the horizon ; and this great basin, with its girdle of temples and palaces has the appearance of a magic cup filled to the brim with joy and pleasure. Then beyond this enclosure of marble and verdure extends the immense lagoon, with San Lazzaro, and the old Lazaret, Santa Elena, and Santa Elisabetta, the Grazia, San Spirito and San Clemente, gaily situated in the midst of green waves. And farther away, indeed quite far, behind Malamocco and its narrow littrorale, behind Pelestrina, which is lost in the mist, the Adriatic with its tender reflections, with its undecided horizon, the Adriatic of an indescribable sweetness, forms the back ground of this superb picture. Let us take a look on the other side now. If the spectacle is less beautiful, less pompous and less splendid, it is not less interesting. Here is a mass of red and grey roofs, a large collection of tiles, slate and lead an inextricable confusion of lines that cross and mingle and cut one another in every sense. To see such a number of houses crowded and heaped together in such a narrow space, it seems that they must have been thrown there at haphazard without any order, systematic plan, or preconceived idea. There are no streets, no canals, no squares. Every now and then there is the fagade of a church, the cornice of a palace, or the gallery of a cloister. Then come campaniles, towers, belfries and Steeples. Do not try to count them, for this would be a VIEW FROM CAMPANILE 117 tiresome task. Formerly Venice numbered two hundred churches; to-day, hardly ninety are in working-order. But if the clergy have departed, the steeples remain, and still throw their shadows upon the neighbouring houses. Their leaning spires dominate the confused heap of roofs and ter races, and these succeed one another without interruption until the sea comes brusquely to interrupt everything with its silver girdle. At the foot of the Campanile we perceive the square of St. Mark's with its galleries and promenaders, its white flags that look like a chessboard and its pigeons that blot it with black spots. Then comes the church with its mo saics on a golden background, shining in the sun, with all its columns and its swelling dome. Then the clock-tower, with its golden lion, its starry dial and its bronze giants that seem to be pygmies. Those are tall masts that seem to be rods. Then if we suddenly lift our eyes beyond the houses, palaces, belfries and churches, there are the lagoons and the green sea with its silvery reflections, sprinkled with islands, with Murano, which seems to be a miniature Venice, and with the cemetery which you would take for a flower- garden. To the right, to the left, — everywhere, there are batteries and ports to protect the approaches to the city. There are San Giacomo, Tessera and Campalto, which by their crossed fire rendered Venice impregnable. There are the batteries of Rossarol, San Antonio and San Marco which isolated her from the mainland and rendered access im possible. 1 1 8 VENICE Beyond the Malghera fort, do you not see Mestre, then Spinea, Zellarino, Tavaro, Gambaraze and their clock- towers? And behind, losing themselves in the transparent mist, the bronzed Alps with their crowns of snow and the bluish peaks of the Vizentine Mountains. If the sky and atmosphere were clearer, we could see the Gulf of Trieste, the coasts of Istria and the Italian coast from the Po di Goro as far as Tagliamento. Perhaps, indeed, with " the eyes of faith," we might like the President of the Brosses perceive " Epirus and Macedonia, Greece, the Archipelago, Constantinople, the sultan's favourite and His Royal High ness toying with her." But let us not complain. It is this luminous haze that gives Venice that intensity of colour that charms us. It is that which intercepting the rays of the sun spreads around us that golden dust. Let us bless it then with all our might and be content with the marvels that unfold beneath our eyes. ST MARK'S JOHN RUSKIN A YARD or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moise, whence to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the frightful fagade of San Moise, and then by the modernising of the shops as they near the Piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging groups of English and Aus trians. We will push fast through them into the shadow of the pillars at the end of the " Bocca di Piazza," and then we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong themselves into ranged sym metry, as if the rugged and irregular houses that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and broken walls had been transformed into 119 1 20 VENICE arches charged with goodly sculpture and fluted shafts of delicate stone. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away ; — a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long, low pyramid of coloured light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clecr as amber and delicate as ivory, — sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morn ing light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, " their bluest veins to kiss " — the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, **— ST. MARK'S 121 rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continu ous chain of language and of life — angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labours of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above them, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers, — a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the restless crowd, hoarse- voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. And what effect has this splendour on those who pass beneath it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St. Mark's, and you will not 122 VENICE see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their coun ters; nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats — not " of them that sell doves " for sacrifice, but of vendors of toys and caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the Aus trian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes, — the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening around them, — a crowd which, if it had its will, would stiletto every sol dier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unem ployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children, — every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing, — gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it continually. That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this, let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean d'Acre, we shall find the gate of the Baptistery; let us enter there. The heavy ST. MARK'S 123 door closes behind us instantly, and the light and the tur bulence of the Piazzetta, are together shut out by it. Let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before the form of the building can be traced ; and then there opens before us a vast cave hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colours along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels ; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and overhead, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream ; forms beau tiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolised together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and change ful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and 124 VENICE carved in every place and upon every stone; sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, " Mother of God," she is not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the darker places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number of the re nowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged ges tures; but the step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor ST. MARK'S 125 of the temple, and then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church as if comforted. The perception of colour is a gift just as definitely granted to one person and denied to another as an ear for music; and the very first requisite for true judgment for St. Mark's, is the perfection of that colour-faculty which few people ever set themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. For it is on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable colouring, that the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested ; and a deaf man might as well pretend to pronounce judgment on the merits of a full orchestra, as an architect trained in the composi tion of form only, to discern the beauty of St. Mark's. It would be easier to illustrate a crest of Scottish moun tain, with its purple heather and pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest, with its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's. The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the interstices between their interwoven bands of marble are filled with colours like the illuminations of a manu script; violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green alternately: but no green is ever used without an intermixture of blue pieces in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale green ; sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of an inch square, so subtle was the feeling for colour which was thus to be satisfied. The intermediate circles have I26 VENICE golden stars set on an azure ground, varied in the same manner; and the small crosses seen in the intervals are alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small circles of white set in the golden ground above and beneath them, each only about half an inch across (this work, remember, being on the outside of the building, and twenty feet above the eye) , while the blue crosses have each a pale green centre. From the vine-leaves of that archivolt, though there is no direct imitation of nature in them, but on the contrary a studious subjection to architectural purpose, we may yet receive the same kind of pleasure which we have in seeing true vine-leaves and wreathed branches traced upon golden light; its stars upon their azure ground ought to make us remember, as its builder remembered, the stars that ascend and fall in the great arch of the sky : and I believe that stars, and boughs, and leaves, and bright colours are everlastingly lovely and to be by all men beloved; and, moreover, that church walls grimly seared with squared lines, are not better nor nobler things than these. I believe the man who designed and the men who delighted in that archivolt to have been wise, happy, and holy. Now there is one circumstance to which I must direct the reader's special attention, as performing a notable dis tinction between ancient and modern days. Our eyes are now familiar and wearied with writing; and if an inscrip tion was put upon a building, unless it be large and clear, it is ten to one whether we ever trouble ourselves to decipher it. But the old architect was sure of readers. He knew that ST. MARK'S 127 every one would be glad to decipher all that he wrote; that they would rejoice in possessing the vaulted leaves of his stone manuscript; and that the more he gave them, the more grateful would the people be. We must take some pains, therefore, when we enter St. Mark's, to read all that is inscribed, or we shall not penetrate into the feeling either of the builder or of his times. On the vault be tween the first and second cupolas are represented the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, with the usual series of intermediate scenes, — the treason of Judas, the judg ment of Pilate, the crowning with thorns, the descent into Hades, the visit of the women to the Sepulchre, and the apparition to Mary Magdalene. The second cupola itself, which is the central and principal one of the church, is entirely occupied by the subject of the Ascension. At the highest point of it Christ is represented as rising into the blue heaven, borne up by four angels, and throned upon a rainbow, the type of reconciliation. Beneath him, the twelve apostles are seen upon the Mount of Olives, with the Ma donna, and, in the midst of them, the two men in white apparel who appeared at the moment of the Ascension, above whom, as uttered by them, are inscribed the words: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven ? This Christ, the Son of God, as He is taken from you, shall so come, the arbiter of the earth, trusted to do judgment and justice." Beneath the circle of apostles, between the windows of the cupola, are represented the Christian virtues, as sequent 128 VENICE upon the crucifixion of the flesh, and the spiritual ascension together with Christ. Beneath them on the vaults which support the angles of the cupola, are placed the four Evangelists, because on their evidence our assurance of the fact of the ascension rests; and, finally, beneath their feet, as symbols of the sweetness and fulness of the Gospel which they declared, are represented by the four rivers of Para dise, Pison, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the wit ness of the Old Testament to Christ; showing him en throned in its centre and surrounded by the patriarchs and prophets. But this dome was little seen by the people; their contemplation was intended to be chiefly drawn to that of the centre of the church, and thus the mind of the worshipper was at once fixed on the main groundwork and hope of Christianity — " Christ is risen," and " Christ shall come." If he had time to explore the minor lateral chapels and cupolas, he could find in them the whole series of New Testament history, the events of the Life of Christ, and the Apostolic miracles in their order, and finally the scenery of the Book of Revelation ; but if he only entered, as often the common people do to this hour, snatching a few moments be fore beginning the labour of the day to offer up an ejacula- tory prayer, and advanced but from the main entrance as far as the altar screen, all the splendour of the glittering nave and variegated dome, if they smote upon his heart, as they might often, in strange contrast with his reed cabin among the shallows of the lagoon, smote upon it only that they ST. MARK'S 129 might proclaim the two great messages — " Christ is risen," and " Christ shall come." Daily, as the white cupolas rose like wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy campanile and frowning palace were still withdrawn into the night, they rose with the Easter Voice of Triumph — " Christ is risen " ; and daily, as they looked down upon the tumult of the people, deepening and eddying in the wide square that opened from their feet to the sea, they uttered above them the sentence of warning, — " Christ shall come." And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look with some change of temper upon the gorgeous building and wild blazonry of that shrine of St. Mark's. He now perceives that it was in the hearts of the old Venetian people far more than a place of worship. It was at once a type of the Redeemed Church of God, and a scroll for the writ ten word of God. It was to be to them, both an image of the Bride, all glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold ; and the actual Table of the Law and the Testimony, writ ten within and without. And whether honoured as the Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting that neither the gold nor the crystal should be spared in the adornment of it; that, as the symbol of the Bride, the building of the wall thereof should be of jasper, and the foundations of it garnished with all manner of precious stones; and that, as the channel of the Word, that triumphant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of it — " I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all riches " ? And shall we not look with changed temper down the long per- 1 30 VENICE spective of St. Mark's Place towards the sevenfold gates and glowing domes of its temple, when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts of it were lifted above the pave ment of the populous square? Men met there from all countries of the earth, for traffic or for pleasure; but, above the crowd swaying forever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or thirst of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the temple, attesting to them, whether they would hear or whether they would forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchantmen might buy without a price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and the statutes of God. Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain ministry to the desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the colours of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them, that once was written in blood ; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults, that one day shall fill the vault of heaven, — " He shall return, to do judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so long as she remembered this: her destruction found her when she had forgotten this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot it without excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations of the North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with confused and hardly legible imagery; but, for her the skill and the treasures of the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the Magi. THE SCULPTURES ON THE FACADES OF ST. MARK'S JEAN PAUL RICHTER IN the following attempt to investigate the principal or west fagade, as well as the north and south lateral fagades of St. Mark's, it must be understood, that no remarks will be made on the architectural construction and decorations of the church, although it would not be im possible to enter upon such a discussion of this unique monument from fresh and altered points of view. To many among those who are accustomed to look on it as a superlative work of art, or, it may be, as one of the " seven wonders of the world," this course may appear strange. We may even seem to be straying from the sub ject altogether in thus ignoring architecture when pro posing to discuss this wonder of architecture. In depreca tion of such a charge, I beg to remark beforehand that it is only a lacuna in the art literature relating to St. Mark which it is here attempted to supply. A slight examination of the reliefs on the fagade is suf ficient to show that they contain examples of the styles of eight different centuries, beginning with the Fourth. Several of them have inscriptions, but unhappily none with the names of the artists. Nor do the numerous descriptions of St. Mark's which have been published give any clue 131 I32 VENICE whatever to the origin of the reliefs. Indeed, they scarcely ever mention them. F. Sansovino, in his Venetia citta nobilissima, only says that, in the middle of the Eleventh Century, Selvo, the thirtieth Doge, first covered the walls of the church with an incrustation of finissimi marmi, and had many columns conveyed thither from Athens, various islands of Greece and the Morea. A more detailed account of a single piece of Byzantine sculpture in St. Mark's is given in the Cronica Veneta, published in the year 1736, where we read that " at the side of the altar, in a side wall of the chapel of St. Zeno, is the marble relief of the Madonna with the Infant Christ, a bas-relief executed alia Greca, and underneath it a similar work in marble, repre senting an angel. The inscription on it declares that it was discovered by the Emperor Michael Palaiologus (1260- 1283), and that the stone is alleged to be the same out of which Moses made the water to flow- The stone was discovered by the aforesaid Emperor, and brought, as the inscription on it asserts, to Constantinople, from whence the Doge Vitale Michel brought it to Venice." We see from this that after the completion of the interior the Venetians continued to collect Oriental reliefs for the adornment of the church. To do full justice to the Byzantine sculptures on the fagade of St. Mark's, we must first inquire into their history. And since the printed chronicles and descriptions of Venice afford us no information, we are compelled to have recourse to the archives of the Republic. One chronicler, indeed, who SCULPTURES ON ST. MARK'S 133 might have given us the information from documentary evidence, contents himself with the following disappointing remark: — " If I wished to give the sources of the different reliefs with which St. Mark's is adorned, I should be obliged to relate the history of all the expeditions ever undertaken by the Venetians." Unfortunately, it is only in isolated cases that we can now hazard any definite conjectures as to the origin of these treasures. Beneath the balustrade which protects the four horses there are five bas-reliefs, placed between the seven arches of the fagade. Unequal in size, they are also unequal in artistic value ; and their subjects are so different as to show plainly that it is only by chance that they have been placed together. Still in some cases, they form pendants. Those, for instance, at the extreme north and south ends of the fagade represent two of the Labours of Hercules. In the one we see the hero in a mantle hanging down upon his back; while on his left shoulder lies the Erymanthian wild boar, which he is firmly grasping, with both hands held up over his head. In the second, his attitude is the same, but he carries the hind of Diana. That these two mythological representa tions were not originally designed for the fagade of a church is self-evident. Out of the Twelve Labours of Hercules, the third and fourth, following the customary computation, have here been selected, and we may assume for certain that the tablets originally belonged to a complete series of the deeds of the hero. The remaining pieces, however, are not to be found in Venice; and from this we may conclude that t 34 VENICE the Venetians were probably not able to get possession of the entire cycle. Representations of the Labours of Hercules are not uncommon among the monuments of Greek and Roman art. But what lends a special and peculiar impor tance to the two tablets in question is the style in which they are executed. The firm drawing of the outlines, the very flat modelling, and the quick movement of the figure, at once betray the hand of a Byzantine artist. The drawing is so correct, and the composition of the figure so skilful, that it is impossible to assign them to a time later than the Fourth or Fifth Century after Christ — the age of Constantine and Theodosius, when the traditions of antiquity were still held in honour in the erection of public monuments. We are not afraid of being accused of exaggeration when we maintain that no city of the East, no museum in Europe, possesses Byzantine marble-reliefs so exquisite in conception and exe cution as these. Two other reliefs, depicting subjects from the ancient my thology, and belonging to the Byzantine epoch of art, are to be found on the south fagade of St. Mark's. First, there is a woman standing upright, enveloped in a long tunic and bear ing a crown on her head. A palm-branch is visible in her left hand, while her right, which is stretched out in front of her, holds a wreath. The emblems of the wreath and palm point to a Victory, while the crown is the distinctive mark of the tutelar goddess of a city. The figures of Victory of classic antiquity are winged, and are not so composed and dignified in their bearing as this Byzantine woman, whose solemn step SCULPTURES ON ST. MARK'S 135 recalls the archaic Greek representations of Pallas Promachos. This figure can scarcely have served for any other purpose, whether in Constantinople or any other capital of the East, than to adorn a triumphal arch. Secondly, on the same wall of the south fagade is a relief representing the sun-god in a chariot drawn by three griffins, and in all probability dating from the Ninth or Tenth Century. Among the Byzantine sculptures in the outer walls of St. Mark's, there still remain two which represent not Christian, but mythological subjects. These mythological groups con sist each of four medallions. The scenes depicted in them are partly taken from the models of classic antiquity, such as Amor riding upon a lion, and playing the flute ; two eagles, one fighting with a snake, the other seated upon a hare ; or a griffin attacking a deer. Others indicate an Asiatic influence, such as the curious group of four lions, placed two and two, facing one another, and with one head in common. Another of these medallions shows a boy with a drawn sword, fighting a lion; another, a gazelle, ridden by a naked man, with a sword in his hand. The meaning of these representations is very obscure, and they probably refer to popular traditions now fallen into oblivion. The sculptures referring to Christian belief are, as might be expected, more numerous than the mythological repre sentations on the fagade of St. Mark's, and although the subjects they contain are not, in the majority of cases, of an unusual character, they nevertheless require very careful consideration, being almost the only examples preserved to us t 3 6 VENICE of an art the monuments of which are rarely to be met with elsewhere. The principal doorway is ornamented by two bas-reliefs let into the wall, one on each side, and at first sight exactly alike. Each shows a knight, clad in a Byzan tine coat-of-mail, and seated upon a kind of throne, with a sword across his lap, which he is in the act of drawing out of the scabbard. They are St. Demetrius, pro-consul and martyr of Saloniki, and St. George, the canonised slayer