A Wanderer in Venice Part 23

The most cherished possession of the Frari is, I suppose, the tomb of t.i.tian. It is not a very fine monument, dating from as late as 1852, but it marks reverently the resting-place of the great man. He sits there, the old painter, with a laurel crown. Behind him is a relief of his "a.s.sumption", now in the Accademia; above is the lion of Venice.

t.i.tian's work is to be seen throughout Venice, either in fact or in influence, and all the great cities of the world have some superb creation from his hand, London being peculiarly fortunate in the possession of his "Bacchus and Ariadne". Standing before the grave of this tireless maker of beauty, let us recall the story of his life.

t.i.tian, as we call him--Tiziano Vecellio, or Vecelli, or Tiziano da Cadore, as he was called by his contemporaries--was born in Cadore, a Venetian province. The year of his birth varies according to the biographer. Some say 1477, some 1480, some 1487 or even 1489 and 1490.

Be that as it may, he was born in Cadore, the son of a soldier and councillor, Gregorio Vecelli. As a child he was sent to Venice and placed under art teachers, one of whom was Gentile Bellini, and one Giovanni Bellini, in whose studio he found Giorgione. And it is here that his age becomes important, because if he was born in 1477 he was Giorgione's contemporary as a scholar; if ten years later he was much his junior. In either case there is no doubt that Giorgione's influence was very powerful. On t.i.tian's death in 1576 he was thought to be ninety-nine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MADONNA OF THE PESARO FAMILY FROM THE PAINTING BY t.i.tIAN _In the Church of the Frari_]

One of t.i.tian's earliest known works is the visitation of S. Mary and S.

Elizabeth, in the Accademia. In 1507 he helped Giorgione with the Fondaco dei Tedeschi frescoes. In 1511 he went to Padua. In 1512 he obtained a sinecure in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and was appointed a State artist, his first task being the completion of certain pictures left unfinished by his predecessor Giovanni Bellini, and in 1516 he was put in possession of a patent granting him a painting monopoly, with a salary of 120 crowns and 80 crowns in addition for the portrait of each successive Doge. Thereafter his career was one long triumph and his brush was sought by foreign kings and princes as well as the aristocracy of Venice. Honours were showered upon him at home and abroad, and Charles V made him a Count and enn.o.bled his progeny. He married and had many children, his favourite being, as with Tintoretto, a daughter, whose early death left him, again as with Tintoretto, inconsolable. He made large sums and spent large sums, and his house was the scene of splendid entertainments. It still stands, not far from the Jesuits'

church, but it is now the centre of a slum, and his large garden, which extended to the lagoon where the Fondamenta Nuovo now is, has been built over.

t.i.tian's place in art is high and una.s.sailable. What it would have been in colour without Giorgione we cannot say; but Giorgione could not affect his draughtsmanship. As it is, the word t.i.tianesque means everything that is rich and glorious in paint. The Venetians, with their ostentation, love of pageantry, and intense pride in their city and themselves, could not have had a painter more to their taste. Had Giorgione lived he would have disappointed them by his preoccupation with romantic dreams; Bellini no doubt did disappoint them by a certain simplicity and divinity; Tintoretto was stern and sparing of gorgeous hues. But t.i.tian was all for sumptuousness.

Not much is known of his inner life. He seems to have been over-quick to suspect a successful rival, and his treatment of the young Tintoretto, if the story is true, is not admirable. He was more friendly with Aretino than one would expect an adorner of altars to be. His love of money grew steadily stronger. As an artist he was a pattern, for he was never satisfied with his work but continually experimented and sought for new secrets, and although quite old when he met Michael Angelo in Rome he returned with renewed ambitions. Among his last words, on his death-bed, were that he was at last almost ready to begin.

As it happens, it is the pyramidal tomb opposite t.i.tian's that was designed to hold his remains. It is now the tomb of Canova. Why it was not put to its maker's purpose, I do not know, but to my mind it is a far finer thing than the t.i.tian monument and worthier of t.i.tian than of Canova, as indeed Canova would have been the first to admit. But there was some hitch, and the design was laid in a drawer and not taken out again until Canova died and certain of his pupils completed it for himself. Canova was not a Venetian by birth. He was born at Pa.s.sagno, near Asolo, in 1757, and was taught the elements of art by his grandfather and afterwards by a sculptor named Torretto, who recommended him to the Falier family as a "phenomenon". The Faliers made him their protege, continued his education in Venice, and when the time was ripe sent him to Rome, the sculptors' Mecca. In Rome he remained practically to the end of his life, returning to Venice to die in 1822. It is possible not too highly to esteem Canova's works, but the man's career was marked by splendid qualities of industry and purpose and he won every worldly honour. In private life he practised unremittingly that benevolence and philanthropy which many Italians have brought to a fine art.

