Over the Ocean Part 37

This elegant and elaborate workmanship, these two grand columns, and the series of arches of the Doge's Palace, the ca.n.a.l between the palace and the prison, and the Bridge of Sighs, were the first objects that greeted my sight going out from the hotel in the morning; like the gondolas and ca.n.a.ls, they seemed of the Venice we read about, as they do even now, as we look at them in one of the photographic mementos of our visit.

The great Square of St. Mark, or "_Pe-at-zir San Marko_," as tourists learn to call it, after they have been there, is five hundred and eighty feet long by about two hundred and seventy wide. It is an elegant enclosure, paved with broad, flat slabs, and surrounded by elegant buildings, the lower stories all around, except beneath one or two public buildings, are arcades, in which are shops, restaurants, and money changers' offices.

At one end of the square, right across the whole s.p.a.ce of it, rises the Church of St. Mark, with its arched entrances, florid decorations, bronze horses, and mosque-like cupolas: upon one side extends the Ducal Palace, the lower story on the square utilized into cafes and shops; upon the other side are the Mint and Library, and also the great clock tower, with a huge sun-dial, in blue and gold, upon its square side; above it, in a sheltered niche, is the Virgin and Child; above this, a huge winged lion upon a cornice; and standing high upon the top of the tower, in the open air, is a great bell, beside which stand two huge bronze Moors, armed with hammers, with which they strike the hours on the bell.

Looking towards the Church of St. Mark, we see the lofty Campanile lifting its huge pyramidal top three hundred and twenty feet above the pavement. Here, in this great square, of a cool evening and moonlight night, played a fine band of music, while the public distributed itself about at tables, which were set far out upon the pave, and ordered refreshing ice-creams, delicate cakes, and light wines, from the cafe waiters, which they enjoyed while listening to the music. Ladies and gentlemen sauntered up and down; lazzaroni stretched themselves at full length in shadowy nooks; pedlers of curiosities, selecting foreigners with unnerring instinct, sought to dispose of their wares at six times their value, reminding one very forcibly of their image-selling brethren in America. A fellow, with a handful of tooth-picks carved out of bone into the shape of a gondola, sauntered up.

"Signore Inglese" (exhibiting his wares), "you buy him?

"No, no" (shaking my head); "don't want it."

Who ever heard of a man's picking his teeth after eating ice-cream? But the peripatetic dealer was not to be repulsed at the first charge.

"Signore, buy; varee sheep."

"How much?"

Unlucky words. He scented a trade at once. His black eyes sparkled, and his white teeth glittered in the moonlight. The rogue understood a little English, too.

"One lira, one franc, sare; magnifique."

"One franc! Quarter of a dollar for a contemptible little tooth-pick!

Get out."

"Varee fine, sare; gondola, sare; tree for two lira" (holding up his fingers, and laying the merchandise on the table before me).

"No, no; too dear."

"Vat you give me for him?"

At this moment the cafe waiter brought me a few copper coins in change, and was profoundly grateful for two of them. I c.h.i.n.ked the others in my hand absently.

"Give you four sous."

"Ah, no, signore" (with a deprecatory shrug); "take for half lira--ten sous."

"No; don't want it. Four sous."

He gathered up his tooth-picks, replaced them in his little tray, walked away half a dozen steps--then returned.

"Signore sall have him for four sous."

He pocketed the coins and pa.s.sed away, and I became possessed of a Venetian memento which I afterwards found could be bought in any of the shops for half what I paid for it. Nevertheless, it was a cheap lesson in the Italian retail trade, which I afterwards profited by.

The reader will recollect that the promenading, and the lounge at the tables in the square, is undisturbed by horses and vehicles. There are no horses in Venice. If one by chance should be brought there, he would be exhibited as a show. The shops around the square are frequented by travellers for the purchase of Venetian jewelry, gla.s.s beads, and gla.s.s ware.

Little silver gondolas, scarf-pins, with the winged lion in gold, and mosaics, inlaid with figures of beetles, are much bought by tourists. So are the little mother-of-pearl-looking sh.e.l.ls, strung together in necklaces and bracelets, and hawked round by the pedlers. But let no one who visits Venice leave without buying some of Carlo Ponti's photographs, the best and cheapest in the world, unless he has changed since we were in his shop, 52 St. Mark's Square. These photographic views were of rare beauty, and of all the interesting views in Venice, public buildings, exteriors and interiors; also all the great paintings, besides views of buildings and paintings in the great galleries of other cities. These beautiful large-sized views, which bring back what they so faithfully represent vividly to mind, we purchased at from thirty to seventy-five cents each. In New York and Boston the price was from three to five dollars each.

