Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume VII Part 9

The carriages rattle toward the opera-houses. Trains of people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying blazing torches and a cross elevated on a high pole before a coffin, pa.s.s through the streets chanting the service for the dead. The Brethren of Mercy may also be seen engaged in their office. The rapidity of their pace, the flare of their torches, the gleam of their eyes through their masks, and their sable garb, give them a kind of supernatural appearance. I return to bed, and fall asleep amid the shouts of people returning from the opera, singing as they go s.n.a.t.c.hes of the music with which they had been entertained during the evening.

III

VENICE

THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA[42]

BY CHARLES YRIARTE

To taste in all their fulness his first impressions of Venice, the traveler should arrive there by sea, at mid-day, when the sun is high.

By degrees, as the ship which carries him enters the channels, he will see the unparalleled city emerging from the lap of the lagoon, with its proud campaniles, its golden spires, its gray or silvery domes and cupolas. Advancing along the narrow channels of navigation, posts and piles dot here and there with black that sheet of steel, and give substance to the dream, making solid and tangible the foreground of the illusive distance.

Just now, all that enchanted world and fairy architecture floated in the air; little by little all has become distinct; those points of dark green turn into gardens; that ma.s.s of deep red is the line of the ship-building yards, with their leprous-looking houses and with the dark-colored stocks on which are erected the skeletons of polaccas and feluccas in course of construction; the white line showing so bright in the sun is the Riva dei Schiavoni, all alive with its world of gondoliers, fruit-sellers, Greek sailors, and Chioggiotes in their many-colored costumes. The rose-colored palace with the stunted colonnade is the Ducal Palace. The vessel, on its way to cast anchor off the Piazzetta, coasts round the white and rose-colored island which carries Palladio's church of Santa Maria Maggiore, whose firm campanile stands out against the sky with Grecian clearness and grace. Looking over the bow, the traveler has facing him the Grand Ca.n.a.l, with the Custom House where the figure of Fortune veers with the wind above her golden ball; beyond rise the double domes of the Salute with their great reversed consoles, forming the most majestic entrance to this watery avenue bordered by palaces.

He who comes for the first time to Venice by this route realizes a dream--his only dream perhaps ever destined to be surpa.s.sed by the reality; and if he knows how to enjoy the beauty of nature, if he can take delight in silver-gray and rose-colored reflections in water, if he loves light and color, the picturesque life of Italian squares and streets, the good humor of the people and their gentle speech which seems like the twittering of birds, let him only allow himself to live for a little time under the sky of Venice, and he has before him a season of happiness without alloy.

THE APPROACH BY TRAIN[43]

BY THE EDITOR

After leaving Padua the land for several miles is flat sand. No gra.s.s or tree grows here. Lagoons and ca.n.a.ls intersect the land. At the right are marshes bordering the Adriatic. Along the horizon, light smoky clouds blend imperceptibly with the water. Other clouds, floating overhead, are reflected in the brown and waveless water. Far across this expanse glides here and there a small boat, propelled by a man standing erect.

Through dim mists, settled over the bay, we sight flying birds that call loudly as they increase their flight. Absolutely without motion is this water. The sole objects that move are boats and birds. The water shimmers and sparkles wherever the sun, pa.s.sing in and out of clouds, lights it up. The shallow bay broadens until our view includes no land.

Everywhere extends a realm of waveless waters, in which fishing stakes stand erect, and tall plants grow.

How strangely all this differs from the blue Mediterranean we saw a fortnight ago when riding from Genoa to Leghorn, under that cloudless sky of blue; in that stirring breeze, and an almost tropical temperature, tho it was late in December; along that rocky, tunnel-pierced coast, with deep olive groves bordering the way; the sea a boundless vision of water moving and resounding against the sh.o.r.e; whitecaps everywhere visible on its broad expanse. Here on this road to Venice is complete repose, lifeless, sleepy repose--as of the dead--not without poetry, but of the Orient and of mystics, rather than of Provence, or the Ligurian sh.o.r.e and active, stalwart men.

