A Wanderer in Venice Part 18

Straightway in jumped Andrea Vendramin, the chief of the Scuola, to save it, and was supernaturally buoyed up by his sanctified burden. The picture has a religious basis, but heaven is not likely, I think, to be seriously affronted if one smiles a little at these aquatic sports.

Legend has it that the little kneeling group on the right is Gentile's own family, and the kneeling lady on the left, with a nun behind her, is Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus.

Bellini has made the scene vivid, but it is odd that he should have put not a soul at a window. When we turn to Carpaccio's "Miracle" of 1494, representing the healing of a man possessed of a devil, who may be seen in the loggia at the left, we find a slightly richer sense of history, for three or four women look from the windows; but Mansueti, although a far inferior artist, is the only one to be really thorough and Venetian in this respect.

One very interesting detail of Carpaccio's "Miracle" picture is the Rialto bridge of his time. It was of wood, on piles, and a portion in the centre could be drawn up either to let tall masts through or to stop the thoroughfare to pursuers. It is valuable, too, for its costumes and architecture. In a gondola is a dog, since one of those animals finds its way into most of his works. This time it is S. Jerome's dog from the picture at S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni. An English translation of the Santa Croce story might well be placed in this room.

Before leaving this room one should look again at the haunting portrait of S. Lorenzo Giustiniani, No. 570, by Gentile Bellini, which has faded and stained so graciously into a quiet and beautiful decoration.

It is the S. Ursula pictures in Room XVI for which, after t.i.tian's "a.s.sumption," most visitors to Venice esteem the Accademia; but to my mind the charm of Carpaccio is not displayed here so fully as in his decorations at S. Giorgio. The Ursula pictures are, however, of deep interest and are unforgettable.

But first for the story. As _The Golden Legend_ tells it, it runs thus.

Ursula was the daughter of a Christian king in Britain named Notus or Maurus, and the fame of her beauty and wisdom spread afar, so that the King of England, who was a heathen himself, heard of it and wished her for his son's wife. His son, too, longed for the match, but the paganism of his family was against it. Ursula therefore stipulated that before the marriage could be solemnized the King of England should send to her ten virgins as companions, and each of these virgins and herself, making eleven, should have a retinue of a thousand other virgins, making eleven thousand in all (or to be precise, eleven thousand and eleven) for prayer and consecration; and that the prince moreover should be baptised; and then at the end of three years she would marry him. The conditions were agreed to, and the virgins collected, and all, after some time spent in games and jousting, with n.o.blemen and bishops among the spectators, joined Ursula, who converted them. Being converted, they set sail from Britain for Rome. There they met the pope, who, having a prevision of their subsequent martyrdom, resigned the papacy, much against the will of the Church and for reasons which are not too clear.

In Rome they were seen also by two fellow-princes named Maximus and Africa.n.u.s, who, disliking them for their Christianity, arranged with one Julian, a prince of the Huns, that on their arrival at Cologne, on their return journey, he should behead the whole company, and thus prevent them from further mischief. Meanwhile Ursula's betrothed went to Cologne to meet his bride. With the eleven thousand were many of the most eminent bishops and other men of mark, and directly they arrived at Cologne the Huns fell on them and killed every one except Ursula and another named Cordula. Julian offered to make Ursula his wife, but on her repudiation of the suggestion he shot her through the body with his bow and arrow. Cordula hid in a ship, but the next day suffered death by her own free will and earned a martyr's crown. All this happened in the year A.D. 238.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DEPARTURE OF THE BRIDEGROOM AND HIS MEETING WITH URSULA FROM THE PAINTING BY CARPACCIO _In the Accademia_]

Carpaccio, it will be quickly seen, disregards certain details of this version. For example, he makes Ursula's father a King of the Moors, although there is nothing Moorish about either that monarch, his daughter, or his city. The first picture, which has the best light in it, shows the amba.s.sadors from England craving the hand of the princess.

At the back is one of those octagonal buildings so dear to this painter, also in the city. His affection for dogs, always noticeable, is to be seen here again, for he has placed three hounds on the quay. A clock somewhat like that of the Merceria is on the little tower. The English ship has a red flag. On the right is the King pondering with Ursula over his reply. In the next picture, No. 573, the amba.s.sadors receive this reply. In the next the amba.s.sadors depart, with the condition that a term of three years must first pa.s.s. They return to a strangely unfamiliar England: an England in which Carpaccio himself must have been living for some time in the role of architect. This--No. 574--is a delightful and richly mellow scene of activity, and not the least attractive feature of it is the little fiddling boy on the left.