of the dragon, who suffered martyrdom in Nicomedia. Of Byzantine reliefs containing single figures, there are to be found on the principal fagade of St. Mark's only a Ma donna and a figure of the archangel Michael. These too, both in execution and conception, have a character entirely their own, and diverse from Western art. Whether we go to the painting of Cimabue at Santa Croce in Florence; or to the two world-renowned pictures of the archangel by Raphael, in the Salon Carre of the Louvre ; or to the equally popular painting by Guido, in the church of the Capuchins at Rome, Michael is always the same mighty hero, with foot advanced, trampling beneath him the dragon of the ancient mythology, transfixed in head or neck by the spear. In the Byzantine relief of St. Mark's, on the contrary, the arch angel stands before us in solemn repose, as though awaiting the command of his Lord. Two mighty wings are visible on his shoulders; his right hand grasps a globe with a cross upon it, the symbol of the earth ; his left, a sceptre, or rather herald's staff, such as we find borne by the messengers of princes as early as Homer. SCULPTURES ON ST. MARK'S 137 No less interesting, even though unimportant from an artistic point of view, is the figure of the Madonna, which probably dates from about the Sixth Century. She is not associated with the infant Christ, but stands alone, upright, and stretching out both her arms in prayer, in the act of offering up intercession for those who commend themselves to her protection. This conception is entirely in accordance with the fresco paintings of the early Christian catacombs. Among the single figures of the south fagade, the most prominent are the four Evangelists, of almost life size. They are apparently productions of the Byzantine art of the Fifth Century. In their conception and execution there is nothing extraordinary. The Evangelists are continually occurring in Byzantine art, especially in illuminated man uscripts. But if we compare these with the reliefs, it is at once evident that from an artistic point of view the latter are far superior to all other representations of the same subject. Nothing can be more natural than the solemn deliberation with which these holy men are here writing down their nar ratives. The parchment roll or book in which they write, lies, in Oriental fashion, upon their knees. John is not, as in Western representations, a youth ; but an old man with a long beard ; for according to the tradition of the Church, he wrote his Gospel in extreme old age, and the Apocalypse in his earlier years; and accordingly, in the representation on St. Mark's, he is writing his Gospel on a roll on his right knee, while a closed book, evidently the Apocalypse, lies upon his left. 138 VENICE It still remains for us to describe the reliefs in which entire compositions are depicted. We may first mention some frag ments belonging to the attica of an early Christian sarcoph agus, which are let into the wall above one of the doorways of the principal fagade. They contain eleven different sub jects from the New Testament, such as the Annunciation of the Angels to the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Wise Men, the Miracle of Cana, and Christ between the Apostles Paul and Peter. We find an abundance of similar reliefs in the museums of the Papal Palaces at Rome, brought from the atria of the oldest basilicas, and, generally speaking, not in ferior in artistic value to the fragments on St. Mark's. But, notwithstanding, we must look on those of St. Mark's as unique, because they are Greek work, and of a kind of which little or nothing else has survived destruction. The care bestowed on an operation so difficult and laborious as the carving of a great number of small figures, disconnected from the background, would imply that the sarcophagus from which the fragments were taken belonged to the tomb of some great personage — a prince, perhaps even an emperor. All that is known at the present day of Byzantine art after the Seventh Century presents it to us in an unfavourable light, and the late Byzantine sculptures in the fagade of St. Mark's confirm us in this judgment. We shall therefore here refer to only two of them, which merit attention on account of the peculiarity of their subjects. They are in the south wall. In the centre of one of them is represented a throne— the heavenly throne of Christ, although Christ Him- SCULPTURES ON ST. MARK'S 139 self is not represented as occupying it; but on the throne are set three symbols typifying His person, viz., a cross with six arms, a medallion containing the figure of a lamb, and a crown. On each side of the throne, and looking up to it, stand six lambs, and behind them, closing in the composition, are two palm-trees and four vases. As to the meaning of these symbols, all doubt is removed by the Greek inscription beneath the relief. The lambs are the " holy apostles " ; the lamb upon the throne is " the holy Lamb." Such representa tions are by no means uncommon among the oldest mosaics in the apses of the churches at Ravenna and Rome, which also show that the palm-trees are no idle accessory, but signify Paradise. Another reproduction of a wall-painting or mosaic is to be found in the second relief on the same wall. Here, as usual in historical representations of primitive Christian art, two different scenes are combined in the same composition. On the left is Abraham leading the boy Isaac by the hand. Isaac carries on his back the wood for the sacrifice ; Abraham holds in his left hand a great vessel, in the shape of a bowl, and doubtless representing the patriarchal tinder-box for the Fathers and theologians of the Church speculated much as to how Abraham kindled the sacrificial fire on Moriah. In the second scene, Isaac is lying bound upon the earth before a burning altar, while Abraham, standing behind him, lays his left hand upon Isaac's head, and with face averted lifts the knife in his right hand, ready to deliver the fatal blow. Be hind him stands a lofty tree, with a lamb below it, and amid 1 40 VENICE the branches of the tree appears a hand, the usual symbol of the Voice of God, on which Abraham bends his gaze. On the north side of St. Mark's, near the entrance to the courtyard of the Doge's Palace, is a relief executed in por phyry. It represents four Oriental princes embracing one another in couples. These have given rise to the most vari ous explanations, and are pointed out as objects of peculiar interest. Guides and guidebooks alike direct attention to them, and few visitors to the City of the Lagoons can have passed them by without notice. Why they should be thought worthy of such special attention (being, as they are, of very inferiour artistic value), it would be difficult to ex plain. Perhaps it is because they are close to a door through which people are continually passing, and are thus easily seen. They were brought from Ptolemais. The decorations of the upper portions of the fagade were completed as late as the Fourteenth Century, since the orna ments of that part are in the Gothic style and Byzantine sculptures are wholly wanting. The figurative ornamenta tion of the principal entrance is the work, probably not of Byzantine, but of native artists, and belongs, without the least doubt, to the beginning of the same century. These sculptures deserve our thorough attention in more than one respect — not least because they represent the earliest efforts of Venetian sculpture. Venetian plastic art during the Fourteenth Century is almost wholly unknown outside the city; but any one who is intimately acquainted with the monuments in the churches of Venice cannot for a moment SCULPTURES ON ST. MARK'S 141 doubt that it was far superior to the painting of the same date, and that the great Venetian painters of the Fifteenth Century had more to learn from the sculptors than from the painters of their native state. It has been said that the first great master of Italian sculpture, Andrea Pisano, was the author of the oldest non-Byzantine sculptures on the fagade of St. Mark's; but this would be to do them too much honour. In admiring them it has hitherto unhappily been the fashion to stop short at a general survey, and we ask in vain why it is that the sculptures of the principal fagade have never yet been described and explained. No other rea son suggests itself for this than the extraordinary variety of invention and the great wealth of composition which they display. The visitors to Venice are — not too idle or too superficial perhaps — but, let us say, too busy, to spend their time in the examination of the details of such complicated compositions. And yet these compositions are, before all things, to the last degree remarkable in their details; still more so even than in their artistic finish. Design and modelling may have been brought to an equal or greater degree of finish; but the subjects here handled by Venetian artists are simply unique of their kind. The three semicircular archivolts of the principal doorway, one within the other, are ornamented on the inner, as well as the outer surfaces, with compositions containing figures. The large external arch is adorned with rich foliage and roses, in the taste of the best iEgypto-Arabian ornamentation, and, as usual in early Christian monuments, proceeding from two 1 42 VENICE vases. The spaces are filled up with eight holy men looking upwards .to Christ, a beardless youth, at the summit of the arch. At the crown of the same arch is a medallion, with the Lamb of God, held by two angels ; and below it on each side are twelve very remarkable representations of the handi crafts of Venice. First come the shipbuilders, then follow the vintners, occupied in drawing liquor from the vats. Then the bakehouse and the shambles, matched on the op posite side by a dairy, and by masons and shoemakers. These are followed by the hairdressers, and here we can see the dandies of ancient Venice having their hair pressed with curling-irons. Next comes coopers, carpenters, smiths, and many fishermen, who are placed opposite the shipbuilders. The meaning of the figures on the outer side of the smaller internal archivolt is more enigmatical. At the apex is seated a woman in antique costume, with her feet crosswise upon the ground. In each hand she holds a medallion, and beside her stand or sit sixteen women with loose-flowing hair, the majority having scrolls in their hands, which once probably bore their names. These are undoubtedly personifications of virtues. Here, for instance, is a youthful woman with flow ing locks, tearing open the jaws of a lion with her hands, and representing Strength. There is Justice, holding a pair of scales in her right hand. A third is Love, with a crown upon her head. The inner side of the arch is filled by twelve representations of the months, in the style then in vogue for ornamenting illuminated manuscripts and calen dars, and showing how people for the most part employed themselves in Venice during the different seasons. SCULPTURES ON ST. MARK'S 143 To the figures on the inmost archivolt, no religious or theo logical signification can be attached ; but it is perhaps precisely on this account that they are so very interesting. A cock is sitting upon a vine, pecking a bunch of grapes, while a fox looks up longingly from below ; a wolf is seen pursuing a lamb and an eagle clutches a hare. Round these scenes runs a band of foliage, issuing from a woman reclining on the ground, and offering her breast to a serpent and a man. "Mater terra" is the explanation of this enigmatical figure which we find in several Italian manuscripts of the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Centuries; and we may therefore conclude that this representation — possibly borrowed from the Northern, in no case from the ancient classic mythology — had already found its way elsewhere into Italy. How proud the citizens of Venice formerly were of the adornment of the fagade of their church is clearly proved by the fact that they placed a view of it in mosaic above one of the side-doors of the principal entrance. This is the sole Byzantine mosaic still remaining there, although at one time the whole of the lunettes were ornamented by them. The high opinion of the Byzantine reliefs of the fagade entertained even by the foremost masters of the Renaissance is proved by Gentile Bellini's great picture still preserved in Venice, which represents the procession, with the relics of the cross, in the square of St. Mark's, and in which the whole width of the background is occupied by the fagade of the church, reproduced in every detail with marvellous precision, THE MOSAICS OF VENICE WILLIAM B. SCOTT PIETY and ecclesiastical observances were very favour ite amusements with the Venetians, so much so, that some native historians have assigned that as the final cause of the long prosperity of the city. The great event in connection with this passion, one of the most remarkable in the history of relics, was the translation of the body of St. Mark from Alexandria to Venice, where it was in the course of three centuries enshrined in a church of the highest value in the history of Mediaeval architecture, and especially in the art of mosaic, examples of which it has preserved df various kinds and dates, while they have disappeared by time and accidents in Rome and elsewhere. Besides, St. Mark and his lion appear in a hundred different pictures of the school, they were bound up with the very life of the city, and became identified with it more completely than any other patron-saint ever was with the locality under his charge. So self-sufficient did the piety of the Venetians be come, and so confident were they in the efficiency of their patron, that the Roman ecclesiastics said, with irony, that Venice had a pope of its own, il papa Marco. By the middle of the Ninth Century the sailors and merchant adventurers of the Lagoon had excelled all others on that side of Italy, and absorbed nearly all the trade of the East. At that time, Alexandria being under Mahome- 144 INTERIOR OF ST. MARK'S MOSAICS OF VENICE 145 dan rule, a little fleet of Venetian ships was lying in the har bour there, when the church wherein lay the remains of the Evangelist was pounced upon by the ruling powers, and the coloured marbles with which it was lined carefully removed for the purpose of decorating a rising palace. The Ma- homedans were by no means unmindful of relics, but the priests belonging to the church were frightfully agitated lest the holy body should suffer profanation. The Venetian merchants, whose plans were laid, came to their aid, offered their ships as a temporary asylum for the precious burden, and, having once got it on board in a basket, put to sea. Theft was indeed the only way in times of peace such invalu able objects could be acquired, Mahomedans as well as Chris tians held them so tenaciously; but this did not seem to dis please the saint, who forthwith began a career of miracle- working, warning the captain of the particular ship to whose yardarm the sacred basket had been attached, in fear of the examination for contraband goods, to furl his sails, and so forth. When safely landed at the spot now occupied by the church of San Francisco della Vigna (which still possesses one of the earliest pictures of the school, the colossal Virgin of Negroponte), an angel was said to address him with the words Pax tibi, Marce, Evangelista meus, words afterwards placed on the open book under the paw of the lion, and the mad joy of the people overflowed in feasting, music, proces sions, and prayers. The former patron, St. Theodore, was laid aside for the Evangelist, and, by the help of the Greeks, the most wonderfully rich mass of building, golden mosaic 146 VENICE within and crusted marble of many colours without, began to rise. And yet it has been questioned whether any bones or body of a saint was ever brought there. Two centuries after, in 1094, tne Emperor Henry III. made an express pilgrimage to the shrine, when its contents could not be found, had dis appeared, temporarily withdrawn themselves, as it was said. This untoward affair cast the city into mourning, until one morning the Sacristan perceived, on entering the church, a fragrant odour, and a brilliant light issuing from a particu lar column. At first he feared a fire was breaking out, but on approaching he saw a human arm protruding from the stone. Very soon Doge and bishop, with priests in hun dreds, were kneeling before the rent and illuminated column, when the protruding hand dropped a ring from one of its fingers into the bishop's bosom. The solid mass opened, and an iron coffin was visible, in which were the remains of St. Mark. This was on the 24th of July, ever after kept as a feast; but, strange to say, since that time the burial-place of the body has remained unknown. The secret was said to be confided to a few, but, indeed, the next Doge (or rather Carossio, the usurper of the Doge's throne) has been accused of stealing the relics. The ring, itself a sufficient curiosity, was stolen, and disappeared in 1585. In connection with this church, the art of mosaic, which had been practised long before by Greeks at Ravenna, entered Venice. With the mosaists came other artists, and on the island of Murano, besides the glass-workers, various Byzan- MOSAICS OF VENICE 147 tine craftsmen began working. It is to this island and to these painters, of whom, however, individually we know nothing, vve must look for the beginning of all the arts in Venice. The two outlying islands, too far away from the seventy or eighty on which the city stands to be considered a part of it, Torcello and Murano, are long strips of still thickly in habited houses, with symptoms of antiquity as great as any part of the capital. To the last named island the manufac ture of glass was confined by the government, and held in the profoundest secrecy; but there can be no doubt this secrecy was initiated by the workmen themselves, who were foreigners, and that the workshops of Constantinople con tinued to a rather late time to export objects of art of all sorts, glass and pictures in particular, not only to Venice, but to all the coast towns of Italy. During the Sixth, Sev enth, and Eighth Centuries the whole interior of Italy was overrun by northern conquerors, and production had entirely ceased. This being the case, the cities along the coast, Venice, Ravenna, Ancona, and round by Naples to Genoa, the rival at a later time of Venice, were better off than interior towns. Late Roman art during this period dies out. Venice itself, dating from this period, had no traditions whatever. No antique spirit inspired sculpture as at Pisa and Rome, nor even at a later time did it practically adopt the Renaissance, especially in architecture, like the rest of Italy. There seems to have been, in the early Venetian tem per, a dislike to adopt benefits of an intellectual sort from 148 VENICE the terra firma which the island power had subjugated, from Padua and Verona particularly; and the advantage of trade with the capital of the Eastern Empire continued the Byzan tine influence in other matters. At the same time we must recognise in the architecture of the advancing city a quite independent character : sculpture there was none under Greek religious influence. It must be remembered also that East ern Art not only continued its traditional forms and condi tions, it retrograded ; and its pictures gradually became more hieratic, parting from living nature altogether at the very time free artistic impulses were beginning in the West. We must not, therefore, expect to find any authentic pic tures dating very early in Venice. There were painters on the Continent a century earlier. Giotto's noble work in the Arena was accomplished at the very commencement of the Fourteenth Century, 1306, and yet near as it was, and in the territory of the Republic, it appears to have had no influ ence on the painters of Murano; the most prosperous state in Italy, Venice, at that day continued without painters, and imported its art with its manufactures. The existing specimens of native mosaics, according to Kugler, are the mosaics in the church of St. Cyprian, in the town of Murano, completed in 882, representing the Virgin between saints and archangels. With incomparably more force, however, he says, the Byzantine type is represented in the Church of St. Mark, that curious fabric being begun in 976, at the latest, the earliest wall and cupola pictures therein go back to the Eleventh, and perhaps to the Tenth, Century. MOSAICS OF VENICE 149 The floor, the walls, and the pillars, half-way up, were cov ered with the most costly marbles, while the rest of the interior — upper walls, waggon-roofs, and cupolas, compris ing a surface of more than forty thousand square feet — was covered with mosaics on a gold ground; a gigantic work which even all the wealth of Venice spent six centuries in patching together. Thus it is that we find all the successive stages of development in these mosaics, down to " the lowest mannerism of the school of Tintoretto," perpetuated in the edifice. Many of the earlier are so noble in design, and so curious in an archaeological and mythological point of view, that it is surprising they have not been more studied and reproduced. The single figures are for the most part con ventional and similar to others of the same personages else where; but the long series of subjects from the Bible, begin ning with the first verse of Genesis, are full of thought and mystical beauty. In all those showing the progressive stages of creation, God is represented in light yellow and bright garments, partly white, not as in later Art in deep red and blue approaching to black. He stands calmly, as he does not fly with rolling draperies and great feet extended, as in Michelangelo, or in Raphael's imitation of the same, and is attended by, or rather his acts are witnessed by, angels in light blue, one, two, or three ; a single angel in the creation of Light (which is represented by bars of gold rushing out of two globes, one red, the other black), having one wing yellow, the other blue; three angels in the creation of the vegetable world. In others that follow, as in that wherein 150 VENICE their Maker is telling our first parents to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, we see the most unhesitat ing candour of representation, showing the long journey and the many changes our ideas of the Deity have passed through since these mosaics were considered their fitting expression. The effect on the eye made by the interior of St. Mark's, which is only lit from above, is certainly gloomy and oppress ive, but gorgeous and overpowering. We must remember that there was no need for light except at the altar, which was blazing with lamps, when the people assembled, and that glass windows were at their rarest at the time the church was planned; but it strikes upon the heart of the visitor as the piled-up offerings of men who were willing to buy the favour of Heaven with the richest gifts. From the tesselated pavement, undulating like the waves of the sea (whether or not intentionally is a question lately raised, and still unset tled, although it is said the groining of the crypt is perfect), up to the gilt ironwork on the tops of the cupolas, it is com plete. Outside the mosaics are for the most part late. The only old one of the five, over the five portals, shows the dif ference between the decorative sense of the end of the Four teenth Century and the beginning of the Eighteenth, when the others were mostly done. The spaces covered are con cave hemispheres, and in the earlier mosaic the forms are made to bend with the curvature towards the centre, like reflections in a glass ball; the later resists the curvature of its own surface, contradicting the architectural basis, and looking like a picture applied. THE PIAZZA HENRY PERL WE find ourselves on the Piazza itself, which we are to study under the different aspects of differ ent hours of the day — on the Piazza, with the encircling arcades, locally called the Procuratie,1 in which shelter from the sun or the rain can always be obtained. The Piazza was cut across by a canal until the beginning of the Twelfth Century, from the banks of which rose the first Church of San Geminiano, and on the site of the Loggie of the Ducal Palazzo flourished a vegetable garden belonging to the nuns of San Zaccaria. At that remote period, the Senate, which then only meant the elders, when Puritanical simpli city reigned amongst the island community, liked to retire there to meditate quietly on the State necessities of the rapidly growing state. In the Twelfth Century the canal was filled in and the church mentioned above pulled down, only for another to rise up, to which the same name was given, but which was destroyed by order of Napoleon in 1810. In 1260 the first block was laid of the Piazza di San Marco, after the designs of Andrea Tirali, and from the same time may be said to date its rise to the glorious position it was to occupy as the nucleus of the life of Venice. 