It is these two tombs which draw most visitors to the Frari; but there are two pictures here that are a more precious artistic possession. Of these let us look first at Bellini's altar-piece in the Sacristy. This work represents the Madonna enthroned, about her being saints and the little angelic musicians of whom Bellini was so fond. In this work these musicians are younger than usual; one pipes while the other has a mandolin. Above them is the Madonna, grave and sweet, with a resolute little Son standing on her knee. The venerable holy men on either side have all Bellini's suave benignancy and incapacity for sin: celestial grandfathers. The whole is set in a very splendid frame. I give a reproduction opposite page 252, but the colour cannot be suggested.

The other great Frari picture--stronger than this but not more attractive--is the famous t.i.tian altar-piece, the "Pesaro Madonna". This is an altar-piece indeed, and in it unite with peculiar success the world and the spirit. The picture was painted for Jacopo Pesaro, a member of a family closely a.s.sociated with this church, as the tombs will show us. Jacopo, known as "Baffo," is the kneeling figure, and, as his tonsure indicates, a man of G.o.d. He was in fact Bishop of Paphos in Cyprus, and being of the church militant he had in 1501 commanded the Papal fleet against the Turks. The expedition was triumphant enough to lead the Bishop to commission t.i.tian to paint two pictures commemorating it. In the first the Pope, Alexander Borgia, in full canonicals, standing, introduces Baffo, kneeling, to S. Peter, on the eve of starting with the ships to chastise the Infidel. S. Peter blesses him and the Papal standard which he grasps. In the second, the picture at which we are now looking (see the reproduction opposite page 246), Baffo again kneels to S. Peter, while behind him a soldier in armour (who might be S. George and might merely be a Venetian warrior and a portrait) exhibits a captured Turk. Above S. Peter is the Madonna, with one of t.i.tian's most adorable and vigorous Babes. Beside her are S.

Francis and S. Anthony of Padua, S. Francis being the speaking brother who seems to be saying much good of the intrepid but by no means over-modest Baffo. The other kneeling figures are various Pesari.

Everything about the picture is masterly and aristocratic, and S. Peter yields to no other old man in Venetian art, which so valued and respected age, in dignity and grandeur. In the clouds above all are two outrageously plump cherubs--fat as b.u.t.ter, as we say--sporting (it is the only word) with the cross.

As I sat one day looking at this picture, a small grey and white cat sprang on my knee from nowhere and immediately sank into a profound slumber from which I hesitated to wake it. Such ingratiating acts are not common in Venice, where animals are scarce and all dogs must be muzzled. Whether or not the spirit of t.i.tian had instructed the little creature to keep me there, I cannot say, but the result was that I sat for a quarter of an hour before the altar without a movement, so that every particular of the painting is photographed on my retina. Six months later the same cat led me to a courtyard opposite the Sacristy door and proudly exhibited three kittens.

Jacopo Pesaro's tomb is near the Baptistery. The enormous and repellent tomb on the same wall as the t.i.tian altar-piece is that of a later Pesaro, Giovanni, an unimportant Doge of Venice for less than a year, 1658-1659. It has grotesque details, including a camel, giant negroes and skeletons, and it was designed by the architect of S. Maria della Salute, who ought to have known better. The Doge himself is not unlike the author of a secretly published English novel ent.i.tled _The Woman Thou Gavest Me_.

As a gentle contrast look at the wall tomb of a bishop on the right of the Pesaro picture. The old priest lies on his bier resting his head on his hand and gazing for ever at the choir screen and stalls. It is one of the simplest and most satisfactory tombs in this church.