Carpaccio has so enjoyed the pageantry and detail, even to frescoes on the house, crowded bridges, and so forth, that his duty as a story-teller has suffered. In the next picture, No. 575, which is really two, divided by the flagstaff, we have on the left the departure of the English prince from an English seaport (of a kind which alas! has disappeared for ever) to join in his lady-love's pilgrimage to Rome. He bids his father farewell. Nothing could be more fascinating than the mountain town and its battlements, and every inch of the picture is amusing and alive. Crowds of gay people a.s.semble and a ship has run on the rocks. On the right, the prince meets Ursula, who also has found a very delectable embarking place. Here are more gay crowds and sumptuous dresses, of which the King's flowered robe is not the least. Farther still to the right the young couple kneel before the monarch. I reproduce this.

The apotheosis of S. Ursula, No. 576, is here interposed, very inappropriately, for she is not yet dead or a saint, merely a pious princess.

The story is then resumed--in No. 577--with a scene at Rome, as we know it to be by the castle of S. Angelo, in which Ursula and her prince are being blessed by the Pope Cyriacus, while an unending file of virgins extends into the distance.

In the next picture, reproduced opposite page 120, Ursula, in her nice great bed, in what is perhaps the best-known bedroom in the world, dreams of her martyrdom and sees an angel bringing her the rewards of fort.i.tude. The picture has pretty thoughts but poor colour. Where the room is meant to be, I am not sure; but it is a very charming one. Note her little library of big books, her writing desk and hour-gla.s.s, her pen and ink. Carpaccio of course gives her a dog. Her slippers are beside the bed and her little feet make a tiny hillock in the bedclothes: Carpaccio was the man to think of that! The windows are open and she has no mosquito net. Her princess's crown is at the foot of the bed, or is it perchance her crown of glory?

We next see the shipload of bishops and virgins arriving at Cologne.

There are fewer Carpaccio touches here, but he has characteristically put a mischievous youth at the end of a boom. There is also a dog on the landing-stage and a bird in the tree. A comely tower is behind with flags bearing three crowns. The next picture shows us, on the left, the horrid ma.s.sacre of all these nice young women by a brutal German soldiery. Ursula herself is being shot by Julian, who is not more than six feet distant; but she meets her fate with a composure as perfect as if instead of the impending arrow it was a benediction. On the right is her bier, under a very pretty canopy. Wild flowers spring from the earth.

Now should come the apotheosis.

Carpaccio was not exactly a great painter, but he was human and ingratiating beyond any other that Venice can show, and his pictures here and at S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni make the city a sweeter and more lovable place, Vasari is very brief with Vittore Scarpaccia, as he calls him, and there are few known facts. Research has placed his birth at Capo d'Istria about 1450. His earliest picture is dated 1490: his last 1521 or 1522. Gentile Bellini was his master.

Ruskin found Carpaccio by far the most sympathetic Venetian painter.

Everything that he painted, even, as I point out later, the Museo Civico picture of the two ladies, he exults in, here, there, and everywhere. In his little guide to the Accademia, published in 1877, he roundly calls Carpaccio's "Presentation of the Virgin" the "best picture" in the gallery. In one of the letters written from Venice in _Fors Clavigera_--and these were, I imagine, subjected to less critical examination by their author before they saw the light than any of his writings--is the following summary, which it may be interesting to read here. "This, then, is the truth which Carpaccio knows, and would teach: That the world is divided into two groups of men; the first, those whose G.o.d is their G.o.d, and whose glory is their glory, who mind heavenly things; and the second, men whose G.o.d is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. That is just as demonstrable a scientific fact as the separation of land from water. There may be any quant.i.ty of intermediate mind, in various conditions of bog; some, wholesome Scotch peat,--some, Pontine marsh,--some, sulphurous slime, like what people call water in English manufacturing towns; but the elements of Croyance and Mescroyance are always chemically separable out of the putrescent mess: by the faith that is in it, what life or good it can still keep, or do, is possible; by the miscreance in it, what mischief it can do, or annihilation it can suffer, is appointed for its work and fate. All strong character curdles itself out of the sc.u.m into its own place and power, or impotence: and they that sow to the Flesh, do of the Flesh reap corruption; and they that sow to the Spirit, do of the Spirit reap Life.

"I pause, without writing 'everlasting,' as perhaps you expected.

Neither Carpaccio nor I know anything about duration of life, or what the word translated 'everlasting' means. Nay, the first sign of n.o.ble trust in G.o.d and man, is to be able to act without any such hope. All the heroic deeds, all the purely unselfish pa.s.sions of our existence, depend on our being able to live, if need be, through the Shadow of Death: and the daily heroism of simply brave men consists in fronting and accepting Death as such, trusting that what their Maker decrees for them shall be well.