'The nine Procurators, second in power to the Doge alone, lived in the palaces of the Piazza: hence this name. 151 1 52 VENICE The central portion of the Piazza is 192 yards long by 90 broad on the eastern or San Marco, and 61 on the western or Palazzo Reale end. What the Piazza di San Marco is to the Venetians can only be understood by those who are intimately acquainted with the inner life of the town. According to the time at which it is visited, it is the forum for the transaction of civil and political business, the market for buying and selling all manner of goods, the exchange, the place for the drawing of lotteries, the gondola station, the scene of church or secular fetes, the promenade of all classes, the summer rendez-vous of the upper ten, the open-air tribunal, at the time of the carni val the ballroom the spot where artists of all kinds meet to discuss their affairs, the stage for religious ceremonies, the place to secure seats at the theatre, or to have your boots blacked — "La pattina, la pattina lucido! " rings the cry, re minding us that well-polished shoes often make up for worn- out costumes — the place where the latest news is to be had by every one from all parts of the world; in a word, the meeting-point of all Venice — especially of those who have any interest in common — from porters and factory-girls to the elite of society. Every article of dress can be bought alike by ladies and gentlemen in the Piazza, and things are very chic there, too. Jewels and art fabrics, antique and modern, of every variety, are there displayed to suit every taste and purse ; and at any hour of the day or night, without leaving the square, you can get a hot or a cold meal, anything you fancy to drink and THE PIAZZA 153 sweetmeats to toy with; or you can have your hair cut or dressed; and last, not least, you can thoroughly steep your self in an atmosphere of art, for from whatever point of view you look at this nucleus of all that is best in the whole world, your eyes will rest upon some scene of satisfying beauty. This noble marble-paved square, where dust and the noise of carriages, with the barking of dogs, are alike unknown, where the rain sinks away as soon as it has fallen, leaving the stones as clean and fresh as ever, is not alone the focus of the grandeur of Venezia, it is her very heart ; it is herself, for in it is contained all that her citizens can need. Differences of rank cease to exist face to face with this stone Ninon de L'Enclos, as a witty Frenchman dubbed the Piazza, and the unique square loses not one iota of its grand eur thereby, as we can well understand when we remember that the banner of the Republic was set up in Venice in the Fourteenth Century. We saunter slowly up and down the Piazza, now sitting down outside some cafe, first one side and then another, meeting at every turn fresh details of the highest artistic value. But let us pause a moment to look up at the Clock Tower, with its big dial-plate visible from a long distance off. This tower is one of the curiosities of Venice, and was erected by Pietro Lombardo, one of the Lombardi family, with whose name so much of the best architecture in Venice is associated. La Torre dell' Orologio dates from 1496, and is remarkable for two black giants on a platform, which strike the 154 VENICE hours with their hammers, and are called by the Venetians " /' Mari." From the Feast of the Epiphany to the beginning of Lent, and during the week between Ascension Day and Whit Sunday, the figures of the three kings who came to worship the Infant Christ may be seen to issue every hour from one of the two doors leading to the gallery of the tower where the Madonna sits enthroned, and passing in front of her they remove their crowns, bow low before her, and walk off to the second door on the other side, through which they disappear. This pretty little puppet-show caused an immense amount of excitement at the time of its erection, and even now, especially at Whitsuntide, crowds of country folk collect to stare up at it. The general effect — we mean of the tower itself — is highly decorative, and is quite inseparable from our thoughts of Venice, for it rises up in our memories in connection with so many characteristic scenes. Truly a typical bit of local colouring is this trusty old Torre dell' Orologio, which greets us directly we set foot in Venice from the water-side and come in sight of the Piazzetta. The device of the noble Venetian lion with outstretched paws upon the cover of the Gospels, with the background of star-flecked azure blue sky, gave rise to a clever bon mot. In 1797, when novelty was the rage, the motto of the lion of San Marco, " Pax tibi Marce Evangelista meus," was converted into the formula " Droits de I'homme et du citoyen " ; and a gondolier — the gondoliers of Venice are noted for their wit and ready repartee — cried, "// leone gha volta pagina" (the THE PIAZZA 155 lion has turned over a new leaf). It was not long, however, before the lion of the Clock Tower, with all his winged comrades returned to the old " Pax tibi Marce Evangelista meus." We meant only just to look at the time, but the stones of Venice have all such a lot to say for themselves that it is very difficult to tear ourselves away from them. It is eleven o'clock now, and at twelve o'clock we expect an acquaintance to have di collazione with us. But we will just turn into the Procuratie Vecchie first, to which a path leads direct from the Clock Tower. It is always pleasant to stroll about in these arcades, for they are well protected from the heat and dust. We pass jeweller's shop after jeweller's shop beneath this porticus with its fifty arches and the electric light almost deceives us into fancying we are looking at the gems by starlight. It is the same with the unrivalled verroterie, or glass-ware, which, with the crimson plush setting, presents quite a fairy-like appearance. The only thing, however, which we really cannot pass with out stopping to examine it, is a very lovely Venetian necklace of thirty strings or fill as they are technically called, such as Venice is famed for all the world over. This wonderful collar is made of niello, or enamel beads, of about the size of a thaler, and the clasp consists of a many-coloured repre sentation of the old arms of Venice or of the winged lion. The necklace is worn so that the clasp comes in front on the centre of the throat. A celebrated ornament of this kind, coveted by all foreign ladies, is that made by Angelo Mis- 156 VENICE siaglia, and as it consists of ducats of the finest gold, not one of which had ever been used, it must have cost a very large sum. It is really marvellous how many jewellers work and thrive in Venice. All Italians — especially the Venetians, who have more affinity with Orientals than their sisters of the rest of the peninsula — delight as much in decking them selves out with jewels as the women of the Orient, and in spite of their love of economy in other respects, squander large sums upon their ornaments. Seated in front of the cafes, Trattorie, German Birrerie, and drinking-saloons called " American bars " and resem bling those on the other side of the Atlantic, may be seen at this hour of the day many a daintily-dressed and befrizzled fop, with the inevitable flower, bought from the equally in evitable flower-girl, in his button-hole, gazing into the blue, or, to be strictly accurate, up at the greyish-blue curtains which hang down from the roofing of the arcades, and flutter in the soft sea-breeze which always comes in to freshen the atmosphere about noon. As we stroll along in the cool stone grove, we pass yet more shops full of costly products of Venetian industry : glass mosaics, filigree-work, point lace, and antique silken textures, quaint life-sized figures carved in wood, furniture ornamented with iron filigree-work or carved and inlaid, all of truly artistic design and workmanship ; all manner of reproductions of masterpieces of pictorial art; antique and modern Vene tian mirrors, memorial mosaics and other examples of mon- THE PIAZZA 157 umental art, all Venetian specialties, peculiarly fascinating to the foreigner. The thought is first borne in upon us that in the inner labyrinths of this town, where at first sight life seems to be one long dream of pleasure, there must be many important industries and many skilled artisans. And now for a rapid glance at the Procuratie Nuove, that colonnade which is always cool even on the hottest June day. Here things appear very much the same in the early part of the day as they do over in the Procuratie Vecchie. Tripping about amongst the aristocrats, officials, and the privileged idlers so cleverly dubbed Disperati, are the flower-girls in their fresh youth and the middle-aged seller of wild flowers from the country, who reminds us, with his two baskets full of floral treasures, of some kitchen garden in late autumn. A group of painters always appear at Florian's about this time to take their collazione or dejeuner a la fourchette together. In this classical colonnade, with its thirty-six arches, there reigns a kind of hush, for here business never makes itself obtrusive, for though there are a good many old curiosity shops and other art warehouses, their owners have no need to advertise their wares — those who want them know well where to find them. The fact that we can go up from here to the regal apartments on the first floor, which every foreigner ought to visit, is yet another attraction of these Procuratie; and there, too, we can enjoy absolute quiet. And the " volte " once gone through, as they say in the breaking in of horses, we shall come in due course to the 158 VENICE permanent art exhibitions, housed in rooms on the same floor in the last wing of the colonnade, which every one ought to see, for they form a kind of monthly record of the art in dustries of Venice. Nearer the Piazzetta all is changed, and trade takes the place of art. Agents of ship-brokers, consignors of merchan dise, offices of steamship companies, storehouses, etc., occupy this wing, and the frequenters of the neighbouring cafes are all busy people. The bank buildings, once the old Zecca or mint, the newly-built well-situated Cafe alia Borsa, looking out towards the Molo, occupying three arcades of the Zecca, form the finest point of view of the Procuratie Nuove, of which Sansovino drew the plans, carried out in 1582, un fortunately with certain alterations, by Vincenzo Scamozzi. Time flies fast when you are talking about the past. Why, it is twelve o'clock already ; we hear the twelve long-drawn- out strokes from the Clock Tower of San Marco, and at the same moment rings out a cannon-shot from San Giorgio, the signal for all Venice that lunch-time has arrived. In a moment the scene is changed. The Piazza is at once full of people eager for their mid-day meal; and at the same time appear hundreds of winged beggars whom nobody dreams of driving away, for their privileges have been secured to them for many long years. The pigeons of San Marco, which nest in great numbers amongst the arches and decorations of the various buildings, come down in flocks, circling about the church and Piazza as if, pensioners of the Republic as they are, they knew full well that they have a right to the food THE PIAZZA 159 so amply provided for them by their many patrons and friends. A very beautiful picture is this daily gathering on the Piazza of the pigeons at noon and at two o'clock, a poetic picture which never loses its charm. Foreigners, especially, are very fond of feeding them, and ladies and children are lavish with corn which their favourites eat out of their hands. So tame and confiding have the gentle creatures become, through a long course of indulgence and petting, that they often settle on the hands, arms or shoulders of their friends. The cannon-shot was not only the signal for the birds to fly down from their sheltered niches behind the cornice, but also for all the clerks in the various offices to lay down their pens as if at the word of command from their chiefs, and hurry through the Procuratie to take their second break fast, and enjoy their one short hour of rest during the day in one or another restaurant hard by. As a result, the Piazza is for some ten minutes full of life and animation, and even the late risers, who do not think it good form to appear before the mid-day cannon signal has been heard, may be seen gathering together now. All about the flagstaff's with their winged lions are charm ing groups pausing to exchange greetings or to make up little luncheon parties. Though from these flagstaffs no longer float the silken banners of the Morea, Cyprus and Candia, symbolising the vast possessions of the Republic, the far- stretching influence of Venice is still illustrated by the many different nationalities represented here. It is at such a time as this that the Piazza appears at its best — at least, at its 160 VENICE best during the hours of broad daylight, for of course at mid day there is none of the glamour or mystery which have so much to do with the fascination exercised on all comers by the unrivalled Venezia. As in all works of art, every picture in Venice gains by something being left to the imagination of the spectator. It was this secret which Turner — most suc cessful of all the exponents of Venetian efforts of colour and chiaroscuro — so completely fathomed in his many exquisite water-colour views of the fair city of his admiration ; and we may perhaps add that it was this same secret which Canaletto, in his more prosaic renderings of the same scenes, to a certain extent missed. But we are again wandering off into side issues and must return to the Piazza itself. From November to April, the fashionable world congregates to bask in the sunshine on the Piazza from two to four, or according to the new Italian form from the hour of fourteen to that of sixteen, and four times a week to listen to the civic or military band. On a bright clear autumn, or even winter day, the beauti ful buildings on the Piazza, especially the fagade of San Marco with its marvellous wealth of architectural ornaments, are seen to the very greatest advantage. The atmosphere is so transparent, that every detail, however minute, can be dis tinctly recognised, and there is about the whole a repose which in other lights is rather wanting to this very complex struc ture. It is, in fact, a marked peculiarity of the whole of Venice, especially of the fine architectural groups on the Piazza di San Marco, that they appear totally different under THE PIAZZA 161 different conditions, whether of atmosphere or of light, and affect the spectator in a number of different ways. We tear ourselves away from our contemplation of the inanimate stone beauties on every side, to give due attention to the many lovely and fascinating women in costly costumes who take eye and heart by storm. With faces half hidden by big white or rose-coloured silk sunshades, giving to them a touch of mystery, they are seated in the same Piazza where Shakespeare's Othello first saw his Desdemona, and where Bianca Cappello — this we know for very certain — gave Bon- aventurini the sign which preceded her flight from her father's house. Each one of these Venetian women is in her self a poem. Women little know how wonderfully the beautiful Piazza di San Marco sets off their charms especially in the mild sun shine of a winter or early spring day, when the old church literally radiates golden beams reflected from the fair young faces gazing up at its time honoured glories, and borrowing from it something of its triumphant elation of expression. And when the sun sinks lower, and the shadows lengthen, the capricious beauties in stone and gold become transformed in appearance, their features gradually grow paler — one is almost tempted to say more diaphanous — these marvellous creations in stone which affect us much as do the Thousand and One Nights in fiction, as the sunshine imprints on them the hurried farewell kiss of the short winter twilight, and day is suddenly converted into night, — soft, soothing gentle night, reminding us of the smile of some young mother, or of the 1 62 VENICE rapt ecstasy of some devotee before the figure of the Redeemer in a quiet village church. How different does the whole scene appear on a hot summer's day, when it resembles more the dream of some Oriental potentate, with the medley of turrets and chapels, the golden cupolas, the crosses, the weather cocks, the angels and saints, in which blue and gold pre dominate, standing out darkly, yet distinctly and imposingly, from beneath their pale gold garlands of stone, whilst the greenish grey of the main material looks leaden by contrast. Or again at night what a change is there, when everything around is steeped in darkness, and there is no light in heaven but the pale light of stars; when all styles are blended into one harmonious whole, and the whole mighty mass of build ings glows as with the white heat of a conflagration before everything falls to pieces in ashes; when the great lunettes gleam like huge diamonds, and the general effect is of some mysterious unfathomable choas, the very spires and towers resembling hieroglyphic writing traced upon the night sky by the invisible hand of some cyclops. THE DOVES OF ST MARK'S HORATIO F. BROWN IN Venice the pigeons do not allow you to forget them, even if one desired to forget a bird that is so intimately connected with the city and with a great ceremony of that ancient Republic which has passed away. They belong so entirely to the place, and especially to the great square; they have made their home for so many generations among the carvings of the Basilica, at the feet of the Bronze Horses, and under the massive cornices of the New Procuratie, that the great campanile itself is hardly more essential to the character of the Piazza than are these delicate denizens of St. Mark's. In the structure of the Ducal Palace the wants of the pigeons have been taken into account, and near the two great wells which stand in the inner courtyard, little cups of Istrian stone have been let into the pavement for the pigeons to drink from. On cold frosty mornings you may see them tapping disconsolately at the ice which covers their drinking troughs, and may win their thanks by breaking it for them. Or if the borin blows hard from the east, the pigeons sit in long rows under the eaves of the Procuratie; their necks drawn into their shoulders, and the neck feathers ruffled round their heads, till they have lost all shape, and look like a row of slate-coloured cannon balls. From St. Mark's the pigeons have sent out colonies to the 163 1 64 VENICE other churches and campi of Venice, they have crossed the Grand Canal, and roost and croon among the volutes of the Salute, or, in wild weather, wheel high and airily above its domes. They have even found their way to Malamocco and Mazzorbo; so that all Venice in the sea owns and pro tects its sacred bird. But it is in St. Mark's that the pigeons " most do congregate " ; and one cannot enter the piazza and stand for a moment at the corner without hearing the sudden rush of wings upon the air, and seeing the white under feathers of their pinions, as the doves strike backward to check their flight, and flutter down at one's feet in expec tation of peas or grain. They are boundlessly greedy, and will stuff themselves till they can hardly walk, and the little red feet stagger under the loaded crop. They are not vir tuous, but they are very beautiful. There is a certain fitness in the fact that the dove should be the sacred bird of the sea city. Both English " dove " and Latin columba mean the diver; and the dove uses the air much as the fish uses the sea. It glides, it dives, it shoots through its airy ocean ; it hovers against the breeze, or presses its breast against the sirocco storm, as you may see fish poised in their course against the stream ; then with a sudden turn it relaxes the strain and sweeps away down the wind. The dove is an airy emblem of the sea upon which Venice and the Venetians live. But more than that ; the most permanent quality in the colour of the lagoons, where the lights are always shifting, is the dove-tone of sea and sky ; a tone which holds all colours in solution, and out of which they emerge THE DOVES OF ST. MARK'S THE DOVES OF ST. MARK'S 165 as the water ripples or the cloud flakes pass; just as the colours are shot and varied on a young dove's neck. There is some doubt as to the origin of these flocks of pigeons which shelter in St. Mark's. According to one story, Henry Dandolo, the crusader, was besieging Candia; he received valuable information from the interior of the island by means of carrier-pigeons, and, later on, sent news of his successes home to Venice by the same messengers. In recognition of these services the government resolved to main tain the carriers at the public cost; and the flocks of to-day are the descendants of the Fourteenth Century pigeons. The more probable tradition, however, is that which connects these pigeons with the antique ceremonies of Palm Sunday. On that festival the Doge made the tour of the Piazza, ac companied by all the officers of state, the Patriarch, the for eign ambassadors, the silver trumpets, — all the pomp of the ducal dignity. Among other largess of that day, a number of pigeons, weighted by pieces of paper tied to their legs, used to be let loose from the gallery where the Bronze Horses stand, above the western door of the church. Most of the birds were easily caught by the crowd, and kept for their Easter dinner; but some escaped, and took refuge in the upper parts of the palace and among the domes of Saint Mark's. The superstition of the people was easily touched, and the birds that sought the protection of the saint were thenceforth dedicated to the patron of Venice. The charge of support ing them was committed to the superintendents of the corn stores, and the usual hour for feeding the pigeons was nine 1 66 VENICE o'clock in the morning. During the revolution of 1797 the birds fared as badly as the aristocracy; but when matters settled down again the feeding of the pigeons was resumed by the municipality, and takes place at two in the afternoon, though the incessant largess of strangers can leave the birds but little appetite for their regular meal. In spite of the multitudes of pigeons that haunt the squares of the city, a dead pigeon is as rare to see as a dead donkey on the mainland. It is a pious opinion that no Venetian ever kills a pigeon, and apparently they never die ; but the fact that they do not increase so rapidly as to become a nuisance instead of a pleasure, lends some colour to the suspicion that pigeon pies are not unknown at certain tables during the proper season. THE COLUMNS OF THE PIAZZETTA JOHN RUSKIN GO first into the Piazzetta, and stand anywhere in ¦ the shade, where you can well see its granite pillars. Your Murray tells you that they are " famous," and that the one is "surmounted by the bronze lion of St. Mark, the other by the statue of St. Theodore, the Protector of the Republic." It does not, however, tell you why, or for what the pillars are " famous." Nor, in reply to a question which might conceivably occur to the curious, why St. Theodore should protect the Republic by standing on a crocodile ; nor whether the " bronze lion of St. Mark " was cast by Sir Edwin Landseer, — or some more ancient and ignorant person ; — nor what these rugged corners of limestone rock, at the bases of the granite, were perhaps once in the shape of. Have you any idea why, for the sake of any such things, these pillars were once, or should yet be, more renowned than the Monu ment, or the column of the Place Vendome, both of which are much bigger? Well, they are famous, first, in memorial of something which is better worth remembering than the fire of London, or the achievements of the great Napoleon. And they are famous, or used to be, among artists, because they are beau- 167 1 68 VENICE tiful columns; nay, as far as we old artists know, the most beautiful columns at present extant and erect in the conven iently visitable world. Each of these causes of their fame I will try in some dim degree to set before you. I said they were set there in memory of things, — not of the man who did the things. They are to Venice, in fact, what the Nelson column would be to London if, instead of a statue of Nelson and a coil of rope, on the top of it, we had put one of the four Evangelists, and a saint, for the praise of the Gospel and of Holiness; — trusting to the memory of Nelson to our own souls. However, the memory of the Nelson of Venice, being now seven hundred years old, has more or less faded from the heart of Venice herself, and seldom finds its way into the heart of a stranger. Somewhat concerning him, though a stranger, you may care to hear, but you must hear it in quiet ; so let your boatman take you across to San Giorgio Mag- giore; there you can moor your gondola under the steps in the shade, and read in peace, looking up at the pillars when you like. In the year 1117, when the Doge Ordelafo Falier had been killed under the walls of Zara, Venice chose, for his successor, Domenico Michiel, Michael of the Lord, " Catto- lico nomo e audace," a Catholic and brave man, the servant of God and of St. Michael. Venice was sincerely pious, and intensely covetous. But not covetous merely of money. She was covetous first of THE COLUMNS OF THE PIAZZETTA COLUMNS OF THE PIAZZETTA 169 fame; secondly, of kingdom; thirdly, of pillars of marble and granite, such as these that you see ; lastly, and quite prin cipally, of the relics of good people. To the nation in this religiously covetous hunger, Bald win appealed, a captive to the Saracen. The Pope sent let ters to press his suit, and the Doge Michael called the State to Council in the Church of St. Mark. There he, and the Primate of Venice, and her nobles, and such of the people as had due entrance with them, by way of beginning the busi ness, celebrated