We have sauntered all around the great Square of St. Mark, have waited till the hour of two was struck, and seen the cloud of pigeons that come, with their rush of wings like a shower, down to the pavement at one end of the square, to be fed with their daily ration of corn by the government, punctually at the stroke; we have stood before the three huge pedestals of bronze, which are a dozen or twenty feet high, and look like elegantly-wrought gigantic candlesticks, the candles being the tall masts that rise therefrom, from the peaks of which, in the days of Venetian glory, floated the silken gonfalons emblematical of the three dominions under the republic--Venice, Cyprus, and the Morea. These beautifully-wrought pedestals exhibit in ba.s.s-relief figures of Tritons, ships, and sea-nymphs at their base, with a circle of the everlasting winged lions further up towards the centre, and above them ornamental leaves and flowers enclosing the medallion portrait of one of the doges.

We entered the Campanile, or bell-tower, after admiring the statues about the base, with some doubts about undertaking its ascent, fearing such a getting up stairs as its lofty alt.i.tude would call for. To our surprise, however, we found that there were no stairs whatever, the ascent being made by a brick-paved walk, laid in a series of zigzags, each a gradual ascent from the other. So up we went, the whole three hundred and twenty feet,--a long walk,--to the great pyramid above, and enjoyed a superb view of Venice, and the Gulf of Venice, from the top.

But the lion of Venice (not the winged one) is the grand old Church of St. Mark, with its five great arched doorways, surrounded by magnificent frescoes, its elegant columns, and bronze horses, of historic fame, looking out into the square. This church is said to be a mixture of Grecian and Roman architecture, but its domes give it a suggestion of Saracenic style.

The three huge masts, with their bronze pedestals, stand directly in front of it, and the pavement of the square before the church is fancifully laid out. One great beauty about the entrances is the double row of numerous little columns of various kinds of marble, beautifully wrought. I counted of these fifty-two in the lower tier. They are supported by the same number above, and in the arches of the five doorways are great mosaics, in bright colors, representing the Last Judgment, the Entombment of St. Mark, &c. Above these, over the huge arches of the doors, except the central one, are other rich mosaics, representing the Descent from the Cross, the Ascension, &c. A marble gallery and railing run above the great arches of the doorways; and over the central one, in front of a huge arched window of many-hued gla.s.s, stand the four bronze horses of which so much has been written. They are said to have been brought to Rome by Augustus after his victory over Antony, to have adorned a triumphal arch there, and been successively removed by Nero the fiddler, Domitian the fly-catcher, and Trajan, forum and wall-builder, to arches of their own. The Emperor Constantine then carried them to his new capital, Constantinople, which, hundreds of years after, fell into the hands of the Turks, but which, in turn, was taken by the crusaders in the fourth crusade, in 1206, whence they were wrenched from where they stood by knightly plunderers, and brought to Venice, to be again pulled down by the great modern crusader, Napoleon.

France, after having them trotting forth from the top of the Arc du Carrousel for eighteen years, had to trot them back to Venice. So that these horses in their day, which is a s.p.a.ce of fifteen hundred years, have travelled about the world to some extent. These bronze steeds weigh nearly two thousand pounds each.

Above the upper mosaics, the horses, and upper arches, the fringe or decoration of the arches is crammed and crowded with fret-work, statuary, and ornament. Six open-work, ornamental steeples enclose colossal statues of saints, a fringe and fret-work of angels, palm-branches, saints, and scroll-work run all along the top of the arches; upon the points of four stand four other saintly statues; on the point over the great arch is the statue of St. Mark; under him is his winged lion, with his paw upon the Book, and in every conceivable nook and corner a statue, mosaic, or carving, making this great temple one of florid display, while it is rich with the plundered spoils of the crusaders, wrenched from mosques of the Moslem, and from Constantine's capital, when it fell into their hands. Everywhere in this church the visitor sees evidence of this plunder of the East, or, as the old crusaders might have said, "reclamation from the Moslems." One of the great bronze doors leading into the s.p.a.cious vestibule is said to have been one brought from the Mosque of St. Sophia in 1203; and the vaulted roof of this vestibule is filled with beautiful mosaic representations of Scripture subjects, while around its walls are elegant columns of rare marbles, brought from the East. The huge portals of entrance are of bronze, and besides the one mentioned above is the elegant central one, of a sort of Moorish workmanship, with its panels inlaid with figures and carvings in silver.