"But what Carpaccio knows, and what I know, also, are precisely the things which your wiseacre apothecaries, and their apprentices, and too often your wiseacre rectors and vicars, and _their_ apprentices, tell you that you can't know, because 'eye hath not seen nor ear heard them,'

the things which G.o.d hath prepared for them that love him. But G.o.d has revealed them to _us_--to Carpaccio, and Angelico, and Dante, and Giotto, and Filippo Lippi, and Sandro Botticelli, and me, and to every child that has been taught to know its Father in heaven,--by the Spirit: because we have minded, or do mind, the things of the Spirit in some measure, and in such measure, have entered into our rest."

Let me only dare to add that it is quite possible to extract enormous pleasure from the study of Carpaccio's works without agreeing with any of the foregoing criticism.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ACCADEMIA. III: GIOVANNI BELLINI AND THE LATER PAINTERS

Pietro Longhi--Hogarth--Tiepolo--A gambling wife--Ca.n.a.letto--Guardi--The Vivarini--Boccaccini--Venetian art and its beginnings--The three Bellinis--Giovanni Bellini--A beautiful room--t.i.tian's "Presentation"--The busy Evangelists--A lovely ceiling.

A number of small rooms which are mostly negligible now occur. Longhi is here, with his little society scenes; Tiepolo, with some masterly swaggering designs; Giambettino Cignaroli, whom I mention only because his "Death of Rachel" is on Sundays the most popular picture in the whole gallery; and Ca.n.a.letto and Guardi, with Venetian ca.n.a.ls and palaces and churches. For Tiepolo at his best the l.a.b.i.a Palace must be visited, and Longhi is more numerously represented at the Museo Civico than here. Both Ca.n.a.letto and Guardi can be better studied in London, at the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection. There are indeed no works by either man to compare with the best of ours. No. 494 at Hertford House, a glittering view of the Dogana, is perhaps Guardi's masterpiece in England; No. 135 in the National Gallery, Ca.n.a.letto's.

Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in 1702, five years after Hogarth was born in London. He died in 1762, two years before Hogarth in Chiswick. I mention the English painter because Longhi is often referred to as the Venetian Hogarth. We have a picture or two by him in the National Gallery. To see him once is to see all his pictures so far as technique goes, but a complete set would form an excellent microcosm of fashionable and frivolous Venice of his day. Hogarth, who no doubt approximates more to the Venetian style of painting than to any other, probably found that influence in the work of Sebastiano Ricci, a Venetian who taught in St. Martin's Lane.

The brave Tiepolo--Giovanni Battista or Giambattista, as the contraction has it--was born in Venice in 1696, the son of a wealthy merchant and shipowner. In 1721 he married a sister of Guardi, settled down in a house near the bridge of S. Francesco della Vigna, and had nine children. His chief artistic education came from the study of t.i.tian and Paul Veronese, and he quickly became known as the most rapid and intrepid ceiling painter of the time. He worked with tremendous spirit, as one deduces from the the examination of his many frescoes. Tiepolo drew with masterly precision and brio, and his colour can be very sprightly: but one always has the feeling that he had no right to be in a church at all, except possibly to confess.

At the National Gallery we have some small examples of Tiepolo's work, which, if greatly magnified, would convey an excellent impression of his mural manner. Tiepolo went to Spain in his old age to work for Charles III, and died there in 1770. His widow survived him by nine years, dying in 1779. She seems to have been a gambler, and there is a story of her staking all her losses one evening against her husband's sketches.

Losing, she staked his villa, containing many of his frescoes, and lost again.

Antonio Ca.n.a.l, called Ca.n.a.letto, was born in Venice in 1697, the son of a scene-painter. At first he too painted scenery, but visiting Rome he was fascinated by its architecture and made many studies of it. On returning to Venice he settled down as a topographical painter and practically reproduced his native city on canvas. He died in 1768.

Venice possesses only inferior works from his hands; but No. 474 here--the view of the Scuola of S. Marco--is very fine.

Ca.n.a.letto had a nephew named Bernardo Bellotto, who to much of his uncle's skill brought a mellow richness all his own, and since he also took the name of Ca.n.a.letto, confusion has resulted. He is represented in the Accademia; but Vienna is richest in his work.

The great Ca.n.a.letto has a special interest for us in that in later life he lived for a while in England and painted here. The National Gallery has views of Eton College and of Ranelagh seen through his Venetian eyes. In Venice Tiepolo often added the figures for him.