the Mass of the Holy Spirit. Then the Primate read the Pope's letters aloud to the assembly; then the Doge made the assembly a speech. And there was no opposition party in that parliament to make opposition speeches; and there were no reports of the speech next morn ing in any Times or Daily Telegraph. And there were no plenipotentiaries sent to the East, and back again. But the vote passed for war. The Doge left his son in charge of the State, and sailed for the Holy Land, with forty galleys and twenty-eight beaked ships of battle — "ships which were painted with divers colours," far seen in pleasant splendour. Some faded like ness of them, twenty years ago, might be seen in the painted sails of the fishing-boats which lay crowded, in lowly lustre, where the development of civilisation now only brings black steam-tugs, to bear the people of Venice to the bathing- machines of Lido, covering their Ducal Palace with soot, and consuming its sculptures with sulphurous acid. The beaked ships of the Doge Michael had each a hun- 170 VENICE dred oars; — each oar pulled by two men, not accommodated with sliding seats, but breathed well for their great boat- race between the shores of Greece and Italy; — whose names, alas, with the names of their trainers, are noteless in the jour nals of the barbarous time. They beat their way across the waves, nevertheless,1 to the place where Dorcas worked for the poor, and St. Peter lodged with his namesake tanner. There, showing first but a squadron of a few ships, they drew the Saracen fleet out to sea, and so set upon them. And the Doge, in his true Duke's place, first in his beaked ship, led for the Saracen admiral's, struck her and sunk her. And his host of falcons followed to the slaughter; and to the prey also, — for the battle was not without gratification of the commercial appetite. The Venetians took a number of ships containing precious silks and " a quantity of drugs and pepper." After which battle, the Doge went up to Jerusalem, there to take further counsel concerning the use of his Venetian power; and, being received there with honour, kept his Christmas in the mountain of the Lord. In the council of war that followed, debate became stern whether to undertake the siege of Tyre or Ascalon. The judgments of men being at pause, the matter was given to the judgment of God. They put the names of the two cities in an urn, on the altar of the Church of the Sepulchre. An 'Oars, of course, for calm and adverse winds, only; bright sails full to the helpful breeze. COLUMNS OF THE PIAZZETTA 171 orphan child was taken to draw the lots, who, putting his hand into the urn, drew out the name of Tyre. Which name you may have heard before, and read per haps words concerning her fall — careless always when the fall took place, or whose sword smote her. She was still a glorious city, still queen of the treasures of the sea; chiefly renowned for her work in glass and in purple ; set in command of a rich plain, " irrigated with plentiful and perfect waters, famous for its sugar-canes; ' fortissimo/ she herself, upon her rock, double walled towards the sea, treble walled to the land ; and, to all seeming, unconquerable but by famine." You will not expect me here, at St. George's steps, to give an account of the various mischief done on each other with the dart, the stone, and the fire, by the Christian and Saracen, day by day. The steady siege went on, till the Tyrians lost hope, and asked terms of surrender. They obtained security of person and property, to the indignation of the Christian soldiery, who had expected the sack of Tyre. The city was divided into three parts, of which two were given to the King of Jerusalem, the third to the Venetians. While the Doge Michael fought for the Christian King at Jerusalem, the Christian Emperor at Byzantium attacked the defenceless states of Venice, on the mainland of Dal- matia, and seized their cities. Whereupon the Doge set sail homewards, fell on the Greek islands of the ^Egean, and took the spoil of them; seized Cephalonia; recovered the lost cities of Dalmatia; compelled the Greek Emperor to sue for 172 VENICE peace, — gave it, in angry scorn; and set his sails at last for his own Rialto, with the sceptres of Tyre and Byzantium to lay at the feet of Venice. Spoil he also brought, enough, of such commercial kind as Venice valued. These pillars that you look upon, of rosy and grey rock; and the dead bodies of St. Donato and St. Isidore. He thus returned in 1126. Of these things, then, the two pillars before you are " famous " in memorial. What in themselves they possess deserving honour, we will next try to discern. But you must row a little nearer to the pillars, so as to see them clearly. I said these pillars were the most beautiful known to me : — but you must understand this saying to be of the whole pillar- group of base, shaft, and capital, — not only of their shafts. You know so much of architecture, perhaps, as that an " order " of it is the system connecting a shaft with its capi tal and cornice. And you can surely feel so much of archi tecture, as that if you took the heads off these pillars, and set the granite shaft simply upright on the pavement, they would perhaps remind you of ninepins or rolling-pins, but would in no wise contribute either to respectful memory of the Doge Michael, or to the beauty of the Piazzetta. Their beauty which has been so long instinctively felt by artists, consists then first in the proportion, and then in the propriety of their several parts. Do not confuse proportion with propriety. An elephant is as properly made as a stag; but it is not so gracefully proportioned. In fine architecture, and all other fine arts, grace and propriety meet. COLUMNS OF THE PIAZZETTA 173 I will take the fitness first. You see that both these pil lars have wide bases of successive steps.1 You can feel that these would be " improper " round the pillars of an arcade in which people walked, because they would be in the way. But they are proper here, because they tell us the pillar is to be isolated, and that it is a monument of importance. Look from these shafts to the arcade of the Ducal Pal ace. Its pillars have been found fault with for wanting bases. But they were meant to be walked beside without stumbling. Next you see the tops of the capitals of the great pillars spread wide, into flat tables. You can feel, surely, that these are entirely " proper," to afford room for the statues they are to receive, and that the edges, which bear no weight, may " properly " extend widely. But suppose a weight of superincumbent wall were to be laid on these pillars? The extent of capital which is now graceful, would then be weak and ridiculous. Thus far of propriety, whose simple laws are soon satis fied: next, of proportion. You see that one of the shafts, — the St. Theodore's, — is much slenderer than the other. One general law of proportion is that a slender shaft should have a slender capital, and a ponderous shaft, a pon derous one. But had this law been here followed, the companion pil- 1 Restored, — but they always must have had them, in some such proportion. 174 VENICE lars would have instantly become ill-matched. The eye would have discerned in a moment the fat pillar and the lean. They would never have become the fraternal pillars — " the two " of the Piazzetta. With subtle, scarcely at first traceable, care, the designer varied the curves and weight of his capitals; and gave the massive head to the slender shaft, and the slender capital to the massive shaft. And thus they stand in symmetry, and uncontending equity. Next, for the form of these capitals themselves, and the date of them. You will find in the guide-books that though the shafts were brought home by the Doge in 1126, no one could be found able to set them up until the year 11 71, when a cer tain Lombard, called Nicholas of the Barterers, raised them, and for reward of such engineering skill, bargained that he might keep tables for forbidden games of chance between the shafts. Whereupon the Senate ordered that executions should also take place between them. But now of the capitals themselves. If you are the least interested in architecture, should it not be of some impor tance to you to note the style of them? Twelfth Century capitals, as fresh as when they came from the chisel, are not to be seen every day, or everywhere ; — much less capitals like these a fathom or so broad and high! And if you know the architecture of England and France in the Twelfth Cen tury, you will find these capitals still more interesting from their extreme difference in manner. Not the least like our COLUMNS OF THE PIAZZETTA 175 clumps and humps and cushions, are they? For these are living Greek work, still; not savage Norman or clumsy Northumbrian, these; but of pure Corinthian race; yet, with Venetian practicalness of mind, solidified from the rich clus ters of light leafage which were their ancient form. You must find time for a little practical cutting of capitals your self, before you will discern the beauty of these. There is nothing like a little work with the fingers for teaching the eyes. What I want you to notice now, is but the form of the block of Istrian stone, usually with a spiral, more or less elaborate, on each of its projecting angles. For there is infinitude of history in that solid angle, prevailing over the light Greek leaf. That is related to our humps and clumps at Durham and Winchester. Here is, indeed, Norman temper, prevailing over Byzantine ; and it means, — the outcome of that quarrel of Michael with the Greek Emperor. It means — western for eastern life, in the mind of Venice. It means her fel lowship with the western chivalry; her triumph in the Cru sades, — triumph over her own foster nurse, Byzantium. Which significances of it, and many others with them, if we would follow, we must leave our stone-cutting for a little while and map out the chart of Venetian history from its beginning into such masses as we may remember without confusion. But since this will take time, and we cannot quite tell bow long it may be before we get back to the Twelfth Cen- 176 VENICE tury again, and to our Piazzetta shafts, let me complete what I can tell you of these at once. In the first place, the Lion of St. Mark is a splendid piece of Eleventh or Twelfth Century bronze. I know that by the style of him; but have never found out where he came from.1 I may now chance on it, however, at any moment on other quests. Eleventh or Twelfth Century the lion — Fifteenth, or later, his wings; very delicate in feather- workmanship, but with little lift or strike in them ; decorative mainly. Without doubt his first wings were thin sheets of beaten bronze, shred in plumage; far wider in their sweep than these.2 The statue of St. Theodore, whatever its age, is wholly without merit. I can't make it out myself, nor find record of it: in a stonemason's yard, I should have passed it as modern. But this merit of the statue is here of little consequence. St. Theodore represents the power of the Spirit of God in all noble and useful animal life, conquering what is venom ous, useless, or in decay: he differs from St. George in con tending with material evil, instead of with sinful passion : the crocodile on which he stands is the Dragon of Egypt ; slime- 1 " He " — the actual piece of forged metal, I mean. 2 1 am a little proud of this guess, for before correcting this sen tence in type, I found the sharp old wings represented faithfully in the wood cut of Venice in 1480, in the Correr Museum. Diirer, in 1500, draws the present wings; so that we get their date fixed within twenty years. COLUMNS OF THE PIAZZETTA 177 begotten of old, worshipped in its malignant power, for a God. St. Theodore's martyrdom was for breaking such idols; and with beautiful instinct Venice took him in her earliest days for her protector and standard-bearer, repre senting the heavenly life of Christ in men, prevailing over chaos and the deep. THE DUCAL PALACE JOHN RUSKIN THE charm which Venice still possesses, and which for the last fifty years has rendered it the favourite haunt of all the painters of picturesque subjects, is owing to the effect of the palaces belonging to the period we have now to examine, mingled with those of the Renaissance. The effect is produced in two different ways. The Re naissance palaces are not more picturesque in themselves than the club-houses of Pall Mall ; but they become delightful by the contrast of their severity and refinement with the rich and rude confusion of the sea life beneath them, and of their white and solid masonry with the green waves. Remove from beneath them the orange sails of the fishing boats, the black gliding of the gondolas, the cumbered decks and rough crews of the barges of traffic, and the fretfulness of the green water along their foundations, and the Renaissance palaces possess no more interest than those of London or Paris. But the Gothic palaces are picturesque in themselves, and wield over us an independent power. Sea and sky, and every other accessory might be taken away from them, and still they would be beautiful and strange. They are not less striking in the loneliest streets of Padua and Vicenza (where many were built during the period of the Venetian authority in those cities) than in the most crowded thoroughfares of Venice 178 THE DUCAL PALACE THE DUCAL PALACE 179 itself; and if they could be transported into the midst of London, they would still not altogether lose their power over the feelings. The best proof of this is in the perpetual attractiveness of all pictures, however poor in skill, which have taken for their subject the principal of these Gothic buildings, the Ducal Palace. In spite of all architectural theories and teachings, the paintings of this building are always felt to be delight ful; we cannot be wearied by them, though often sorely tried ; but we are not put to the same trial in the case of the palaces of the Renaissance. They are never drawn singly, or as the principal subject, nor can they be. The building which faces the Ducal Palace on the opposite side of the Piazzetta is celebrated among architects, but it is not familiar to our eyes; it is painted only incidentally, for the completion, not the subject of a Venetian scene; and even the Renaissance arcades of St. Mark's Place, though fre quently painted, are always treated as a mere avenue to its Byzantine church and colossal tower. And the Ducal Palace itself owes the peculiar charm which we have hitherto felt, not so much to its greater size as compared with other Gothic buildings, or nobler designs (for it never yet has been rightly drawn), as to its comparative isolation. The other Gothic structures are as much injured by the continual juxtaposition of the Renaissance palaces, as the latter are aided by it; they exhaust their own life by breathing it into the Renaissance coldness: but the Ducal Palace stands com paratively alone, and fully expresses the Gothic power, 180 VENICE And it is just that it should be so seen, for it is the original of nearly all the rest. It is not the elaborate and more studied development of a national style, but the great and sudden invention of one man, instantly forming a national style, and becoming the model for the imitation of every architect in Venice for upwards of a century. It was the determination of this one fact which occupied me the greater part of the time I spent in Venice. It had always appeared to me most strange that there should be in no part of the city any incipient or imperfect types of the form of the Ducal Palace; it was difficult to believe that so mighty a building had been the conception of one man, not only in disposition and detail, but in style; and yet impossible, had it been otherwise, but that some early examples of approximate Gothic form must exist. There is not one. The palaces built be tween the final cessation of the Byzantine style, about 1300, and the date of the Ducal Palace (1320-1350), are all com pletely distinct in character, and there is literally no trans itional form between them and the perfection of the Ducal Palace. Every Gothic building in Venice which resembles the latter is a copy of it. I do not mean that there was no Gothic in Venice before the Ducal Palace, but that the mode of its application to domestic architecture had not been deter mined. The real root of the Ducal Palace is the apse of the church of the Frari. The traceries of that apse, though earlier and ruder workmanship, are nearly the same in mouldings, and precisely the same in treatment (especially in the placing of the lions' heads) , as those of the great Ducal THE DUCAL PALACE 181 Arcade; and the originality of thought in the architect of the Ducal Palace consists in his having adopted those tra ceries, in a more highly developed and finished form to civil uses. The reader will observe that the Ducal Palace is arranged somewhat in the form of a hollow square, of which one side faces the Piazzetta, and another the quay called the Riva dei Schiavoni; the third is on the dark canal called the Rio del Palazzo, and the fourth joins the Church of St. Mark. Of this fourth side, therefore nothing can be seen. Of the other three sides we shall have to speak constantly ; and they will be respectively called, that towards the Piazzetta, the " Piazzetta Fagade " ; and that towards the Riva dei Schi avoni, the " Sea Fagade " ; and that towards the Rio del Palazzo, the " Rio Fagade." This Rio, or canal, is usually looked upon by the traveller with great respect, or even horror, because it passes under the Bridge of Sighs. It is, however one of the principal thoroughfares of the city ; and the bridge and its canal together occupy in the mind of a Venetian, very much the position of Fleet Street and Temple Bar in that of a Londoner, — at least at the time when Temple Bar was occasionally decorated with human heads. The two buildings closely resemble each other in form. We must now proceed to obtain some rough idea of the appearance and distribution of the palace itself; but its arrangement will be better understood by supposing our selves raised some hundred and fifty feet above the point in the lagoon in front of it, so as to get a general view of the 1 82 VENICE Sea Fagade and Rio Fagade (the latter in very steep per spective), and to look down into its interior court. We have merely to notice that, of the two bridges seen on the right, the uppermost, above the black canal, is the Bridge of Sighs; the lower one is the Ponte della Paglia, the regular thoroughfare from quay to quay, and I believe, called the Bridge of Straw, because the boats which brought straw from the mainland used to sell it at this place. The corner of the palace rising above this bridge, and formed by the meeting of the Sea Fagade and Rio Fagade, will always be called the Vine angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the drunkenness of Noah. The angle opposite will be called the Fig-tree angle, because it is decorated by a sculp ture of the Fall of Man. The long and narrow range of building, of which the roof is seen in perspective behind this angle, is the part of the palace fronting the Piazzetta; and the angle under the pinnacle most to the left of the two which terminate it will be called the Judgment angle. Within the square formed by the building is seen its interior court (with one of its wells), terminated by small and fantastic buildings of the Renaissance period, which face the Giants' Stair, of which the extremity is seen sloping down on the left. The great fagade which fronts the spectator looks south ward. Hence the two traceried windows lower than the rest, and to the right of the spectator, may be conveniently distinguished as the " Eastern Windows." There are two others like them, filled with tracery, and at the same level, which look upon the narrow canal between the Ponte della THE DUCAL PALACE 183 Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs: these we may conveniently call the " Canal Windows." On the party wall, between the second and third windows, which faces the eastern extremity of the Great Council Chamber, is painted the Paradise of Tintoret ; and this wall will therefore be hereafter called the " Wall of the Paradise." In nearly the centre of the Sea Fagade, and between the first and second windows of the Great Council Chamber, is a large window to the ground, opening on a balcony, which is one of the chief ornaments of the palace, and will be called in future the " Sea Balcony." The fagade which looks on the Piazzetta is very nearly like this to the Sea, but the greater part of it was built in the Fifteenth Century, when people had become studious of their symmetries. The side windows are all on the same level. Two light the west end of the Great Council Cham ber, one lights a small room anciently called the Quarantia Civil Nuova; the other three, and the central one, with a balcony like that to the Sea, light another large chamber, called Sala del Scrutinio, or " Hall of Enquiry," which ex tends to the extremity of the palace above the Porta della Carta. The reader is now well enough acquainted with the topog raphy of the existing building to be able to follow the ac counts of its history. The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built successively in the three styles. There was a Byzan tine Ducal Palace, a Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance 1 84 VENICE Ducal Palace. The second superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and the ex isting building is formed by the union of the two. We shall review the history of each in succession. 1st. The Byzan tine Palace. The year of the death of Charlemagne, 813, the Venetians determined to make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital of their state. Their Doge, Angelo or Agnello Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement of the small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the future Venice. He appointed per sons to superintend the rising of the banks of sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build wooden bridges over the canals. For the offices of religion he built the Church of St. Mark; and on, or near the spot where the Ducal Palace now stands, he built a palace for the administra tion of the government. The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last representation of her power. Of the exact position and form of this palace of Parti cipazio little is ascertained. Sansovino says that it was built near the Ponte della Paglia, and answeringly on the Grand Canal towards San Giorgio; that is to say, in the place now occupied by the Sea Fagade; but this was merely the popu lar report of his day. There can be no doubt whatever that the palace at this period resembled and impressed the THE DUCAL PALACE 185 other Byzantine edifices of the day, such as the Fondaco dei Turchi, etc.; and that, like them, it was covered with sculpture, and richly adorned with gold and colour. In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by fire, but repaired before 11 16, when it received another em peror, Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honoured by imperial praise. Between 11 73 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. Sansovino says that this Doge not only repaired it, but " enlarged it in every direction " ; and after this enlargement, the palace seems to have remained untouched for a hundred years, in the commencement of the Fourteenth Century, the works of the Gothic Palace were begun. The old palace, of which half remains to this day, was built by Sebastian Ziani. So far, then, of the Byzantine Palace. 2d. The Gothic Palace. — The reader, doubtless, rec ollects that the important change in the Venetian govern ment which gave stability to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297, under the Doge Pietro Grade- nigo, a man thus characterised by Sansovino : — " A prompt and prudent man, of unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who laid, so to speak, the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by the admirable regulations which he introduced into the government." The Serra del Consi- glio fixed the numbers of the Senate within certain limits, and it conferred upon them a dignity greater than they bad ever before possessed. It was natural that the altera- 1 86 VENICE tion in the character of the assembly should be attended by some change in the size, arrangement, or decoration of the chamber in which they sat. We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that " in 1301 another saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo under the Doge Gradenigo, and finished in 1 309, in which year the Grand Council first sat in it." In the first year, therefore, of the Fourteenth Century, the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was begun; and ao the Byzantine Palace, was, in its foundation, coeval with the state, so the Gothic Palace, was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the aris tocratic power. Considered as the principal representation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace is the Parthenon of Venice, and Gradenigo its Pericles. But the newly constituted Senate had need of other addi tions to the ancient palace besides the Council Chamber. A short, but most significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction of that room. " There were near it," he says, " the Cancellaria, and the Gheba or Gabbia, afterwards called the Little Tower." Gabbia means a " cage " ; and there can be no question that certain apartments were at this time added at the top of the palace and on the Rio Fagade, which were to be used as prisons. Whether any portion of the old Tor- resella still remains is a doubtful question; but the apart ments at the top of the palace, in its fourth story, were still used for prisons as late as the beginning of the Seven teenth Century. I wish the reader especially to notice that THE DUCAL PALACE 187 a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose, in order to clear the government of the accusa tions so constantly made against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the " piombi " of the Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported, small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable rooms, with good flat roofs of larch, and care fully ventilated.1 The new chamber, then, and the pris ons, being built, the Great Council first sat in their retired chamber on the Rio in the year 1309. It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of Decem ber, 1340, that the commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their report to the Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the com mencement of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal. The room then begun is the one now in existence, and its building involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio. Its decorations and fittings, however, were long in com- 1Bettio, Lettera: "Those who wrote without having seen them described them as covered with lead; and those who have seen them know that, between their flat timber roofs and the sloping leaden roof of the palace, the interval is five metres where it is least, and nine where it is greatest." 