Amid these artistical and historical curiosities, we are pointed to an inlaid red and white place in the pavement, at the princ.i.p.al entrance, marking the spot where Pope Alexander III. and Frederick Barbarossa, the bold, red-bearded emperor of Germany, who did so much to raise the secular power of his kingdom in opposition to arrogated papal supremacy, met and were reconciled. In other words, here is where, in 1177, Frederick rather "knocked under" to the pope.

Pa.s.sing in at the portal, the spectator is amazed at the vast ma.s.s of elegant columns of marble, porphyry, verd antique, agate, and other elegant stone, superb mosaics, gilding and ornament in profusion that meet his view on every side. This church was, in fact, a sort of treasure-house to the Venetians. Every ship that went out from the republic when it was building was enjoined to bring back material for it; the doges lavished their wealth upon it, and great artists left their work upon its walls, while the wealth which rich sinners paid in, in offerings, in the hope of purchasing with money immunity from divine wrath for their cruelties and crime, was expended on it with unsparing hand.

It is like many other old cathedrals in other countries--a monument of the nation of the past, and not of the present. So St. Mark's is a symbol of old Venice as it was, and of which we read in history and romance; and as we stand upon its pavement, uneven in marble billows, we look for solemn, long-bearded doges, priests in their vestments, with swinging censers, moving amid the pillars; or a group of crusaders around the octagon pulpit, with a Maltese cross in its panel, instead of a few modern dressed tourists in the midst of its dim-lighted splendor.

The church is built in the form of a Greek cross, with a great dome over the centre, and also one over each arm of the cross. The walls and columns of the interior are of marbles of the richest and most elegant description; there are said to be five hundred of the columns, and the various portions of the interior, with its different style of architecture, Grecian, Gothic, and Saracenic, would take a volume to describe. In fact the visitor hardly knows where to begin first to examine this incongruous ma.s.s of architectural defects, historic interests, splendor, and collection of rare works of art badly displayed. The interior of this wonderful old church can no more be described in a tourist's sketch, than it can be seen in a single visit.

There is the very porphyry basin which holds the holy water set on a pedestal that was once a Greek altar, upon which the Achaians sacrificed to their G.o.ds. There is the superb marble colonnade separating the nave from the choir, supported by columns of black and white porphyry, and upholding fourteen elegant marble statues, seven on each side, with a huge cross bearing the figure of the Saviour, in solid silver, in the centre. There is a magnificent high altar; with its four richly-wrought columns, elegant bronze statues, its costly mosaics, its pictures in gems and enamel of scenes in the life of St. Mark, its rich ba.s.s-relief and gorgeous canopy. The canopy of another altar is supported by four fluted spiral pillars brought from the Temple of Jerusalem, two of them of translucent alabaster. The sacristy, with its roof covered with rich mosaics; the curious tessellated floor, and the wonderfully decorated roof above; the different chapels and altars, each one of which is a specimen of the art of a different time, are seen here.

There were the splendid tomb of Cardinal Zeno, built in 1515; bronze doors made in Venice in the year 1100; the marble columns taken from Constantinople in 1205; the bronze statue of St. John, by Segala in 1565; the altar table made from a slab of stone brought from Tyre in 1126; monument of the last doge buried in St. Mark in 1354; the figure of Christ, in silver, 1594; Greek, Byzantine, and Gothic specimens of art. The church is a study of marbles, pillars, and colonnades; every part of it seems to have a history, and the eye becomes wearied with an endless succession of different objects, and the mind confused in endeavoring to grasp and retain distinct impressions of various portions, which it only preserves, at last, as one general picture.

In Venice the tourist cannot but be struck, as elsewhere in Italy, with the splendor of the churches, the wealth of gold, silver, and bullion locked up idle, dormant, and useless, contrasted with the abundance of the beggars that in grisly crowds beset the very doors of these splendid temples. Cathedrals, whose wealth would build a hundred such religious edifices as we erect in America, and which contribute nothing to the expense of the state, maintain little more than a corporal's guard of bedizened priests, while hundreds of gaunt, famine-stricken wretches are perishing at their very threshold for the necessaries of life. It seemed wicked to look upon great solid silver busts of forgotten archbishops, gem-crusted crosiers and mitres that make their public appearance but once in a year in a church ceremonial; altars with borders of solid gold and flashing jewels, hidden from public view, and unveiled only on the occasion of church festivals, or for the tourist's shilling, while the poor, ignorant followers of the church vainly plead in misery at its portals.