But it is in the right transept, about the Sacristy door, that the best tombs cl.u.s.ter, and here also, in the end chapel, is another picture, by an early Muranese painter of whom we have seen far too little, Bartolommeo Vivarini, who is credited with having produced the first oil picture ever seen in Venice. His Frari altar-piece undoubtedly had influence on the Bellini in the Sacristy, but it is less beautiful, although possibly a deeper sincerity informs it. Other musicianly angels are here, and this time they make their melody to S. Mark. In the next chapel are some pretty and cool grey and blue tombs.

Chief of the tombs in this corner is the fine monument to Jacopo Marcello, the admiral. This lovely thing is one of the most Florentine sculptures in Venice; above is a delicate fresco record of the hero's triumphs. Near by is the monument of Pacifico Bon, the architect of the Frari, with a Florentine relief of the Baptism of Christ in terra-cotta, a little too high to be seen well. The wooden equestrian figure of Paolo Savello, an early work, is very attractive. In his red cap he rides with a fine a.s.surance and is the best horseman in Venice after the great Colleoni.

In the choir, where t.i.tian's "a.s.sumption" once was placed, are two more dead Doges. On the right is Francesco Foscari, who reigned from 1423-1457, and is one of the two Foscari (his son being the other) of Byron's drama. Francesco Foscari, whom we know so well by reason of his position in the relief on the Piazzetta facade of the Doges' Palace, and again on the Porta della Carta, was unique among the Doges both in the beginning and end of his reign. He was the first to be introduced to the populace in the new phrase "This is your Doge," instead of "This is your Doge, an it please you," and the first to quit the ducal throne not by death but deposition. But in many of the intervening thirty-four years he reigned with brilliance and liberality and encouraged the arts.

His fall was due to the political folly of his son Jacopo and the unpopularity of a struggle with Milan. He died in the famous Foscari palace on the Grand Ca.n.a.l and, in spite of his recent degradation, was given a Doge's funeral.

The other Doge here, who has the more ambitious tomb, is Niccol Tron (1471-1473) who was before all a successful merchant. Foscari, it will be noticed, is clean shaven; Tron bearded; and to this beard belongs a story, for on losing a dearly loved son he refused ever after to have it cut and carried it to the grave as a sign of his grief.

The Sacristy is, of course, chiefly the casket that contains the Bellini jewel, but it has other possessions, including the "Stations of the Cross" by Tiepolo, which the sacristan is far more eager to display: a brilliant but fatiguing series. Here, too, are a "Crucifixion" and "Deposition" by Canova. A nice ciborium by the door and a quaint wooden block remain in my memory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MADONNA TRIPTYCH BY GIOVANNI BELLINI _In the Church of the Frari_]

For the rest, I recall a gaunt Baptist in wood, said to be by Donatello, on one of the altars to the left of the choir; and the bronze Baptist in the Baptistery, less realistic, by Sansovino; the pretty figures of Innocence and S. Anthony of Padua on the holy water basins just inside the main door; and the corners of delectable medieval cities in intarsia work on the stalls.

And, after the details and before them, there is always the great pleasant church, with its coloured beams and n.o.ble s.p.a.ces.

CHAPTER XXIV

SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO

A n.o.ble statue--Bartolommeo Colleoni--Verrocchio--A Dominican church--Mocenigo Doges--The tortured Bragadino--The Valier monument--Leonardo Loredano--Sebastian Venier--The Chapel of the Rosary--Sansovino--An American eulogy--Michele Steno--Tommaso Mocenigo--A brave re-builder--The Scuola di S. Marco.

It is important to reach SS. Giovanni e Paolo by gondola, because the ca.n.a.ls are particularly fascinating between this point and, say, the Molo. If one embarks at the Molo (which is the habit of most visitors), the gondolier takes you up the Rio Palazzo, under the Ponte di Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs, past the superb side walls of the Ducal Palace; then to the right, with relics of fine architecture on either side, up the winding Rio di S. Maria Formosa, and then to the right again into the Rio di S. Marina and the Rio dei Mendicanti (where a dyer makes the water all kinds of colours). A few yards up this ca.n.a.l you pa.s.s the Fondamenta Dandolo on the right, at the corner of which the most commanding equestrian statue in the world breaks on your vision, behind it rising the vast bulk of the church. All these little ca.n.a.ls have palaces of their own, not less beautiful than those of the Grand Ca.n.a.l but more difficult to see.

Before entering the church--and again after coming from it--let us look at the Colleoni. It is generally agreed that this is the finest horse and horseman ever cast in bronze; and it is a surprise to me that South Kensington has no reproduction of it, as the Trocadero in Paris has.