1 88 VENICE pletion; the paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400. They represented the heavens covered with stars, this being, says Sansovino, the bearings of the Doge Steno. The Grand Council sat in the finished chamber for the first time in 1423. In that year the Gothic Ducal Palace was completed. It had taken, to build it, the energies of the entire period which I have above described, as the central one of her life. 3rd. The Renaissance Palace. — I must go back a step or two, in order to be certain that the reader under stands clearly the state of the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been proceeding, at inter vals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately symmetry, and to contrast the works of sculpture and painting with which it was decorated, — full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the Fourteenth Cen tury, — with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as the " Palazzo Nuovo " ; and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous and more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the " Palazzo Vecchio." That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it towards THE DUCAL PALACE 189 the Sea; but there was not the wide quay in front, the Riva dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Fagade as important as that to the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the water; and the old palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta with the same splendour as the Sea Fagade. . . . The Great Council Chamber was used for the first time on the day when Foscari entered the Senate as Doge — the 3rd of April, 1423, . . . and the following year, on the 27th of March, the first hammer was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani. That hammer stroke was the first act of the period prop erly called the " Renaissance." It was the knell of the architecture of Venice, — and of Venice herself. I have no intention of following out, in their intricate details, the operations which were begun under the Foscari and continued under succeeding Doges till the palace as sumed its present form: but the main facts are the follow ing: The palace of Ziani was destroyed; the existing fagade to the Piazzetta built, so as both to continue and to resemble, in most particulars, the work of the Great Council Cham ber. It was carried back from the Sea as far as the Judg- 190 VENICE ment angle; beyond which is the Porta della Carta, begun in 1439, and finished in two years, under the Doge Foscari; the interior buildings connected with it were added by the Doge Christopher Moro (the Othello of Shakespeare) in 1462. But whatever buildings, old or new, stood on this spot at the time of the completion of the Porta della Carta were destroyed by another great fire of 1479, together with so much of the palace on the Rio that, though the saloon of Gradenigo, then known as the Sala de' Pregadi, was not destroyed, it became necessary to reconstruct the entire fagades of the portion of the palace behind the Bridge of Sighs, both towards the court and canal. This work was entrusted to the best Renaissance architects of the close of the Fifteenth and opening of the Sixteenth Centuries ; Antonio Ricci executing the Giant's Staircase, and on his absconding, Pietro Lombardo taking his place. The whole work must have been completed towards the middle of the Sixteenth Century. But the palace was not long permitted to remain in this finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire, burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fit tings and all the precious pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the Sea Fagade, and most of those on the Rio Fagade, leaving the building a mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames. It was de bated in the Great Council whether the ruin should not be thrown down, and an entirely new palace built in its THE DUCAL PALACE 191 stead. The opinions of all the leading architects of Venice were taken, respecting the safety of the walls, or the pos sibility of repairing them as they stood. These opinions, given in writing, have been preserved, and published by the Abbe Cadorin in the work already so often referred to; and they form one of the most important series of documents connected with the Ducal Palace. The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were however extensive, and interfere in many directions with the earlier work of the palace: still the only serious altera tion in its form was the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace, to the other side of the Rio del Palazzo ; and the building of the Bridge of Sighs, to connect them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form; with the exception of alterations in doors, partitions, and staircases among the inner apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and defacements as have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, I suppose, nearly every build ing of importance in Italy. INTERIOR OF THE DUCAL PALACE THEOPHILE GAUTIER INTO this strange edifice, — at once a palace, senate, tribunal and prison under the government of the Re public, — we enter by a charming door in St. Mark's corner, between the pillars of St. John of Acre and the great, thick column supporting the entire weight of the immense white and rose marble wall that gives such an original aspect to the ancient palace of the Doges. This door, called Delia Carta, is in charming architec tural taste, adorned with little columns, trefoils and statues, without counting the inevitable, indispensable winged lion of St. Mark, and leads into the great interior court by a vaulted passage. This somewhat singular arrangement of an entrance so to speak placed without the edifice to which it leads has the advantage of not interfering in any way with the unity of its fagades, which are not broken by any pro jection except that of their monumental windows. Before passing under the arcade, let us glance over the exterior of the palace to note a few of its interesting de tails. Above the thick and robust column of which we have just spoken, there is a bas-relief of savage aspect represent ing the Judgment of Solomon with Mediaeval costume and a certain barbarity of execution that renders it hard to recognise the subject. The bas-relief opens into the long twisted little columns that cordon each angle of the building. 192 THE DUCAL PALACE INTERIOR OF PALACE 193 On the fagade of the Piazzetta, upon the second gallery, two columns of red marble mark the place whence the death sentences were read, — a custom that still exists to-day. All the capitals are in exquisite taste and inexhaustible va riety. Not one is a repetition. They contain chimasra;, children, angels, fantastic animals, and sometimes Biblical or historical subjects, mingled with foliage, acanthus, fruits and flowers that forcibly show up the poverty of invention of our modern artists: several bear half effaced inscriptions in Gothic characters, which in order to be fluently read would require a skilful paleographer. There are twenty- seven arcades on the Mole and eighteen on the Piaz zetta. The Porta della Carta leads you to the Giants' Stair case, which is not itself gigantic, but takes its name from the two colossi of Neptune and Mars, a dozen feet in height, by Sansovino, standing on pedestals at the top of the flight. This staircase, leading from the courtyard to the second gallery that decks the interior as well as the exterior of the palace, was erected during the dogedom of Agostino Barbarigo by Antonio Rizzo. It is of white marble, dec orated by Domenico and Bernardo of Mantua with ara besques and trophies in very slight relief, but of such perfection as to be the despair of all the ornamenters, carvers and engravers in the world. It is no longer archi tecture, but goldsmith's work, such as Benyenuto Cellini and Vechte alone could produce. Every morsel of this open balustrade is a world of invention; the weapons and 194 VENICE casques of every bas-relief, each one different, are of the rarest fancy and the purest style; even the slabs of the steps are ornamented with exquisite niello, and yet who knows anything of Domenico and Bernardo of Mantua? The memory of mankind, already wearied with a hundred illus trious names, refuses to retain any more, and consigns to oblivion names that are deserving of all glory. If we turn around on reaching the head of this staircase, we see the inner side of the doorway of Bartolomeo, flow ered over with volutes and plated with little columns and statues, with remnants of blue painting starred with gold in the tympanums of the arch. Among the statues, one in particular is very remarkable: it is an Eve by Antonio Rizzio of Verona, carved in 147 1. The other side, facing the wells, was built in 1607 m the style of the Renaissance, with columns and niches full of antique statues from Greece, representing warriors, orators, and divinities. A clock and a statue of the Duke Urbino, carved by Gio Bandini of Florence in 1625, complete this severe and classic front. Letting your glance fall towards the middle of the court, you see what look like magnificent bronze altars. They are the mouths of the cisterns of Nicolo de Conti and Fran cesco Alberghetti. The first dates from 1556, the second from 1559. Both are masterpieces. Besides the obligatory accompaniment of griffins, sirens, and chiaerae, various aquatic subjects taken from the Scriptures, are represented in them. One could not imagine such richness of invention, INTERIOR OF PALACE 195 such exquisite taste, such perfection of carving, nor such finished work as is displayed by the kerbs of these wells enriched with the polish and verdigris of time. Even the inside of the mouth is plated with thin sheets of bronze branched with a damaskeen of arbesques. These two wells are said to contain the best water in Venice. Near the Giants' Staircase is an inscription framed with ornaments and figures by Alessandro Vittoria recalling the passage of Henry III. through Venice; and farther on in the gallery at the approach to the golden staircase are two statues by Antonio Aspetti, Hercules and Atlas bending beneath the starry firmament, the weight of which the mighty hero is about to transfer to his own bull-neck. This magnificent staircase, adorned with stuccos by Vittoria and paintings by Giambatista, is by Sansovino and leads to the library which now occupies several rooms of the palace of the Doges. To attempt to describe them one by one would be a work of patience and erudition that would require a whole volume. The old hall of the Grand Council is one of the largest you could find anywhere. The Court of Lions at the Al- hambra would easily go inside it. On entering, you stand still, struck with astonishment. By an effect that is some what frequently found in architecture, this hall looks much larger than the building that contains it. A sombre and severe wainscoting where bookcases have taken the place of the seats of the old senators, serves as a plinth for im mense paintings that extend all around the walls, broken I96 VENICE only by windows, below a line of portraits of the Doges and a colossal gilded ceiling of incredible exuberance of orna mentation, with great compartments, square, octagonal and oval, with foliage, volutes, and rock-work in a taste scarcely appropriate to the style of the palace, but so imposing and magnificent that you are quite dazzled by it. Unfortu nately the pictures by Paul Veronese, Tintoret, Palma the Younger, and other great masters, that filled these superb frames have now been removed on account of indispensable repairs. That side of the hall by which you enter is entirely occu pied by a gigantic Paradise by Tintoret, which contains a world of figures. It is a strong painting and it is a pity that time has so greatly darkened it. The smoky shadows that cover it belong to a Hell rather to a Glory. Behind this canvas, a fact that we have not been in a position to verify, it is said that there is an ancient Paradise painted in green camaieu upon the wall by Guariento of Padua in 1365. It would be curious to be able to compare this green Paradise with the black one. It is only Venice that has one depth of painting below another. This hall is a kind of Versailles museum of Venetian history, with the difference that if the exploits are not so great, the painting is far better. It is impossible to im agine a more wonderful effect than is produced by this immense hall entirely covered by these pompous paintings that excel in the Venetian genius. Above these great his torical scenes is a row of portraits of the Doges by Tin- INTERIOR OF PALACE 197 toret, Bassano, and other painters; as a rule they have a smoky and bearded appearance, although, contrary to the impression we form, they have no beards. In one corner the eye is arrested at an empty and black frame that makes a hole as dark as a tomb in this chronological gallery. It is the space that should be occupied by the portrait of Marino Faliero, as told by this inscription: Locus Marini Phaletri, decapitati pro criminibus. All the effigies of Ma rino Faliero were also destroyed, so that his portrait may be said to be undiscoverable. However, it is pretended that there is one in the possession of an amateur at Verona. The republic wanted to destroy the memory of this haughty old man who brought it within an inch of ruin in revenge for a youth's jest that was sufficiently punished by a few month's imprisonment. To finish with Marino Faliero, let us note that he was not beheaded at the head of the Giants' Stair case, as is represented in several prints, since that stairway was not built till a hundred and fifty years later, but in the opposite corner at the other end of the gallery, upon the top of a flight of steps since demolished. We will now name the most celebrated chambers of the palace without pretending to describe them in detail. In the chamber dei Scarlatti the chimney-piece is covered with marble reliefs of the finest workmanship. On the impost also is seen a very curious bas-relief in marble represent ing the Doge Loredan on his knees before the Virgin and Child, accompanied by several saints, — an admirable piece of work by an unknown artist. The Hall of the Shield; 198 VENICE here the arms of the living Doge were emblazoned. It is hung with geographical charts by the Abbe Grisellini that trace the discoveries of Marco Polo, so long treated as fabulous, and of other illustrious Venetian travellers, such as Zeni and Cabota. Here also is kept a globe, found on a Turkish galley, engraved upon wood and of strange con figuration being in accordance with Oriental ideas and cov ered with Arabic characters cut with marvellous delicacy; also a great bird's-eye view of Venice by Albert Diirer, who made a long stay in the city of the Doges. The aspect of the city is generally the same as to-day, since for three centuries one stone has not been laid upon another in the Italian cities. In the Hall of the Philosophers a very beautiful chimney- piece by Pietro Lombardo is to be noticed. The Hall of Stuccos, so called because of its ornamentation, contains paintings by Salviati, Pordenone, and Bassano: the Virgin, a Descent from the Cross, and the Nativity of Jesus Christ. The banquet-hall is where the Doge used to give certain feasts of etiquette, — diplomatic dinners, as we should say to-day. Here we see a portrait of Henry III. by Tintoret, very strong and very fine; and facing the door is the Adora tion of the Magi, a warm painting by Bonifazio, that great master of whose work we possess scarcely anything in Paris. The Hall of the Four Doors has a square anteroom, the ceiling of which, painted by Tintoret, represents Justice giving the sword and scales to the Doge Priuli. The four doors are adorned with statues of grand form by Giulio INTERIOR OF PALACE 199 del Moro, Francesco Caselli, Girolamo Campagna, and Alessandro Vittoria; the paintings that enrich the room are masterpieces. From this hall let us pass into the Anti-Collegio : it is the waiting-room of the ambassadors, the architecture being by Scamozzi. The envoys of the various powers who came to present their credentials to the Most Serene Republic could scarcely have been in a hurry to be introduced: the masterpieces crowded with such lavishness into this splendid anteroom would induce any one to be patient. The four pictures near the door are by Tintoret, and among his best. These are the subjects: Mercury and the Graces; Vulcan's Forge; Pallas, accompanied by Joy and Abundance, chasing Mars; and Ariadne consoled by Bacchus. Apart from a few rather forced foreshortenings and a few violent attitudes in which this master took pleasure on account of their dif ficulty, we can do nothing but praise the virile energy of touch, the warmth of colour, the truth of the flesh, the life-like power and that forceful and charming grace that distinguishes mighty talents when they have to render sweet and gentle subjects. But the marvel of this sanctuary of art is the Rape of Europa, by Paul Veronese. What lovely white shoulders! what blonde curling tresses! what round and charming arms! what smiles of eternal youth in this wonderful can vas in which Paul Veronese seems to have spoken his final word! Sky, clouds, trees, flowers, meadows, seas, tints, draperies, all seem bathed in the glow of an unknown 200 VENICE Elysium. If we had to choose one single example of all Paul Veronese's work, this is the one we should prefer: it is the most beautiful pearl in this rich casket. On the ceiling the great artist has seated his dear Venice on a golden throne with that amplitude of drapery and that abundant grace of which he possesses the secret. For this Assumption, in which Venice takes the place of the Virgin, he always knows how to find fresh blues and new radiance. The magnificent chimney-piece by Aspetti, a stucco cor nice by Vittoria and Bombarda, blue camai'eu by Sebastian Rizzi, and columns of verde antique and Cipolin marble framing the door complete this marvellous decoration in which shines the most beautiful of all luxuries, that of genius. The reception-hall, or the Collegio, comes next. Here we find Tintoret and Paul Veronese, the former red and violent, the other azure and calm; the first, suited to great expanses of wall, the second, for immense ceilings. We will not speak of the camaieu, the grisailles, the columns of verde antique, the little arches of flowered jasper and sculptures by G. Campagna: we should never finish and those are the ordinary sumptuous details in the palace of the Doges. There are many other admirable rooms in the Ducal Palace that we have not mentioned. The Hall of the Council of Ten, the Hall of the Supreme Council, the Hall of the State Inquisitors, and many others. Upon their walls and ceilings sit side by side the apotheosis of Venice and the Assumption of the Virgin; the Doges on INTERIOR OF PALACE 201 their knees before some Madonnas or other; and mytho logical heroes or fabulous gods; the Lion of St. Mark and Jupiter's eagle; the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and a Neptune; Pope Alexander III. and a short-kilted Allegory; mix up stories from the Bible and holy Virgins beneath baldaquins with captures of Zara embroidered with more numerous episodes than one of Ariosto's songs, surprises of Candia and jumbles of Turks; carve the doorcases; cover the cornices with mouldings and stucco; set up statues in every corner; lay gold upon everything that is not covered by the brush of a superior artist; say: " All those who have laboured here, even the obscure, had twenty times as much talent as our celebrities of the present day; and the greatest masters have employed their lives here " ; and then you will have a feeble idea of all this magnificence that defies description. Painters, whose names are not uttered once a century, here hold their place in most terrible proximi ties. You would say that genius was in the air at that climacteric epoch of human progress and that nothing was easier than to produce masterpieces. The sculptors espe cially, of whom no one ever speaks, display extraordinary talent and are not in the least inferior to the greatest painters. THE CARNIVAL CHARLES YRIARTE a T the Carnival it is from the Piazza and the Piaz- Z_% zetta that the processions start and all the exhi- -A. JLbitions and performances of this mad season. And everything takes place to-day just as it did yesterday and as it did two hundred, or even five hundred years ago, as is shown in a pretty composition by Vanutelli which we found in the Gallery of the Princess Matilda. The painter has placed his scene under the arcades of the Ducal Palace; it is there that to-day a whole troupe of masqueraders come to play their lazzi, for the Carnival of Venice, which is just as celebrated as the Roman Carnival and which has served as a theme for poets and musicians and on which Gozzi, Paga- nini and Theophile Gautier have embroidered their Pizzi- cati, is not so dead as people would have us believe; the tradition exists if the genius of the people has changed. The Carnival week, though quieter than it used to be, still attracts strangers; it is the season of intrigues and festivals when the entire population seems intoxicated by the very air. There are two very distinct parts in the Carnival of Venice: the carnival of the street and the carnival of the drawing- room. Not long ago people went masqued to St. Mark's Place and the Fenice, and gave themselves up to merry mys tifications that recalled the good old days of Venice in the PIAZZETTA WITH CORNER OF DOGE'S PALACE THE CARNIVAL 203 Eighteenth Century; this was the age of supper-parties, barcarolles, serenades and Venetian festivals, which last words include everything. To-day the aristocracy is re served and discreet ; a few swell masquerades, a few masqued balls given in a setting worthy of the costumes, a few gay suppers and a few serenades, and the festival is over. Guardi, the painter of delicate touch, the piquant colourist, shows us the balls in the Ducal Palace, the Ridotti, the promenaders on the Piazza with their black velvet masques, their three cornered hats, and that Venetian cloak that has become the livery for carnival gaieties throughout Europe. Of all this nothing remains now, and what is left is difficult to describe and would escape the notice of a passing stranger ; one must be of Venetian origin to enter, or even be ad mitted to, these pleasures and to appreciate their charm. But the street is more lively; the corporations club together and give the city a show; each year they have a new idea and a new way of executing it: an allegorical car, a Bucentaur, a scene full of life and colour in which the celebrated heroes, Vesta Zenda and Tato are seen, and the illustratious Pantaloon harangues the crowd from his throne erected on the Piazzetta in front of the two large granite columns. Pantaloon has arrived at the head of his procession which assembled in the court of the deserted con vent of San Sepolcra ; he goes the whole length of the Riva dei Schiavoni, preceded by his Turkish guards; bridges have been thrown across the canals that intersect the quay, so that nothing interrupts the masquerade along its route. 