The wealth that has been lavished here on the churches seems to have been poured out with as free a hand as if the coffers of the church were exhaustless. In the Chiesa de Gesuiti, or Church of the Jesuits, the luxurious magnificence of the interior is almost indescribable. The walls of this edifice are completely sheathed in carved marble, polished to the highest degree, and inlaid with other colored marbles in flowers and running vines. Up, around, and near the pulpit are heavy, ma.s.sive, and rich hangings, apparently of white and blue brocatelle, graceful, rich, and luxurious; but you find it to be solid inlaid marble, fashioned by the cunning of the artificer into the semblance of drapery.

There it is with fringe and fold, ta.s.sel and variegated pattern, wrought with costly and laborious toil from the solid stone. Great twisted columns of verd antique uphold the altar, and a costly mosaic pavement covers the s.p.a.ce before it; the altar itself is rich with many-colored marbles, agate, and jasper, and all around the church the sculptors have wrought out the marble into a counterfeit resemblance of rich draperies--a wondrous work of art. In this magnificent temple, in front of the great altar, is a slab marking the last resting-place of the last doge of Venice, Manini--the Latin inscription telling that "the ashes of Manini are transmitted to eternity."

The Church of Santa Maria de Frari, built nearly six hundred years ago, is another edifice rich in artistic works and monuments. Here is a mausoleum erected to the doge Pesaro, who died in 1659, and of which all tourists speak; and well they may. It is a great marble temple, eighty feet high, its lower story of a sort of Moorish architecture, open; and in the centre sits a statue of the departed doge upon a sarcophagus upheld by dragons, while two obliging bronze skeletons hold in their bony hands scrolls for the purpose of revealing the virtues of the great departed to posterity. But this is not all of this remarkable monument.

At the four corners of the pillars, upholding the temple, stand four huge Nubians carved in marble; their tunics are of white marble, their legs and faces black, and seen through rents in their white marble garments appears the black as of their skins--a novel effect of sculpture, most certainly.

The beautiful monument to t.i.tian, completed in 1853, is another of the artistic wonders of this church. Upon a marble platform of three steps rises, first, a great marble base or pedestal about thirty feet long, at each end of which are seated two allegorical figures of men, with tablets upon which they have written inscriptions. One of the figures is of a man in the full vigor of life, and the other of extreme old age; between these two rises another huge pedestal or ornamental marble cornice, ten feet high, bearing upon its face two angels in ba.s.s-reliefs, supporting a wreath enclosing the names of t.i.tian, and King Ferdinand, who completed the monument; upon this second pedestal four richly-decorated Corinthian columns support a lofty Corinthian canopy, looking, in fact, like the grand arched entrance to a temple, the centre being the widest, highest, and composed of an arch. Seated in the centre is a grand statue of the great artist, with the figure of an angel at his side; between, and at the sides of the tall columns supporting the canopy above, are colossal marble statues of four female allegorical figures, and on the background, behind these groups, upon the walls of this marble temple as it were, are sculptured elegant ba.s.s-reliefs of the painter's greatest works, the a.s.sumption, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, and Peter Martyr; upon the wings of the great arch, above the column supports, are other beautiful ba.s.s-reliefs, and surmounting the whole, the winged lion, in sculptured marble. The whole structure is very beautiful in its workmanship and elaborate in detail, the eight colossal statues finely done, the marble drapery strikingly natural. Even a picture of this elegant monument is something to study and admire, and to be able to stand before the structure itself is more than doubly gratifying.

The same may be remarked also of the monument of Canova, directly opposite, the design of which is almost the same as that of Archd.u.c.h.ess Christiana at Vienna. It is a huge pyramid of white marble, and at the right, pa.s.sing towards its open door, is a procession of life-size figures in marble, representing, I suppose, Art, Religion, Genius, &c.

The first, a figure completely shrouded in its white marble drapery, is bearing a funeral urn; next comes a youthful figure ascending the steps, bearing a torch; next to this comes a male and female, walking together in an att.i.tude of grief; bearing a festoon of flowers, and following them two boys with torches. At the left of the open door of the monument rests the winged lion in a crouching att.i.tude, with paws crossed upon a book, and below him a colossal figure of an angel, seated upon loose, flowing drapery thrown upon the marble steps, and leaning, with half-bowed head, upon his extinguished torch. This last figure is most naturally and effectively posed, and, with one of its feet hanging carelessly down from the lower step over the pedestal, and the drapery fluttering beneath it, has an exceedingly natural air, and the figure is beautiful and graceful as one might suppose an angelic visitant would be.