Warrior and steed equally are splendid; they are magnificent and they are war. The only really compet.i.tive statue is that of Gattamalata (who was Colleoni's commander) by Donatello at Padua; but personally I think this the finer.

Bartolommeo Colleoni was born in 1400, at Bergamo, of fighting stock, and his early years were stained with blood. The boy was still very young when he saw his father's castle besieged by Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and his father killed. On becoming himself a condottiere, he joined the Venetians, who were then busy in the field, and against the Milanese naturally fought with peculiar ardour. But on the declaration of peace in 1441 he forgot his ancient hostility, and in the desire for more battle a.s.sisted the Milanese in their campaigns.

Fighting was meat and drink to him. Seven years later he returned to the Venetians, expecting to be appointed Captain-General of the Republic's forces, but failing in this wish he put his arm again at the service of the Milanese. A little later, however, Venice afforded him the coveted honour, and for the rest of his life he was true to her, although when she was miserably at peace he did not refrain from a little strife on his own account, to keep his hand in. Venice gave him not only honours and money but much land, and he divided his old age between agriculture and--thus becoming still more the darling of the populace--almsgiving.

Colleoni died in 1475 and left a large part of his fortune to the Republic to be spent in the war with the Turks, and a little for a statue in the Piazza of S. Mark. But the rules against statues being erected there being adamant, the site was changed to the campo of SS.

Giovanni e Paolo, and Andrea Verrocchio was brought from Florence to prepare the group. He began it in 1479 and died while still working on it, leaving word that his pupil, Lorenzo di Credi, should complete it.

Di Credi, however, was discouraged by the authorities, and the task was given to Alessandro Leopardi (who made the sockets for the three flagstaffs opposite S. Mark's), and it is his name which is inscribed on the statue. But to Verrocchio the real honour.

Among the Colleoni statue's great admirers was Robert Browning, who never tired of telling the story of the hero to those unacquainted with it.

The vast church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo does for the Dominicans what the Frari does for the Franciscans; the two churches being the Venetian equivalents of Florence's S. Maria Novella and Santa Croce. Like too many of the church facades of Venice, this one is unfinished and probably ever will be. Unlike the Frari, to which it has a general resemblance, the church of John and Paul is domed; or rather it possesses a dome, with golden b.a.l.l.s upon its cupola like those of S.

Mark. Within, it is light and immense but far inferior in charm to its great red rival. It may contain no t.i.tian's ashes, but both Giovanni and Gentile Bellini lie here; and its forty-six Doges give it a cachet. We come at once to two of them, for on the outside wall are the tombs of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo, who gave the land for the church, and of his son, Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI FROM THE STATUE BY ANDREA VERROCCHIO]

Just within we find Alvise Mocenigo (1570-1577) who was on the throne when Venice was swept by the plague in which t.i.tian died, and who offered the church of the Redentore on the Guidecca as a bribe to Heaven to stop the pestilence. Close by lie his predecessors and ancestors, Pietro Mocenigo, the admiral, and Giovanni Mocenigo, his brother, whose reign (1478-1485) was peculiarly belligerent and witnessed the great fire which destroyed so many treasures in the Ducal Palace. What he was like you may see in the picture numbered 750 in our National Gallery, once given to Carpaccio, then to Lorenzo Bastiani, and now to the school of Gentile Bellini. In this work the Doge kneels to the Virgin and implores intercession for the plague-stricken city.

Pietro's monument is the most splendid, with a number of statues by Pietro Lombardi, architect of the Ducal Palace after the same fire. S.

Christopher is among these figures, with a nice little Christ holding on to his ear.

In the right aisle we find the monument of Bragadino, a Venetian commander who, on the fall of Cyprus, which he had been defending against the Turks, was flayed alive. But this was not all the punishment put upon him by the Turks for daring to hold out so long. First his nose and ears were cut off; then for some days he was made to work like the lowest labourer. Then came the flaying, after which his skin was stuffed with straw and fastened as a figure-head to the Turkish admiral's prow on his triumphant return to Constantinople. For years the trophy was kept in the a.r.s.enal of that city, but it was removed by some means or other, purchase or theft, and now reposes in the tomb at which we are looking. This monument greatly affected old Coryat. "Truly," he says, "I could not read it with dry eyes."