204 VENICE The painters of the Arsenal and painters of other buildings, all in costume, form a guild and sing choruses; other civic guilds form themselves into brass bands, for there are no festivals without music in Venice. The procession is long and the whole city follows it; the banners that are carried in front of it are borne by men dressed as Turks, and another body pretends to guard them; behind them follow the Chioggiotti, the fish-vendors of Chioggia, who carry on their arms elegant baskets filled with fish made of sugar, which they throw into the balconies all along the way; and the whole street presents a number of those grotesque scenes that have been preserved by Guardi's brush. After the Chioggiotti, who have their own band, usually costumed in mediaeval dress, come the Epigrams of the year: these are monster masques, gigantic personages who recall those occurring in the carnivals of the northern cities of France; they are numerous and always represent a satiri cal epigram in allusion to a celebrity of the season, or some actual event is symbolised by each person. Often a political personage is chosen for the allusion, and many times, in deed, the authorities have had to intervene and prevent the caricature of a foreign minister or sovereign. After the great masques come groups of all kinds, follow ing according to popular fancy; but there is nearly always a general idea for the whole procession, the burlesque groups forming detached episodes, framed in the whole; nobody is deceived by anything and there is great applause. THE CARNIVAL 205 Arriving at the Piazzetta, Pantaloon, who is king of the festival, mounts his throne and harangues the crowd in Venetian dialect, and, as he can wag his tongue glibly, the people reward him with acclamations. He descends, re sumes his place at the head of the procession and goes to the Piazza, in the centre of which a circular ball-room, about the height of the Cafe Florian and Cafe Quadri, has been erected. The orchestra takes its place and the most important masquers lead the dances; the Piazza is filled, and the crowd is lively, joyous and bright with colour; a great number of people wear fancy costumes and take an active part in the amusements. This is the overture to the popular festival, the inaugura tion of the Carnival, and as these people thoroughly under stand how to provide amusements, every day brings a new pleasure and surprise. In the evening the Piazza we are describing is fairy-like; it is very brilliantly lighted by a method used only on these occasions: if it is fine weather you can walk about in dancing-shoes, for as the Piazza is paved, it is a veritable ball-room; the cafes are crowded at this time; the tables are even carried into the middle of the Piazza and you can stroll about in the open air as if you were at a gigantic ball. RIVA DEI SCHIAVONI JULIA CARTWRIGHT NEXT to the Piazza the Riva dei Schiavoni is, per haps, the most attractive place in Venice. It is not only for the sake of the view, although that is magnificent, or for S. Giorgio — best beloved of all lesser Venetian shrines — opposite; but it is because there you see whatever is left of the vivacity and joyousness of Venetian life. At Florian's you may see the more elegant side of society, more of the dandies and the well dressed ladies, and the foreigners and tourists, but on the Riva you have the life of the people. This is the place for the artist who knows dexterously to combine groups of figures with shipping and buildings. He has but to take his stand on a balcony overlooking the Riva, or under the vine-trellis of one of the numerous cafes, or osterias, along the quay, and he will see every type and variety conceivable. Sailors of all countries throng the doors, ships from all parts of the world are seen by the side of those red and orange Chioggia sails, which are familiar objects in all Venetian drawings. The scene is always lively and amusing. From early dawn the shrill voices of the street- sellers make themselves heard under your windows. The cries "Aqua! polenta/ pomi d'oro, limonada! " mingle with those of shell and bead-sellers, of flower-girls and fishermen, 206 RIVA DEGLI SCHIAVONI RIVA DEI SCHIAVONI 207 praising their wares, of gondoliers, and facchini seeking custom or quarrelling among themselves, and cursing each other's remotest descendants in the most voluble language. Towards mid-day a change comes over the scene. There is a lull in the busy traffic, a pause in the movement of the crowd. The cries become fewer and feebler, until by de grees they die out entirely, and slumber creeps over the noisiest and most pertinacious vendors of anise-water and macaroni. Those two gondoliers, who half-an-hour ago were calling heaven and earth to witness the eternal hatred which they vowed against each other, are peacefully sleep ing side by side, on the steps of the quay, in the most con fiding trustfulness. Even the little, sharp-faced fruit-seller, who has been crying the ambrosial sweetness of his peaches, exactly under your window, until you wonder he has any voice left, is silent now, and leans against his stall, nodding his head over the piles of ripe fruit before him. Sleep has overtaken all alike, and the only voices to be heard proceed from parties of indefatigable English, who, in tent on pursuing their daily round of sight-seeing regard less of the sun's meridian power, come in search of a gon dolier. As the hours go by, and the heat of the day passes, another change comes over the Riva. A steamer arrives, there is a rush of people to the quay, the sleeping mummies on the pavement lift their heads and rise slowly to their feet. One by one the sellers return, the cries begin exactly as before, only a trifle shriller and more persistent than before, The plot thickens as the afternoon wears away, 208 VENICE and a fresh breeze springs up from the lagoon. Guitar- players and barrel-organs wake the echoes, marionettes and puppet-shows attract small crowds of children and idlers, boatmen and beggars return to the charge with the vigour of giants refreshed with wine, the bargaining and the wrangling and shouting become louder and more bewilder ing than ever. And now it is the hour of promenade, when the beauty and fashion of Venice take the air, and you may see ladies wrapped in lace mantillas go by, wearing gold or pearl pins in their hair and waving large fans to and fro as they walk, followed by groups of friends and admirers. They are dark-eyed beauties for the most part, but occasionally you may see a maiden with the golden hair which Tintoret and Paris Bordone loved to paint, and you may be sure la biondina will excite more than one exclamation of frank admiration from the passers-by. Often the handsomest faces are those of the women of the humbler classes, who also come out to take the air on the Riva at this hour. Some of them wear large straw hats, and others heavy gold chains and earrings, and often silver arrows stuck through their classically braided tresses, while all, whatever their dress may be, have a gaily-coloured handkerchief on their shoulders. The scene on the sea is as lively as that on shore. The lagoon swarms with gondolas and barcas, and the bright colours of the striped awnings and crimson or blue and white scarves of the gondoliers enliven the blackness pf the boats RIVA DEI SCHIAVONI 209 as they go flitting by across the waters. Now and then the note of a guitar is heard from a gondola, and if it be a festa a boatful of men and boys are sure to be there, singing in their rich musical voices the refrain of the favour ite chorus: " Venezia, gemma triatica, sposa del mar," the one perpetual strain of which Venetian boatmen never seem to tire. So it all goes on for hours, the music and the voices and the movement of feet passing up and down, while the west ern sun is pouring its glory over the shore, and Ducal Pal ace and lagoon and the tall campanile of S. Giorgio yonder are steeped in one rosy glow. Long after it has dropped into the sea, and the stars have come out in the sky, they will be promenading, talking, and laughing still, and the voices will wax merrier, and the laughter more joyous as the pleasant twilight hour deepens. But if you have had enough of the noise and of the daz zling brightness which does at last begin to weary your eyes in Venice, you have only to turn a few steps aside from the gay Riva, and stand on the lonely bridge which joins it to the Piazzetta. It is called the Ponte della Paglia, and crosses the narrow channel which flows between the Palace and the Prisons. There it is silent enough, and no one will disturb you as you look down at the dark waters lapping the massive cornices and iron bound windows of the majestic Rio fagade. Not a sound breaks the stillness, 210 VENICE except it be the hum of distant voices and music on the Riva, or the splash of an oar as a solitary gondola comes stealing along by the blackened walls, and under the tomb like structure of the Bridge of Sighs, hanging in mid-air as if it had been flung aloft on purpose to catch the moonbeams which go straying into the waters below. It is to these sud den contrasts that we owe half the charm of Venice. BY SIDE CANALS LINDA VILLARI IN a forlorn coiner of Venice, not far from the Ma donna dell' Orto, where Cima da Conegliano's great picture is enshrined, we come to the grass-grown Campo St. Avis, with its blistered garden walls and cluster of crumbling buildings. There is plenty of time to look about us before the bottle-nosed custodian comes shuffling over the bridge with the keys of the little-frequented church. We have come to seek the earliest productions of Carpaccio, and here they are on the wall of the nave, eight in all and mere daubs, although the promising daubs of a gifted twelve- year-old boy. They are scenes from the Old Testament — Job and his Comforters; Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; Tobit and the Angel; Moses and the Tables of the Law; the Golden Calf; Joshua before the Walls of Jericho; Jo seph's Brethren Imploring Forgiveness; Jacob and Rachel at the Well. These early efforts of the future illustrator of the legends of St. George, St. Ursula, St. Jerome, etc., have little historic worth, but much historic interest, since all crudity and stiff ness notwithstanding, they show the budding dramatic power and keen observation of the future master. And they are the only records of his youth, for few details are known of Carpaccio's life. Even the date of his birth is uncertain, 2 1 2 VENICE but may be placed towards the middle of the Fifteenth Century, as he was an aged man at the time of his death in 1524. The first of his great works is dated 1490, the last 1522. It is a disputed point whether his name was Scarpaccia or Carpaccio, a disputed point whether he was a native of Venice or Istria; but recent research has almost decided this question in favour of the latter place. The St. Avis panels bear the painter's usual signature. In the quaint representation of Jacob's meeting with Rachel, we at once notice the horse stooping to feed. The action is very truthful, and the forelegs have the defect — dispro portionate length — common to all Carpaccio's horses. But, as in his after works, the story is capitally told, the central idea seized, although the brush is feebly handled, and the drawing that of a child. This poverty-stricken church must once have seen better days, for it possesses several excellent works of art. There is a fresco by Bonifazio — The Last Supper — almost identical in composition with the oil-painting by the same master in the Florence Academy. The Judas is specially remarkable as a study in red and brown. Here, too, are a couple of Tie- polo's chefs d'aeuvre: the Scourging in the Temple, and Christ Sinking Under the Cross. They are noble paintings both for colour and design, and painted in the master's most serious mood. No frolicsome angels mar the solemnity of the themes. Nevertheless, like all this master's works, they bear a prophetic kinship with those of the French school of thirty years back. They might have strayed from SANUDO VANAXEL CANAL BY SIDE CANALS 213 the walls of the Luxembourg to this decaying Venetian church. The last of the Venetian colourists is unfortunate in his surroundings, for some of his best productions are hidden in the Palazzo Labia, in the Canareggio quarter, near the rail way station, and are seldom discovered by strangers. The palace stands sideways to the canal, divided from it by a stretch of pavement. It fronts an unsavoury Fondamento, whence, after ringing at a blistered door, you pass into a spacious entrance hall, foul with odours unmentionable and strewed with flakes of plaster dropped from the cracked and bulging vault above. A grandiose staircase faces the mouldy courtyard in the centre of the block. Ascending its grimy steps, you are met by a frowzy portress, fit guardian of decay, whose slip-shod feet lead the way into a lofty saloon with wide cracks in the walls and depressions in the floor corre sponding with the unsightly bulges seen from below. Here are Tiepolo's frescoes of the loves of Antony and Cleo patra, and the Allegory of Fortune. The visitor's first im pression is one of blank disappointment, for the story of the Egyptian queen is coarsely treated, though vigorous in de sign ; and this buxom, blowzy Cleopatra, with ruff and stom acher and powdered toupee, so ostentatiously melting her pearl before the enamoured eyes of her Roman General, is, to say the least, a droll anachronism. But there is a charming group of pipers and trumpeters in the background, delicate, vaporous figures, somewhat after the manner of Hamon. On the opposite wall is seen the arrival of Mark Antony, 2I4 VENICE and on the ceiling the Allegory of Fortune, a truly excellent work. It is sad that treasures like these should be left to perish amid all this dust and decay! A school of mosaic workers occupies the front rooms, and you have to pick your way among heaps of glass cubes, pots of cement, and a con fusion of benches, tables and boys, to obtain a view of the remaining pictures. The rest of the building is let off to tenants of the poorest class who air their rags on the sculp tured window-sills and balconies. Sic transit gloria mundil About a century ago this mas sive Renaissance palace was the meeting-place of the fash ionable world, for the Labia exercised a princely hospitality, and had a private theatre, where many operas were acted by marionettes and sung by good artists behind the scenes. On the same day, we gained admittance to the Palazzo Morosini, at Santo Stefano, one of the best preserved relics of olden Venice. It still belongs to the Morosini, and the present representative of the family allows it to be seen by special appointment. Landing at the water-door in a dark and narrow canal, you are received by ancient serving-men with shrunken faces and loosely hanging coats, and ushered straight into the Seventeenth Century. The chilly entrance hall is adorned with quaint oil sketches of the thirty-seven strongholds captured by Francesco Morosini in the Morea. The huge lanterns of his war-galley project from the end wall. There are full-length portraits of the conquering Doge and of many illustrious ancestors. The Maggiordomo appears and gravely leads you up-stairs into a long suite of BY SIDE CANALS 215 saloons with gorgeous uncomfortable furniture, a large col lection of pictures — good, bad and indifferent — quantities of rare old china of Eastern and native fabric, and innumer able relics of the hero of the house, Doge Francesco, sur- named the " Peloponesiaco." There is his bust in bronze, with memorials of his prowess; and the resolute features are those of a leader of men. The one thing lacking to this typical Venetian dwelling is an outlook on to the Grand Canal. Nearly all the windows open upon the " Calle Stretta," or into mildewed courts ; and the only sunny corner, at the angle of Piazza Santo Stefano, is devoted to the ar moury, filled with spoils of victory over the Turks. A forest of infidel banners and flags droop from the walls in heavy silken folds, amid a store of Pasha's tails, shields, tro phies of arms and armour, guns and mortars, statues, busts and bas-reliefs. This fortunate general captured no less than 1,360 pieces of artillery, and evidently looted on a vast scale, inasmuch as the lion's share of his gains must have gone to the State. The sun streamed into this picturesque hall and through its wide casements. We looked on to the flower-filled terrace of Countess Morosini's private rooms. The gem of the picture gallery is Titian's portrait of Doge Grimiani : a marvellous painting of an astute old face, with piercing narrow eyes and seamed with countless wrinkles. His union with Morosina Morosini can hardly have been a love match, on the lady's part at all events. Beside this masterpiece hangs a good Sir Peter Lely, representing a 216 VENICE bouncing blonde with frank blue eyes, supposed to be the portrait of Christina of Sweden. The collection naturally includes many scenes of Venetian life by the prolific Longhi ; they are very inferior to those in the possession of Mr. Rawdon Browne, but there are some female heads in pastel by the same master which are speci mens of his best work. This home of the Morosini is almost the only notable Venetian palace still owned by the family for whom it was built, and no other has retained so rich a collection of art- treasures and relics. But even at burning mid-day it was cold — cold as the grave. Surely, only disembodied spirits could take their ease in those stiff and chilly saloons! We could imagine the long-deceased Doge and a select company of family ghosts gravely stalking through them by night, and trying to warm themselves by sipping hot coffee — for which the Doge had acquired a taste in the East — from the dainty cups so primly ranged on shelves during the day. That there are ghosts in Venice is known to everyone. Is not that fine grim-fronted palace at the turn of the canal, Palazzo Con tarini delle Figure, perpetually changing hands, because no tenant can long endure its nighty horrors? The present owner has stripped it of its furniture in the hope of getting rid of the ghosts, but no one takes it, and its supernatural occupants now have it all to themselves. SOME CHURCHES OF VENICE HENRY PERL THE localities adjacent to the Rialto are those in which the larger mercantile affairs of the city are carried on. But although it is so especially the resort of business men, it must be understood that the entire neighbourhood is not lacking in objects of rich architectural interest. One of the most remarkable of these is the Church of the Madonna dei Miracoli, to which we may now direct our steps. In itself it is so complete, that, with respect to its purity alike of form and style, it may almost be said to stand alone. The church dates from the early Renaissance, and shows at the same time some slight tendency towards the mediaeval Byzantine style. The name of the original architect is un certain, but the design was no doubt carried out faithfully in 148 1 under the supervision of Pietro Lombardo. Many of the paintings in the interior are of the highest value, but besides these the elaborate perforations and exquisite finish of the stonework demand a careful inspection. From an artistic point of view, the Church " dei Miracoli " must be reckoned amongst the most striking of the architectural works that ever were accomplished by the genius and energy of the Lom- bardi family. Its charm lies primarily in the perfect har mony of its proportion, and this has been more completely 217 zi 8 VENICE revealed since the cultivated taste of modern days has insisted on the removal of the various altars, statues and other erec tions, which had so encroached upon the area as to mar the purity of the proper outlines. As it is seen at present, it is the pearl of Venetian churches. Only a short distance from the Church dei Miracoli, we shall come upon another architectural gem of the days of old. This is the pointed arabesque archway that forms the en trance to what is known as the " Corte della Monache." It is a happy combination of the Moorish with the Gothic style. Almost close by this is the " Campo Tiziano," in which is situated the house which Titian occupied from 1531 to 1576- Going on straight ahead — or, as the Venetians say, sempre dritto — we soon arrive at the Piazza San Giovanni e Paolo, and there we find ourselves in full view both of the church of the same name and of the Municipal Hospital. Opposite is an equestrian statue to the memory of Bartolomeo Colleoni, who was a general of high renown in the time of the Re public. Adjoining the Church of San Giovanni e Paolo is the Scuola di San Marco, remarkable for the singular reliefs in perspective of two lions which adorn it. This is now a hospital. Opposite San Giovanni e Paolo the road leads towards San Lorenzo, whence we proceed towards the Greek Church and the treasury of San Giorzio dei Greci. This is no doubt one of the most curious and striking quarters of Venice, being in a large degree made up of palatial residences, often beautiful in themselves, but almost all deserted. CHURCH OF S. ZACCARIA SOME CHURCHES OF VENICE 219 The Church of San Lorenzo was originally a convent belonging to the Benedictine Order. Its history dates from about 1000 A. D., but the fabric itself was not built till !595) when it was proceeded with under very favourable auspices. The singular circumstance is recorded that, at the very commencement of the undertaking, the workmen who were digging out the excavations for the foundation came upon two of the huge jars known as " zare," and which are still in use for holding water. These were found to be full up to the brim of gold coins. There was no doubt as to how the treasure had come there. The money had been the property of Angela Michiel, an abbess of the convent, who had thus buried her wealth for security after the murder of her brother, the Doge Vicenzo Michiel. As we are strolling about, we shall be sure to find ourselves before long opposite the Church of San Giorgio dei Greci, and we may well pause for a while to look at it. It was in 1498 that the Greeks resident in Venice, some merchants, others fugitives from the Turks, formed a resolution to erect a Greek church, and obtained the requisite permission to carry out the design. One of the other passages close by is the Calle San An- tonino, and leads to the church after which it is named. This church was founded in the Ninth Century; but the ancient structure was removed and the edifice rebuilt in the Six teenth Century, so that it now presents comparatively little of interest. On the right, the Fondamenta leads to another church — 220 VENICE that of San Giorgio degli Schiavoni — where, besides a bas- relief by Pietro da Salo bearing date 155 1, there is preserved the noteworthy series, by Carpaccio, of scenes illustrating the lives of the saintly patrons of Dalmatia and Albania. We need only retrace our steps for a short way, leaving this little church of San Antonino, and we shall come to the Campo della Bragola, and nearly opposite to us we shall see the Palazzo Badoer, bearing one of the oldest names in Venetian history. The building is Fourteenth Century pointed work, and the walls still retain traces of fresco-paintings. The Campo altogether may be justly regarded as a type of mediaeval Venice. It contains, a church dedicated to San Giovanni in Bragola. Leading from the Zattere are several ways into the labyrin thine passages of Venice. We decide to turn into the Calle del Vento, and so reach the Fondamenta San Sebastiano, in which of course, we also find the Church of San Sebastiano. It was here the Paolo Veronese was buried, and the church can boast of possessing a goodly number of his most valued paintings. From the twenty-seventh to the thirty-first year of his age he was employed by the prior to adorn the walls of the building. It was very probably due to this commis sion that Paolo Caliario came from Verona to Venice, where he depicted the city in its glory and gained for himself a world-wide reputation. Seen from the outside the church is quite unpretentious, but some of the pictures that embellish the interior are masterpieces by Veronese. Amongst them are the Martyrdom of S. Sebastian and the Martyrdom of SOME CHURCHES OF VENICE 221 SS. Mark and MarceUinus. One of the altar-pieces is a powerful picture by Titian, and a circumstance that gives it an exceptional interest is that it was painted when the artist was in his eighty-sixth year. The mortal remains of Paolo Veronese lie just below a bust of him, and a Latin inscription certifies the fact. From this church we pass through a little piazza that has almost a rural character, and brings us to the Church of San Angelo Raffaelle, which is another monument of art. The sculptured fountain in the middle of the Campo San Raf faelle is by Marco Arian, of the date of 1349, and is one of the only two authenticated works by him in Venice. Hardly any church enjoys a greater popularity than San Angelo, and the piazza is from time to time bright with the festival pro cessions crossing it. The ceremonial observed with the keenest zest, and therefore the most attractive, takes place on St. John the Baptist's Day, which falls on the 24th of June. A considerable number of little children from two to four years of age are dressed up in lamb-skins, lavishly adorned with flowers, and each provided with a candle that, like themselves, is gay with blossoms and coloured ribbons. Many of them wear dazzling crowns upon their heads, and per sonate the infant Baptist. In this way they form a leading feature in the procession, which is certainly very imposing. The neighbourhood round San Raffaelle and near S. Nicolo dei Mendicanti is one of the poorest, and at the same time one of the most characteristic, in Venice. The little church of S. Nicolo has not been without its significance in 222 VENICE the history of the lagoons, inasmuch as it gave the name of the " Nicolotti " to the residents within its parochial