There are many other monuments rich in historic interest in this fine old church. There is that of Francesco Foscari, whose name has been rendered immortal by Byron; and opposite it the tomb of another doge--a colossal structure, forty feet high and twenty-seven feet wide, decorated with a profusion of sculpture, including nineteen full-length figures; the monument of Simeone Dandolo, who was one of the judges of Marino Faliero; the elegant monument in rich marble of Jacopo Pesaro, who died in 1547, and near it a picture over the Pesaro altar, the property of the Pesaro family, representing the Virgin and Child, seated within a magnificent temple, with St. Peter, St. Francis, and other saints standing near, while numerous members of the Pesaro family were kneeling at different points. It was a grand and elegant painting, said to be one of t.i.tian's best works. The little chapels opening out of the church were rich in beautiful pictures, monuments, and sculpture--votive offerings, or to perpetuate the memory of members of some of the great, but now extinct or almost forgotten, Venetian families. Those who have a desire to view the tombs and monuments of the old doges will find many of them in the Church of Santi Giovannio e Paolo, including the splendid one of Andrea Vendramin, who died in 1479.

This great church is three hundred and thirty-one feet long, one hundred and forty-two feet wide in the transepts, and one hundred and twenty-three feet high. Here, on entering at the left, we saw the s.p.a.ce that was occupied on the wall by t.i.tian's masterpiece, Peter Martyr, recently destroyed by fire. Owing to some repairs that were to be made in this part of the church, this priceless painting was removed to one of the side chapels for greater safety, which soon after took fire, and was totally destroyed, with all its rich decorations and pictures, the t.i.tian among the rest.

The Santa Maria della Salute, an elegant church, with its great dome supported inside by eight pillars, between which open seven chapels, is beautifully decorated; and here we saw Tintoretto's picture of the Marriage at Cana, t.i.tian's Descent of the Holy Spirit, and the elegantly-sculptured high altar.

We become wearied with paintings at the churches, and saints, martyrs, and Madonnas are at last so monotonous that one ought to take a vacation between a visit to the churches and the Academy of Fine Arts, in which I cannot begin to enumerate the beautiful paintings. t.i.tian's a.s.sumption of the Virgin is one glorious work, however--rich in color and elegant in execution; Tintoretto's Adam and Eve, another; the Fisherman presenting the Ring to the Doge, very fine; and the great picture, by Paul Veronese, of Our Saviour in the House of Levi, an immense painting covering one entire end of a hall,--I should think thirty feet or more long by twenty in height,--a very animated composition; t.i.tian's St.

John in the Desert, and Tintoretto's Crucifixion, with the Three Marys, besides an indefinite number of saints, martyrs undergoing tortures, Madonnas, holy families, Virgins, &c., in various styles of art are here.

All the guide-books tell us that Florence is the fairest city of the earth, that it is Florence the Beautiful; so old Genoa is called Genoa Superba; and, in fact, local pride gives many of these old cities grandiloquent or flattering t.i.tles, the present significance of which the tourist fails to see. Florence owes its reputation for beauty more to its beautiful surroundings and its charming environs than to any beauties of its own, being in the centre of a sort of pretty valley, as it were, with gentle elevations surrounding it, and the picturesque peaks of the Apennines rising in the distance. From the hill of Fiesole the visitor gets a most charming view of hill, valley, mountain, and plain, and of the city beneath, with the Arno twisting its silver thread through it. The country all around is picturesque in the extreme, with exquisite bits of landscape taking in vineyards and country houses, villages and church spires, gently sloping hill-sides, and distant mountain peaks a.s.suming many strange hues in the sunlight. But the streets of the city itself are generally narrow, and with but little architectural display. The great palaces look like fortresses, and built, as perhaps they were, for the strongholds of royalty.

Our first walk carried us to the Piazza del Gran' Duca, and here rose the huge square, ma.s.sive-looking building, the Palazzo Vecchio, with great, projecting battlements, and the tall, mediaeval-looking watch-tower rising up at one corner, so familiar from the many pictures that have been drawn of it. Right about in this vicinity are many superb works of art in the open air--an equestrian statue of Cosmo I., the Fountain of Neptune, with the G.o.d in his car drawn by sea-horses, with nymphs, sea-G.o.ds, and tritons sporting about the margin of the basin; and on one side of the door of the palace stands a colossal group of Hercules slaying Cacus, while on the other is a statue of David by Michael Angelo.

This reminds me that we hear this great artist's name at every turn in Florence, see his portrait in every picture store, and prints of his works in the window of every print shop; for are we not in Florence, the birthplace of Angelo--not only of Angelo, but of Dante, Petrarch, Galileo, Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, the artist, and Benvenuto Cellini, the wondrous worker in metals? But I am forgetting the beautiful works of art that stand all about one here in the open street, which I stood gazing at in silent admiration.