Francesco Guardi was born in Venice in 1712 and died there in 1793, and all his life he was translating the sparkling charm of his watery city into paint. His master was Ca.n.a.letto, whom he surpa.s.sed in charm but never equalled in foot-rule accuracy or in that gravity which makes a really fine picture by the older man so distinguished a thing. Very little is known of Guardi's life. That he married is certain, and he had a daughter who eloped with an Irishman. We are told also that he was very indolent, and late in life came upon such evil days that he established himself at a corner of the Piazza, where Rosen's book-shop now is, and sold sketches to whomever would buy for whatever they would fetch; which is only one remove from a London screever. Guardi's picture of S. Giorgio Maggiore in the Accademia, No. 707, shows us that the earlier campanile, which fell in 1774, was higher and slenderer than the present one.

We now come to Room XVII, which has a number of small interesting works, some by great masters. Mantegna is here with a S. George, which I reproduce on the opposite page. Very beautiful it is, both in feeling and colour. It is painted on wood and the dragon is extremely dead. Here too is Piero della Francesca, that rare spirit, but his picture, No. 47, has almost perished. The mild Basaiti and milder Catena are here; a pretty little Caravaggio; two good Cimas, No. 611, sweet and translucent, and No. 592, a Tobias; and excellent examples of both Alvise and Bartolommeo Vivarini, those pioneer brothers, a blue and green dress of the Virgin in No. 615 by Bartolommeo being exquisite.

Here too is a Cosimo Tura, No. 628, poor in colour but fine in the drawing of the baby Christ; and a rich unknown Lombardian version of Christ washing His disciples' feet, No. 599, which is not strong in psychology but has noticeable quality.

The most purely charming work in the room is a Boccaccio Boccaccini, No.

600, full of sweetness and pretty thoughts. The Madonna is surrounded by saints, the figure in the centre having the true Boccaccini face. The whole picture is a delight, whether as a group of nice holy people, a landscape, or a fantasy of embroidery. The condition of the picture is perfect too. The flight into Egypt, in two phases, goes on in the background. I reproduce it opposite page 266.

And then we move to the room devoted to Giovanni Bellini, performing as we do so an act of sacrilege, for one cannot pa.s.s through the pretty blue and gold door without interrupting an Annunciation, the angel having been placed on one side of it and the Virgin on the other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. GEORGE FROM THE PAINTING BY MANTEGNA _In the Accademia_]

Giovanni Bellini was born in 1426, nearly a century after Giotto died.

His father and teacher was Jacopo Bellini, who had a school of painting in Padua and was the rival in that city of Squarcione, a scientific instructor who depended largely on casts from the antique to point his lessons. Squarcione's most famous pupil was Andrea Mantegna, who subsequently married Giovanni Bellini's sister and alienated his master.

According to Vasari, oil-painting reached Venice through Antonello da Messina, who had learned the art in the Netherlands. But that cannot be true. It came to Venice from Verona or Padua long after Florence could boast many fine masters, the delay being due to the circ.u.mstance that the Venetians thought more of architecture than the sister art. The first painters to make any success in Venice were the Vivarini of Murano. The next were Giovanni Bellini and Gentile his brother, who arrived from Padua about 1460, the one to paint altar-pieces in the Tuscan manner (for there is little doubt that the sweet simplicity and gentle radiance of the Giotto frescoes in the chapel of the Madonna dell'Arena, which the Paduans had the privilege of seeing for two or three generations before Squarcione was born, had greater influence than either Jacopo Bellini or Mantegna); and the other to paint church pageants, such as we saw in an earlier room.

Giovanni remained in Venice till his death, in 1516, at the ripe age of ninety, and nearly to the end was he both a busy painter and an interested and impressionable investigator of art, open to the influence of his own pupil Giorgione, and, when eighty, being the only painter in Venice to recognize the genius of Durer, who was then on a visit to the city. Durer, writing home, says that Bellini had implored him for a work and wanted to pay for it. "Every one gives him such a good character that I feel an affection for him. He is very old and is yet the best in painting."

In his long life Bellini saw all the changes and helped in their making.

He is the most varied and flexible painter of his time, both in manner and matter. None could be more deeply religious than he, none more tender, none more simple, none more happy. In manner he was equally diverse, and could paint like a Paduan, a Tuscan, a Fleming, a Venetian, and a modern Frenchman. I doubt if he ever was really great as we use the word of Leonardo, t.i.tian, Tintoretto, Mantegna; but he was everything else. And he was t.i.tian's master.

The National Gallery is rich indeed in Bellini's work. We have no fewer than ten pictures that are certainly his, and others that might be; and practically the whole range of his gifts is ill.u.s.trated among them.

There may not be anything as fine as the S. Zaccaria or Frari altar-pieces, or anything as exquisite as the Allegories in the Accademia and the Uffizi; but after that our collection is unexcelled in its examples.