bounds, the sworn foes of the Castellani, and the eager partakers in the Herculean sports there described. At this end of the city more than anywhere else we realise that Venice is actually an island traversed by navigable canals which the great and mighty have at intervals adorned with buildings, most of them ranking as works of art. Here, as so often happens, we find as we go along either from San Sebastiano, or San Raffaelle that the monotony of the long and cleanly-kept Fondamenta is relieved by some small piazza. On one of these stands a church of high repute known as " I Carmini," whence both the Campo and the adjacent bridge have derived their name. The popular ity that the church enjoys is exceptionally great, and is to be largely, if not entirely, attributed to the circumstance of its being dedicated to the Madonna del Carmelo, who is gen erally supposed to be identical with the Madonna di Loretto. The yearly festival of the Madonna, which is held in the month of July, is observed with especial honour, and is an occasion when the Patriarch of Venice, generally attends and himself celebrates High Mass. From the Marittima we cross a bridge and come upon a pretty piazza that is almost Dutch in its aspect; this is the Campo Sant' Andrea, the church having the same name and facing the Canal di Marittima. It is only on Sundays and festivals that this church is open for service, and it is at tended almost exclusively by sailors. SOME CHURCHES OF VENICE 223 The Frari Church is the Pantheon of Venice. For even the most cursory and superficial inspection of it a quiet un interrupted hour is required. Not only does it contain the monuments of many eminent men who are buried here, but there are numerous portraits and pictures that must detain attention. First we must name the Mausoleums of Pesaro and Titian, and what, perhaps, in an artistic sense will be accounted more important still, the Monument to Canova. ALL SOULS' DAY HORATIO F. BROWN THE Italians keep their Lemuria or festival for the dead, not in May, as their Roman ancestors did, but in November. The 2nd of November, All Souls' Day, and its octave are more generally observed than any other of the minor holy days in the Roman calendar. No festival could so unite all classes of people as this, on which each family pays the tribute of memory to its lost ones, and acknowledges the power of that great Democrat, Death. Every day throughout the octave, the churches of Venice recite a mass for the souls of those who are gone and implore for them the intercession of All Saints, whose festival comes immediately before the day of the dead. In the evening another service is held, a little after sundown. There is a sermon ; and then begins the lighting of candles all through the church, before each altar and round the catafalque in the centre. It is upon the vigil of All Souls, the " notte dei Morti " as it is called, and at the church of the Gesuati, upon the Zattere, that the greatest illumination takes place. The Gesuati is that late Palladian church, built of Istrian stone, almost opposite the nobler fagade of the Redentore, and more formally known as Santa Maria del Rosario. The church is called the Gesuati because hard by — but long before the foundation of this present building, which dates from the 224 CHURCH OF IL SANTISSIMO REDENTORE ALL SOULS' DAY 225 last century only — the company of the Blessed John Colom- bini, which was called the Gesuati, first established itself in the year 1392. Among the other pious duties of the brother hood was that of supplying and carrying the torches at funerals, and hence it comes that the Gesuati makes this dis play of light every 2nd of November. The order of the Blessed John was suppressed in the year 1668; but the Dominicans who succeeded the Gesuati in the possession of their monastery and church continue the custom of the candles. Outside, over the main door of the church is a large black board, and, in white letters, an invitation to all good Christians to pray for the souls of the departed. Round this table hangs a wreath of laurel leaves, twined on a black and white ribbon. Every other door of the church has a similar garland above it. The sun is setting in a cold and cloudless sky, serene and almost hard. In the zenith the colour is deep blue, but towards the west a thin film of gold is spread where the sun is sinking. The wind comes fine and search ing, as it so often does on an autumn evening. The broad and rippled waters of the Giudecca Canal seem as hard as the sky they reflect. Inside the church, through the open door where the women troop, pulling their shawls up over their heads as they enter, all is dark and gloomy, every column, pilaster, and arch itrave draped in black cloth with silver fringes ; and wreaths of laurel are twined round each pillar's base. The high altar is hidden by a towering cenotaph, raised in the middle 226 VENICE of the nave ; against its blackness the thin white stripes of the tapers that surround it stand out clear. The people, chiefly women and boys, scuffle and whisper subduedly as they kneel in rows. The black-walled, black-roofed church seems to enclose and compress them as if in some vast and lugubrious tomb; and their mutterings sound like the gibbering of ghosts. The sermon begins; a voice alone, full of inflexion, passion, forcible cadences, speaking out of the darkness. Though the preacher is invisible, the mind unconsciously and perforce pictures the action that must accompany this strong Italian rhetoric. The voice holds the church; and there is silence in the congregation except for the dull thud of the padded doors as some new-comers arrive. The sermon is not long; only a few rapid passages, and then comes the close. The shuffling and whispering are resumed; and the sacristans begin to light the candles. Through the darkness the little yellow tips of fire move noiselessly, touching the tall wax tapers before each altar, and down the nave, and round the cenotaph in the centre. Presently the church is faintly illuminated by these warm yellow stars, that waver to and fro in the gloom, but do not overcome it. There is a short hush of silent prayer ; then the congregation rises and shuffles out down the steps of the church on to the broad pavement of the Zattere. The sun has set, the wind died away; the air is mild and clear ; the sky in the west is mellowed to a wonderful enamel of molten blue and green and daffodil; and no stars are shining yet. The crowd disappears rapidly; the boys rush ALL SOULS' DAY 227 off with shouts; the men follow in twos or threes with long swinging step and conscious manly movement; the women linked arm in arm, go clattering down the narrow street on their noisy pattens. On All Souls' Day it is the custom to visit the graves of relations and friends in that grim cemetery of San Michele, whose high brick wall you pass on the way to Murano or Torcello. The church itself is a lovely specimen of Lom- bardi work with delicate bas-reliefs in Istrian stone upon the little pentagonal Cappella Emiliana adjoining it. But there is something terrible and sinister in the cemetery itself, where the dead lie buried in the ooze of the lagoon-island. On this day the Venetians carry wreaths to lay on the graves. The wealthier have garlands made of real flowers, but, for the most part, these wreaths are twined out of Venetian beads — red and blue, Madonna's colours, for the women; or black and white for the men, who have no universal patron in the heavens. There is one old custom connected with this festival of the dead which still survives in Venice, and recalls a Latin, or even an earlier superstition. The pious man in Ovid's " Fasti " rises at midnight to fling black beans behind his shoulder. Nine times he flung his beans, and then the ghost was laid. The Venetian does not fling away his beans; he eats them. In Venice this custom of eating beans through the octave of All Souls' is extremely ancient. The monks of every cloister in the city used to make a gratuitous distribution pf beans on All Souls' Day to any of the poor who chose to 228 VENICE come for them. A huge caldron was placed in the middle of the courtyard and the food ladled out to the crowd. The gondoliers did not come with the rest, but had their portion sent down to them at their ferries. This grace was granted to them in consideration of the fact that all the year round they rowed the brothers across the canals for nothing. In deed, though the custom is almost extinct, they still do so; and you may sometimes see a brown-cowled friar crossing a ferry with no other payment than a pinch of snuff or a bene diction. As the Venetians grew more wealthy true beans became distasteful to the palates of the luxurious, who were yet unwilling to break through the custom of eating them on All Souls' Day. The pastry cooks saw their opportunity, and invented a small round puff, coloured blue or red or yel low, and hollow inside; these they called fave, or beans; and these are to be seen at this time of the year in all the bakers' windows. If a man should happen to be courting at this season it is customary for him to make a present of a boxful of these fave to his lady. But the pious mind has never been quite at ease under the gastronomic deception; and so, though you may hate beans and keep your hands from them as scrupulously as any pupil of Pythagoras, — should your cook chance to be a good Catholic you will assuredly, about the month of November, have beans set before you for dinner in Venice. CANALS, WELLS AND SQUARES JULIA CARTWRIGHT IT would be impossible to conceive any street in the world more stately or more full of exquisite and varied loveliness than this of the Grand Canal as it was in the days of Venetian greatness. Even to-day we feel, in Mr. Ruskin's words, how utterly impossible it is for any man " unless on terms of work like Albert Diirer's to express ad equately the mere contents of architectural beauty in any general view on the Grand Canal." Its beautiful sweep and fascinating surroundings always attract artists who, like Mr. Ruskin himself, can overcome the difficulties of any subject by the force of his love, as he has sufficiently proved in his own Venetian drawings. But it is not only on the Canalazzo that we must seek for the examples of the architectural wealth in which Venice abounds. Some of the finest palaces, as well as of some of the choicest specimens of Lombardi and Sansovino's art, are to be found in narrow bye-canals or in obscure campi in the less visited quarters. Sometimes, as in the little canals of St. Bernado or the Campo S. Stefano, you have four or five palaces with richly worked doorways and windows close together ; elsewhere you come upon a Gothic portal upon which the Massegne or the Buoni have lavished all the luxuriance of their wonderful invention. The beautiful gabled relief of Madonnas and saints on the Bridge of Paradise will be familiar to most of us, 229 230 VENICE and there is a door with an angel raising his hand in blessing out near S. Margherita that is worth remembering. Some of the older houses, where fragments of Byzantine work remain, have crosses let in between the windows or emblems of the four Evangelists in the spandrils of the arches. A wall in the little Campiello S. Angaran still retains the medallion of a Byzantine Caesar of the Ninth Century, and on the Corte Sabbionera, close to the favourite Teatro Malibran, is a quaint horseshoe arch, patterned over with plants and animals, curious by reason of its Arabic form, and still more interest ing as having belonged to the house in which Marco Polo was born. It is no uncommon thing to stumble upon a row of Byzan tine windows in a dilapidated palace inhabited by five or six of the poorest families, and even to see clothes hung out to dry on the parapet of a balcony ornamented with delicate flower-work, cornices and sculptured dragons or birds. A few years ago there was a balcony on a palace in a narrow lane somewhere near the Shrine of the Seave, traditionally ascribed to Sansovino, and adorned with the most exquisite heads of fauns and satyrs, with a character and expression of its own. Let no one seek to find it there, for, like so many other rare things in Venice, it has vanished; and the best hope we can cherish is that it may be one of those rescued from destruction by the care of Mr. J. C. Robinson, and preserved at South Kensingston or Birmingham. Many of the dark and dirty courtyards at the back of these old palaces are well worth visiting for the sake of the S. MARIA DELLA MISERICORDA: DOCK. CANALS, WELLS, SQUARES 231 ancient staircases and wells they contain. Some of the stair cases are open to the sky, and are supported by Gothic arches and twisted pillars, others are in the style of the late Renais sance, ornamented with white marble statues that still throw long lines of light into the water below. Strangers are sure to be shown the lovely spiral staircases of Palazzo Minelli, enclosed in a turret, in the dark little Corte del Maltese, which in form so closely resembles the Tower of Pisa, and that other scarcely less picturesque at the corner of the house where Goldoni was born. No less interesting are the old wells, bocche and cinte di pozzi, which you find in every campo and in almost every courtyard of Venice. Next to the windows, balconies, door ways, and tombs, these were the most favourite subjects on which the Venetian sculptors lavished their skill, and those still remaining are shaped and adorned with infinite variety. They are so beautiful in themselves, and so closely connected with the history of Venice, that they have always seemed to me deserving of greater attention than has been usually paid them. From the earliest times the supply of water received the especial attention of the State, and there are said to be no less than two thousand public cisterns in Venice at the present time. In the year 1 1 30 the Paduans, who were then at war with Venice, tried to dam up the Brenta, and thus cut off the chief water-supply of Venice. The alarm which this step excited led to the opening of a number of new wells in the city, and several of those which still exist date back to that 232 VENICE period. Some are even older, and probably belong to the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. These are generally made of Greek marble, while later ones are of the white Istrian stone so common in Venice, or else of red Verona marble. A complete study of these wells would include the whole history of Venetian sculpture, which we find reflected in all its dif ferent phases in the specimens to be found at Venice and its neighbouring islands. At Torcello and Murano and in some parts of Venice we may still see wells of Byzantine date, carved with Greek crosses and stars and peacocks, with inter laced circles and other patterns delicately worked in the flat relief common in pavements and tombs of this epoch in Ravenna. Next we have the Gothic wells of which splendid specimens are to be seen in the Corte Bressana, amongst other places. The earlier of these are shaped like the huge capital of a pillar, and are severe and simple in design, while others are enriched with all the luxuriant foliage and variety of heads, lions, griffins and birds, in which the later Venetian sculptors delighted. Finally, there are the wells which be long, by their form and decoration, to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The more elaborate specimens of this period are profusely adorned with flowers and leaves, medallions, rosettes, bead and scroll-work — in short, with every kind of Renaissance ornament. The finest examples of this numerous and well-preserved class are the octagonal bronze wells in the court of the Ducal Palace, designed after Vittoria's style by Alberghetti of Ferrara and Niccolo de Conti in the middle of the Sixteenth Century CANALS, WELLS, SQUARES 233 It would be unjust to the dry land if we did not acknowl edge the picturesqueness of the calle where the high roofs shut out all but the narrowest strip of blue sky, and where swinging shutters and jutting balconies and window-sills with crimson and yellow stuffs hanging over them, and little shrines of Virgin and saints, each with their lamp burning, and shops and wares and laces are crowded together in the most inextricable confusion. Out of these crooked and bewildering streets, with their bright medley of form and colour, we emerge on to the campi, or squares, in front of the churches, to which they were originally attached as burial-grounds. Each of these squares is now a little centre of life, and has its farmacia and grocery and fruiterer's shop, perhaps a palazzo with the upper stories to let, sometimes a tree or two swaying leafy boughs against the balconies. Each has its well generally raised on steps, round which the gossips of the place collect and wher,e you may glean many a characteristic and amusing incident of Venetian life. Every morning at eight o'clock the iron lid which closes its mouth is unlocked, and then there is a clanking of heels on the stone pavement and a brisk chattering of tongues, as the water-carriers, stout-built pea sant maidens from Friuli, each wearing the same high- crowned hat and short skirts, come to fill their copper buckets at the well. Many of the campi in front of the well-known churches have furnished subjects to our painters, such as the square in front of San Giovanni e Paolo, the burial-place of the Doges, which is further adorned by the 234 VENICE1 presence of CoUeoni's glorious statue and that masterpiece of the Lombard's art, the Scuola di San Marco. Another favourite bit is the little Campiello di San Rocco with the back of the church of the Frari towering over the roofs and some trefoil windows in a house on the right which formed the subject of one of Prout's pictures. Less familiar, but quite as well worth knowing, is the still grassy square in front of the remote church of the Madonna dell' Orto, where the tall Gothic windows and traceries of red and white marble with which Bartolommeo Buoni adorned that fair shrine look down on the sunny turf. This is the very edge of the lagoon. A few steps further on you have a splendid view over the wide expanse from the creek or Sacca della Misericorda. SUMMER IN VENICE LINDA VILLARI VENICE in Summer! To most ears the words seems synonymous with much heat, bad odours, and mosquitoes innumerable. These are there, it is true, yet may all be escaped. Venice is the one city of Italy where summer days need not be spent in darkened rooms, where heat may be defied, and evening glories and the cool salt breath of the lagoon bring delights far outweighing the chance discomfort of fervid noons. But to enjoy your sum mer is essential to live in private lodgings. Then, and then only, you feel the full charm of Venetian magic. No tourist- talk breaks the spell, no dinner-bell curtails your study of sea and sky, and every door can be left open to invite full draughts of air. Instead of the irksome glare and chatter of a crowded table d'hote, you have the choice of quiet meals in your own dim dining-room, of frugal repasts beneath the vines of the artist-haunted restaurant, on the Zattere beside the Giudecca Canal, or of set dinners at the Lido Baths, where courses of changing effects on waves and sky, and distant strip of tree- fringed coast feast your eyes better than the too-dilatory dishes nourish your body. As for the dreaded mosquitoes, their numbers are few until the hungry swallows have flown, and they are too well en- 235 236 VENICE gaged on fresh English blood in the hotels near the Salute and along the Riva to make any raids on private houses. The ideal Venetian lodging should be, of course, in some palace of historic name, with carven balconies, painted arches, and lofty echoing halls. Such lodgings, however, are seldom to be found, and you usually have to content yourself with more plebeian surroundings, and satisfy your soul with local colour of a humbler sort. Fate led us to San Samuele, and gave us a modest dwelling, shrinking back on a little campo on the Grand Canal, placed between Ca'Malipiero and Ca'Grassi, opposite the massive Rezzonico Palace, for which even Renaissance-hating Mr. Ruskin can find no word of blame. Thus we commanded a space of the great highway, and had a perfect Venetian view across the water, down winding Rio San Barnaba, with its bridge and brown tower, tall grey campanile, irregular patches of roof, and fan-shaped chimneys. The vine-trellis, shading our traghetto, or gondola-stand, was a pleasant object in the foreground. There was a sculptured well in the Campo beside us, and the belfry of St. Samuel was built into our house, and bounded our scrap of roof-terrace to the rear. Viewed by moonlight from the canal, it seemed a fit scene for operatic love and crime. Knowing that every inch of Venetian ground, every street and square and bridge, every Campo and Rio and Calle, Salizzada and Fondamenta, has some historic associations to compare with those of the arched and pillared palaces that are better known to fame, we made haste to inquire into the THE LIDO BATHS SUMMER IN VENICE 237 past of our own humble campo, and the humbler network of devious lanes in its rear. Putting aside one or two ugly tales of crime, the following were all the particulars we were able to glean: The Church of San Samuele, only open for early morning service, pending repairs, dates from the beginning of the Eleventh Century; but, having been twice partly destroyed by fire, was almost entirely rebuilt in the Seventeenth Cen tury, and our noisy belfry is probably all that remains of the original structure. The church contains no works of art worthy of mention, but the parish is rich in artistic memories. Titian once possessed a studio hard by in the house of the architect Bartolommeo Buono. The sculptors Giulio, Tullio and Antonio Lombardo lived at San Samuele, and it was the birthplace of Madesta da Pozzo, a learned lady of much repute in the Sixteenth Century. Paolo Veronese spent his last years in the Casa Zecchini, and died there in 1588 of a fever caught by taking part in a grand Easter pro cession. His sons and grandsons, painters all, continued to live there ; and in their days the house was enriched by many of the elder Caliari's works. Girolamo Campagna, too, had once plied his chisel and fused his bronze in the same build ing. Several artists of lesser note, like Giralomo Pilotti, the follower of Palma Vecchio, Ridolfi, the painter and biog rapher of painters, and Pietro Literi, whose profitable brush enabled him to build himself the palace now known as Casa Morolin, also lived within sound of our bells. Here at San Samuele, the notorious adventurer, Giacomo Casannova, 238 VENICE first opened his audacious eyes, and may have passed his early years in squabbling on the campo with other ragamuffins, hooking gondolas for a copper coin, and diving in the canal on summer nights, much after the manner of the Nineteenth Century imps, whose shrill voices made a frequent treble to the deeper tones of our gondoliers, and here, in later and comparatively respectable days, when employed as a spy of the Inquisition, he may perhaps have penned the famous report in which he denounced the possession of many impious and prohibited works. The list is curious, and includes the works of Voltaire and Rousseau, the Esprit of Helvetius, the Belisarius of Marmontel, sundry productions of Crebillon and Diderot, the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius, Boling- broke's Examination, the writings of Machiavelli, Spinoza, etc. The pious criticisms of the white-washed rogue were somewhat sweeping in their range. His white-wash, how ever, had rubbed off by the time he composed his scandalous memoires and miraculous escapes from the Piombi, in the Bohemian castle of his last patron. Being flanked and faced by patrician abodes, our modest campo has had its share of the festive shows for which Venice has at all times been celebrated; but its noblest pa geant must have been that of the wedding of Lucrezia Con tarini and Jacopo, son of the Doge Francesco Foscari, on Sunday, the 29th of January, 1441. Then a crowd of patrician guests in festal attire, and mounted on gaily capari soned steeds, rode to the campo from all quarters of the town, and crossed the canal to San Barnaba on a bridge of SUMMER IN VENICE 239 boats erected for the occasion. The Serenissimo went in per son to meet the bride at High Mass in that brown-towered church; and, later an open-air sermon was preached on the campo without to a great concourse of hearers, tanti zenti lomeni e puovola che no se podeva andar in alcun luogo — so many nobles and townsfolk that there was no room to stir. And in the evening, the Bucintoro brought a hundred and fifty noble dames to lead the bride, escorted by a fleet of skiffs and gondolas to her new home in the Ducal Palace, where the wedding festivities were prolonged far into the night. Fortunately, no astrologer seems to have dimmed the bright ness of the day by foretelling how soon this joy was to be turned into mourning; the gay young bridegroom made the victim of relentless persecution, and his splendid father stripped of his state, and left to die of sheer misery in his family palace at the turn of the Canal ! Foscari's successor, Doge Malipiero, also abode at San Samuele, and the sculp tured archway of his palace in the Salizzada frames a dainty garden scene with fountain and statues in the background. Never live near a traghetto, say old Venetians: and we might add, never beside