Farther on is the pretentious Valier monument, a triumph of bad taste.

Here we see Doge Bertucci Valier (1656-1658) with his courtly abundant dame, and Doge Silvestro Valier (1694-1700), all proud and foolish in death, as I feel sure they must have been in life to have commissioned such a memorial. In the choir are more Doges, some of sterner stuff: Michele Morosini (1382), who after only a few months was killed by a visitation of the plague, which carried off also twenty thousand more ordinary Venetians, but who has a tomb of great distinction worthy of commemorating a full and sagacious reign; Leonardo Loredan (1501-1521) whose features we know so well by reason of Bellini's portrait in the National Gallery, the Doge on the throne when the League of Cambray was formed by the Powers to crush the Republic; and Andrea Vendramini (1476-1478) who has the most beautiful monument of all, the work of Tullio and Antonio Lombardi. Vendramini, who came between Pietro and Giovanni Mocenigo, had a brief and bellicose reign. Lastly here lies Doge Marco Corner (1365-1368), who made little history, but was a fine character.

In the left transept we find warlike metal, for here is the modern statue of the great Sebastian Venier whom we have already seen in the Ducal Palace as the hero of the battle of Lepanto in 1571, and it is peculiarly fitting that he should be honoured in the same church as the luckless Bragadino, for it was at Lepanto that the Turks who had triumphed at Cyprus and behaved so vilely were for the moment utterly defeated. On the death of Alvise Mocenigo, Venier was made Doge, at the age of eighty, but he occupied the throne only for a year and his end was hastened by grief at another of those disastrous fires, in 1576, which destroyed some of the finest pictures that the world then contained. This statue is vigorous, and one feels that it is true to life, but for the old admiral at his finest and most vivid you must go to Vienna, where Tintoretto's superb and magnificent portrait of him is preserved. There he stands, the old sea dog, in his armour, but bare-headed, and through a window you see the Venetian fleet riding on a blue sea. It is one of the greatest portraits in the world and it ought to be in Venice.

The chapel of the Rosary, which is entered just by the statue of Venier, was built in honour of his Lepanto victory. It was largely destroyed by fire in 1867, and is shown by an abrupt white-moustached domineering guide who claims to remember it before that time. Such wood carving as was saved ("Saved! Saved!" he raps out in tones like a pistol shot) is in the church proper, in the left aisle. Not to be rescued were t.i.tian's great "Death of S. Peter, Martyr" a copy of which, presented by King Victor Emmanuel, is in the church, and a priceless altar-piece by Giovanni Bellini. The beautiful stone reliefs by Sansovino are in their original places, and remain to-day as they were mutilated by the flames.

Their unharmed portions prove their exquisite workmanship, and fortunately photography has preserved for us their unimpaired form. An American gentleman who followed me into the church, after having considered for some time as to whether or not he (who had "seen ten thousand churches") would risk the necessary fifty centimes, expressed himself, before these Sansovino masterpieces, as glad he came. "These reliefs," he said to me, "seem to be of a high order of merit." The restoration of the chapel is being carried out thoroughly but slowly.

Modern Sansovinos, in caps made from the daily paper, are stone-cutting all day long, and will be for many years to come.

Returning to the church proper, we find more Doges. An earlier Venier Doge, Antonio (1382-1400), is here. In the left aisle is another fine Ducal monument, that of Pasquale Malipiero (1457-1462), who succeeded Foscari on his deposal and was the first Doge to be present at the funeral of another, for Foscari died only ten days after his fall. Here also lie Doge Michele Steno (1400-1413), who succeeded Antonio Venier, and who as a young man is credited with the insult which may be said to have led to all Marino Faliero's troubles. For Steno having annoyed the Doge by falling in love with a maid of honour, Faliero forbade him the palace, and in retaliation Steno scribbled on the throne itself a scurrilous commentary on the Doge's wife. Faliero's inability to induce the judges to punish Steno sufficiently was the beginning of that rage against the State which led to his ruin. It was during Steno's reign that Carlo Zeno was so foolishly arrested and imprisoned, to the loss of the Republic of one of its finest patriots.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADONNA WITH THE MAGDALEN AND S. CATHERINE FROM THE PAINTING BY GIOVANNI BELLINI _In the Accademia_]