a well or in front of a belfry. But although at the cost of quiet, our position had undoubted ad vantages for insight into local manners and customs. Daily at 5 A. M. St. Samuel's iron voice reminded us that we were in Venice, its vibrations shaking us in our beds. An hour later, the clang of copper pails, clinking of chains and shrill clatter of housewives' tongues announced the opening of the well. Soon the ringers were again at work in our belfry, the pierc- 240 VENICE ing whistles of the " tram " steamers, most disturbing of modern utilities, began to resound from the canal, and the every day business of Venice was fairly begun. As for the gondoliers of our traghetto, they were never quiet : all hours seemed alike to them. Like the poet's hack neyed brook, they too ran on forever. They seldom ceased quarrelling with one another excepting to wage a fiercer war of words with their brethren of the opposite stand. Hail storms of invective were always flying back and forth across the water. The only truce to the undying feud was when both sides joined in volleys of bad language against their common foes, the penny steamers that have so wofully dimin ished their gains. One day, one of these steamers chanced to foul the nearest landing-stage, and instantly the air was rent by the derisive howls of all the gondoliers within sight. But if our noisy crew had little work, neither did they take much repose. Towards 1 1 p. m. there would be a promising lull in their disputes: they would indulge in prolonged and prodigious yawns. Custom was growing scarce, there were fewer footsteps on the pavement, fewer cries of " Poppi " — the signal for hailing a gondola to ferry you over the canal — came to summon them to their oars. Surely they would slumber at last, and allow silence to reign in our campo! Not at all ! Within half an hour they were livelier than ever — all fatigue had evaporated in yawns, and they had so much spare energy that they were driven to vent it in sudden bursts of stentorian song, and thus excite the emulation of the San Barnaba rivals. Luckily the air of Venice is soothing to new- SUMMER IN VENICE 241 comers, so we learnt the art of sleeping through the din, and it was difficult to wake at any hour without hearing it going on almost as briskly as before. The only tranquil time was just towards daybreak. A Venetian dawn in July is well worth the cost of a sleepless night, and its clear-eyed frank ness as beautiful in its way as the mysterious fantasies played by moonlight on walls and water. Naturally here at San Samuele, midway up the Grand Canal, you miss the splendour of sunrise on the sea to be enjoyed from the Riva; but lack of horizon is almost balanced by the added suggestiveness of effects within the narrower range of vision. For instance, this is what we saw during the small hours of a July morn ing. First, the soft twilight that had never been gloom at any period of the brief night, gradually paled to a faint white ness in which the slender, grey, angel-topped campanile down our favourite opening by the Rezzonico walls seemed to lose all substance and become a cloud structure — a mere film instead of a pile of stones. The sturdy brown tower of San Barnaba wore a deeper, warmer tint as the light grew and the stars died out. A few tiny cloudlets began to dapple the clear zenith, slowly expanded and were slowly suffused by a delicate flush that presently deepened to a vivid rose, streaked with grey and backed by darker wool-packs. By this time the swallows were on the wing, circling swiftly in the air, and emitting their sharp sweet note. Pigeons, too, were flitting down from cornice and house top, with much velvety flutter and melodious whirr. Sparrows, pert and well-plumed, darted this way and that, and hopped 242 VENICE lightly about the deserted pavement. One or two boats appeared on the canal: the eyes of Venice were begin ning to open for the day. Soon a great barge lumbers past laden with fresh water from the mainland. It is so full that a bare few inches of woodwork save the " sweet water " within from mingling with the brakish element without. How unkempt and sleepy-eyed are the red-capped bargees so patiently trudging the length of their craft with shoulders hard-pressed to their punting poles. Theirs is no easy trade! With favourable wind and tide they have had at least an eight hours' sail ! With wind and tide against them, it is sometimes a two days' journey. Yet this cargo of water only brings them five francs. Having reached its destination, the barge is quickly tackled by a busy little engine, which, with much noise and fuss, distributes its contents into smaller boats, that in their turn fill the public wells by means of far-reaching hose. The sky was still bright with the freshness of early morn, there were blue spaces still mottled with rose, but the tenderly blushing cloudlets had gone, just as the joyous smiles of in fancy vanish in the gravity of manhood. Storm clouds were now thickening over the lagoon to the south, and although unseen from our San Samuele windows, they had sent their messengers before them. Dark brownish masses began to en croach on the azure overhead, and this was already touched here and there by the tiny brush-strokes of the wind. Morn ing was full-blown now, and a cool breeze at last brought sleep to nerve us for the coming heat of the day. NIGHT IN VENICE JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS NIGHT in Venice! Night is nowhere else so wonderful, unless it be in winter among the high Alps. But the nights of Venice and the nights of the mountains are too different in kind to be compared. There is the ever-recurring miracle of the full moon rising before day is dead, behind San Giorgio, spreading a path of gold on the lagoon which black boats traverse with the glow worm lamp upon their prow ; ascending the cloudless sky and silvering the domes of the Salute; pouring vitreous sheen upon the red lights of the Piazzetta; flooding the Grand Canal, and lifting the Rialto higher in ethereal whiteness; piercing but penetrating not the murky labyrinth of rio linked with rio, through which we wind in light and shadow, to reach once more the level glories, and the luminous expanse of heaven beyond the Misericordia. This is the melodrama of Venetian moonlight; and if a single impression of the night has to be retained from one visit to Venice, those are fortunate who chance upon a full moon of fair weather. Yet I know not whether some quieter and soberer effects are not more thrilling. To-night, for example, the waning moon will rise late through veils of sirocco. Over the bridges of San Cristoforo and San Gre gorio, through the deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and 243 244 VENICE I walk in darkness, pass the marble basements of the Salute, and push our way along its Riva to the point of the Dogana. We are at sea alone, between the Canalozzo and the Giu decca. A moist wind ruffles the water and cools our fore heads. It is so dark that we can only see San Giorgio by the light reflected on it from the Piazzetta. The same light climbs the Campanile of St. Mark, and shows the golden angel in a mystery of gloom. The only noise that reaches us is a confused hum from the Piazza. Sitting and musing there, the blackness of the water whispers in our ears a tale of death. And now we hear a plash of oars, and gliding through the darkness comes a single boat. One man leaps upon the landing-place without a word and disappears. There is another wrapped in a military cloak asleep. I see his face beneath me, pale and quiet. The barcaruolo turns the point in silence. From the darkness they came; into the darkness they have gone. It is only an ordinary incident of coast-guard service. But the spirit of the night has made a poem of it. Even tempestuous and rainy weather, though melancholy enough, is never sordid here. There is no noise from car riage traffic, and the sea-wind preserves the purity and trans parency of the atmosphere. It had been raining all day, but at evening came a partial clearing. I went down to the Molo, where the large reach of the lagoon was all moon- silvered, and San Giorgio Maggiore dark against the bluish sky, and Santa Maria della Salute domed with moon- irradiated pearl, and the wet slabs of the Riva shimmering in ISLAND OF S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE NIGHT IN VENICE 245 moonlight, the whole misty sky, with its clouds and stellar spaces, drenched in moonlight, nothing but moonlight sen sible except the tawny flare of gas-lamps and the orange lights of gondolas afloat upon the waters. On such a night the very spirit of Venice is abroad. We feel why she is called Bride of the Sea. Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi's Forza del Destino at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked homeward through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the narrow calle which leads to the traghetto of the Salute. It was a warm, moist, starless night, and there seemed no air to breathe in those narrow alleys. The gondolier was half asleep. Eustace called him as we jumped into his boat, and rang our soldi on the gunwale. Then he arose and turned the ferro round, and stood across towards the Salute. Silently, insensibly, from the oppression of confinement in the airless streets to the liberty and immensity of the water and the night we passed. It was but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said good-night, and went our way and left the ferryman. But in that brief passage he had opened our souls to everlasting things, — the freshness, and the darkness, and the kindness of the brooding, all-enfolding night above the sea. THE ARSENAL CHARLES YRIARTE THE Arsenal of Venice, so strong and formidable considering the date of its construction, was the natural outgrowth to that spirit of commerce and genius for barter. It was also a powerful auxiliary to the ambition of the Venetians; they had wished to make their sovereignty over the Adriatic sure; they were therefore bound to be ready at any moment to defend their pretensions, by sending against those who would dispute their claim a fleet strong enough to compensate for the weakness of their claim. The Sieur de Saint-Didier, author of La Ville et la Re- publique of Venice, and an eye-witness of all that he relates, says that the arsenal gives the best idea of the power of Venice, and that it is the admiration of all strangers and " the foundation of the whole power of the State." The Turks, who were the constant and powerful enemies of the Republic and who often brought her within an ace of destruction, always looked with envious eyes upon this estab lishment then unrivalled throughout the world; and when the Grand Viziers received the Venetian ambassadors, they never tired of asking for details regarding its organisation, resources and strength. Visitors to Venice would hurry to the arsenal to see its wonderful plan and colossal development; it embodied the moral strength of Venice, the symbol of her 246 < w< UJ h THE ARSENAL 247 power, the source of her wealth; here you could lay your finger on the tremendous springs of her military machinery and realise the inexhaustible resources of a nation which had given all its energies to the construction and maintenance of a fleet greatly disproportionate to its territory, and whose su premacy over the waters embraced all the coasts of the Archipelago. Of all modern nations the Venetians were the first to build strong vessels ; even as early as the time of the Crusades, they undertook the transportation of French armies ; and they had not merely to carry the troops but to provide escort and defend them at need. The heavy galleys had seventy-five feet of keel and the light ones were a hundred and thirty- five feet long ; the coques, light vessels especially used for transport service, could carry as many as a thousand men-at- arms with their stores; the galeasses, which were rowed like galleys, had cannon-proof prows and were armed with fifty pieces of artillery of the highest known calibre; sixteen hundred soldiers could easily, fight on board one of them. When such masses appeared on the scene of battle, their at tack was irresistible and gained the victory. For more than a century, rival nations were unable to procure means of action powerful enough to oppose these Venetian warships; but, naturally enough, the Genoese, who were great navigators and, like the Spaniards and Turks, redoubtable enemies, endeavoured, in their turn, to arm ships powerful enough to sustain a contest and at last they succeeded. Thenceforward there was a continual development of 248 VENICE methods of warfare, successive enlargements of the arsenal, and great improvements resulted from the stimulus arising from the rivalry of other nations. The Venetians remained the superiors in one thing, — their artillery, and in every naval battle that they won, it is said that the fate of the day was due to the excellent marksmanship of the Venetian gun ners. All their ships, even the lightest of them, were armed with cannon; the little galleys, so alert and useful in attack and which could enter the creeks of the bay, could also resist the shocks of the enemy, thanks to the fifteen pieces of artil lery with which they were armed. At first the arsenal was only a dockyard for the construc tion of merchant ships and galleys ; it stood on the site of the ancient island Gemole or Gemelle (twins), in the eastern part of the town ; the place was open for a long time before it was enclosed by walls and organised as a national establish ment. Until then dockyards were improvised, wherever space could be found and wherever they were required ; thus in 1 104 and 1298, fifteen large galleys were put on the stocks, in the place where the Royal Gardens now are, on the very edge of the water. During the Thirteenth Century, the arsenal was firmly established and the Senate devoted all its energies to enlarging it ; neighbouring grounds were bought, new docks were dug, and dry-docks and repairing and build ing docks were added whose names show that they were an nexed by degrees. Many a time the ruin of the arsenal was the ambition of the enemy; and incessant watch was kept over it; its square towers at the corners and its fortified THE ARSENAL 249 walls were perpetually guarded by picked troops. Once it happened that during a war against the Genoese and Turks, spies or paid emissaries of the enemy tried to set fire to it. In 1428 we hear of the case of a Brabangon, who is said to have been bribed by the Duke of Milan to destroy the estab lishment ; he was condemned to be quartered on the Piazzetta ; and his body, tied to the tail of a horse, was dragged along the Riva dei Schiavoni. At the close of the Fifteenth Century, according to a traveller, who has left a descriptive memoir, Venice employed sixteen thousand workmen, caulkers, carpenters and painters, and thirty-six thousand seamen. It was about this time, in 1491, that the Senate created the special magistracy of " Provveditori al arsenate." These magistrates remained in office two years and eight months, and they had to leave their Venetian palaces and live in three houses specially built for them, the names of which — Paradise, Purgatory and Hell — are still preserved. Each one had to be on duty a fortnight in turn, during which time he had to sleep in a special apartment in the ramparts. He kept the keys of the arsenal in his room, made the rounds, and answered with his head for the safety of the place. To these three magistrates was attached a secretary, il fidelissimo segretario del reggimento. The arsenal had but one en trance; and the only way of gaining admission, short of scaling the high walls, was by means of a small iron gate that opened on the little campo. Everything concerning ship-building and armament, direc tion of the works, purchase of wood and iron, organisation of 250 VENICE the workshops, discipline of the workmen, commanding of the troops, training of the seamen, storekeeping, provisioning and contracts was under the provveditori. They formed themselves into a committee for testing and examining all the new inventions submitted by their fellow-countrymen or by foreigners. The artillery formed a separate department, under the special management of another magistrate, the Provveditore all' artigliera. The outward appearance of the arsenal has hardly changed since the middle of the Sixteenth Century, as we learn from a curious engraving by Giacomo Franco, which represents the workmen leaving the yard after receiving their pay, and shows the same architecture and decoration that we see to day, with, however, one exception: the great lions that orna ment the entrance were not there then. These strange granite sentinels which give the building such a singular character, works of antiquity brought from Greece by the conquerors of the Peloponnesus and to which they did not hesitate to claim that their origin, or rather their original use, was to commemorate the famous Battle of Marathon, were not placed on their pedestals until the Seventeenth Cen tury. The learned authors of the famous compilation Venice et ses Lagunes, say that one of the lions stood on the Lepsina road from Athens to Eleusis, and that the other, the one that is sitting, was at the Piraeus. The following quo tation leaves no doubt regarding the Venetians' seizure of these two trophies: " The gate is now called Porto Draco, or Lion Gate, on account of a colossal marble lion that was THE ARSENAL 251 placed on a large pedestal near the mouth of the harbour. It was ten feet high, sitting on his haunches and looking to wards the South. As its mouth was pierced it is thought that it was originally a fountain. In 1687 this lion was brought to Venice by the Venetians and placed at the en trance of the arsenal of the city." The workmen were a picked body, and the Republic counted so much on their fidelity that the guard of the Grand Council and Senate was entrusted to them. They were soldiers as well as artisans, united under military organisation and brigaded and inspected in their work by the same men who commanded them as officers ; and on many occasions this body of ten thousand — sometimes as many as sixteen thousand — men, was the secret guarantee of the internal safety of the Venetian government. Side by side with the provveditore and subordinate to him was the admiral whose title was one of courtesy rather than function for he was an artisan; however, he was an artisan of great skill and of high intelligence, and he was given the greatest authority. He superintended the works and had direction over the building-yards, and enjoyed many much- envied privileges. On ceremonial occasions, he wore a state costume that gave him almost the appearance of a noble: his robe was of red satin over which was a vestment that fell to the knees and on his head he wore a violet damask cap orna mented with a gold cord and large tassels. At great public festivals and when the Doge, the Senate or visiting sovereigns paid a visit to the arsenal, the admiral 25 2 VENICE occupied the place of honour, and always conducted the dis tinguished visitors to the docks which were his special domain. On the day of the Sensa, when the Doge, accompanied by the Council and the ambassadors, went with great pomp on board the Bucentaur, to wed the Adriatic, the admiral served as pilot. He was held responsible for bringing the Signory back safely to shore, and had the power, if the weather was threatening, of commanding that they remain in the lagoons without venturing into more dangerous waters. The arsenal comprised three divisions: for ship-building, small arms and artillery. The Venetians surpassed all people of their day in construction and this superiority was attributed to two causes: the skill of the workmen and the quality of the timber they used. They adopted the plan of placing the administration of the forests under the naval de partment, and all other purposes for which timber is used, such as the building of houses, fuel, etc., were made sub ordinate. Timber was bought in the province of Treviso, in Friuli, in Carniola, in Istria and Dalmatia; but these provinces did not supply enough and they had to go to Albania and Germany as well. The timber, after being measured and stamped, was cut into solid beams and floated in the Adriatic near the Lido, where it was kept seasoning for ten years before it was used. The different pieces of which a galley was constructed were prepared in the workshops ready to be put together, and the skill was such in the arsenal that, on the day that King Henry III. of France visited the arsenal (1574), while he THE ARSENAL 253 was attending a banquet in the Great Hall in two hours a galley was put together and launched. It goes without say ing that this was a prodigious feat, and that the governors would scarcely have entrusted the life of the Doge in it ; but it was a means of demonstrating the powerful means of execution that they possessed. In times of political crises the activity here baffles imagination, and when the famous League was crowned by the victory of Lepanto, every morning for five successive days a new galley left the arsenal. To give an idea of the means employed to secure this degree of efficiency let us take one authentic detail: the State laid a permanent requisition on all crops of hemp grown upon its territories, and opened special storehouses for its sale, to which all pur chasers were compelled to go to buy what they needed, at a price regulated by law, after the government had appropriated sufficient for its own needs. Hence arose the superior quality of the Venetian cordage over that of any other navy. The armoury included the arming of the galleys, the man ufacture, preservation and repairing of small arms, and, as in our modern arsenals, supplying the troops. The artillery comprised the foundries, the training-school and parks for the gunners, — all under the superintendence of the provveditore. In the Sixteenth Century, the foundries were under the direction of the famous brothers Alberghetti, who formed a regular school of cannon-foundry; artists like these impressed their own stamp on every piece that went forth, and thus it is that whenever one finds a gun of Venetian make in any of the artillery museums and collec- 254 VENICE tions in Europe, it is almost always a masterpiece, not only of casting but of design. In addition to these branches, there was a superintendent of military machines who was re quired to keep himself informed regarding all the inventions belonging to warfare. T^ THE DOGE WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT HE first duty of the Doge on rising was attendance , at the service of Mass, which was performed every -*- morning in his own private chapel; and he after wards proceeded to apply his attention to his magisterial functions. Accompanied by his notary, he either presided over his own Court at the Palace, or, if no cases of impor tance happened to be pending there, he was present at the sittings of one of the other tribunals, or of the Common Pleas, which used to be held like that of the Romans and Lombards, under the open sky. We casually glean that, at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, Friday was the day for presenting petitions and appeals. The Doge undoubtedly possessed the power of reversing all decisions, and it vested in him down to the Twelfth Century to pay as well as appoint the judges of his own Court, to each of whom his Serenity was expected to send annually four casks of wine as a free gift from the vineyards of Comanzo in Chioggia. From time to time he was in the habit of paying a visit of inspection and inquiry to the several islands which lay around the capital, in order that he might be in a position to check abuses, and to prevent any arbitrary stretches of power on the part of the Tribunes and other subordinate members of the Government. Occasionally it was his practice to 255 256 VENICE show himself formally in public, and to give his benediction to the assembled people; and when it happened that the ful filment of his multifarious avocations admitted relaxation and mental repose, his Serenity sometimes took gondola and followed the chase in the woods of Loredo. Even when the archaic Palace Court had given way to that of the Judges of the Commune, the Doge was held to be the Fountain and Mirror of Justice; and not only was any question, which a Judge might feel himself incompetent to decide, referable in the last resort to the Throne, but in all instances, where a suitor or a prisoner might have reasonable grounds for disputing a judicial award, a right of appeal lay in the same quarter. Even in primitive times the ducal costume was not without some share of splendour. The Berretta (beretum) or Bon net, of the original type of which we know nothing, but which seems at a tolerably early date to have borne some re semblance to the diadem of the kings of ancient Phrygia, was a high cap of conical form, set with pearls,1 not unsimilar to the Episcopal mitre and to the headdresses seen on Orien tal coins and paintings. The tradition, which ascribes to the munificence of the contemporary Abbess of San Zaccaria the presentation of a jewelled headdress to the Doge Tradonico (863-864), is suspected of being apocryphal; and assuredly it is so in 1 The berretta was at last made so weighty that the Doge seldom wore it. Towards the middle of the Fourteenth Century, the Pro curators of Saint Mark were charged to remedy this evil. -I -