We sight in the distance over the lagoon, the white walls and roof line of Venice. The railway starts on its long course over one of the n.o.blest bridges in the world. It is more than two miles long. Some 80,000 piles were used in its foundations, the superstructure entirely of stone, with arches of 33 feet span each, and 222 in number. Along the roadway, on either side is a stone bal.u.s.trade. At each pier a balcony curves outward. For four years a thousand men were engaged in building this viaduct, and the total cost was $10,000,000. Having crossed, we reach an island; then cross another, but shorter, bridge and pa.s.s to another island. Our train thereafter comes to a stop for we have reached Venice and enter a magnificent station, built of stone, with high semi-circular roof, lofty waiting rooms, mosaic floors. We pa.s.s out through a s.p.a.cious doorway, and directly below, and in front, see the Grand Ca.n.a.l, bordered on its farther sh.o.r.e by palaces and other n.o.ble structures of white marble. A wide and broad plaza here fronts the water, and a stairway at its edge leads downward to where are waiting a score of gondolas.

We step into one of these boats, and begin our first gondola ride in Adriatic waters. It is late afternoon. The western sun lies dying in a ma.s.s of yellow and soft brown clouds. On the high walls of the great white station its rays fall with startling brightness and cast long shadows of waiting gondoliers upon the plaza floor. The white palaces opposite are shrouded in somber hues. A warm mist seems to rise from the water. All is still as in the mid-Atlantic. When a sound is made, echoes sharp and clear come from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e.

Our boat glides away from this scene. Adjusting ourselves to its motion, we roll from side to side in our little house of gla.s.s on a downy seat and could pa.s.s the whole night here contentedly. Such rest, such appalling silence, we never knew before. Those gondoliers do their work with consummate skill. They have all the ease that comes of practise in any calling however difficult. The sharp cut of an oar as it enters the water is for a moment heard, but never a splash. The boat rolls constantly, but we feel no strain. It moves as if it were a toy swan drawn by a magnet in a child's hand.

From the Grand Ca.n.a.l we enter a narrow street. Sharp corners are turned quickly, swift-moving boats are pa.s.sed, narrow pa.s.sages entered, and we glide into deep shadows under bridges, but never a collision, or danger of one, occurs. The gondolier at crossings cries out his warning. We hear, but do not see, another who calls aloud in similar tones. The two voices are heard again, each in an echo. Far away in this watery but populous solitude, a church bell tolls.

We have had a quarter-hour's ride when the gondola comes to rest before broad stone steps leading upward to a wide doorway. Here is our hotel, an ancient palace, rich in marble and granite, with broad corridor, a n.o.ble stairway, and mosaic floors. It is Sunday on St. Mark's Place--a bright, warm Sunday it has been, such as winter can not give in our own country. Here, indeed, is a foreign land, its life and spirit more foreign than Rome. No scene in the wide world can rival this St. Mark's scene, with the islands across the way in the broad lagoon--a magnificent piazza, bordered by the facades of splendid palaces, by statues, columns, and ornate capitals, another piazza near it surrounded on three sides by n.o.ble arcaded structures and on the fourth by the half Gothic, half Byzantine Church of St. Mark's, the most resplendent Christian edifice in Europe. In one corner rises the stupendous Campanile, high above palace roofs, arcades and church domes, its bells sounding their notes upon an otherwise silent world.

A TOUR OF THE GRAND Ca.n.a.l[44]

BY THeOPHILE GAUTIER

The Grand Ca.n.a.l of Venice is the most wonderful thing in the world. No other city affords a spectacle so fine, so bizarre, so fairy-like. As remarkable bits of architecture, perhaps, can be found elsewhere, but nowhere located under such picturesque conditions.

There each palace has a mirror in which to gaze at its beauty, like a coquettish woman. The superb reality is doubled by a charming reflection. The water lovingly caresses the feet of these beautiful facades, which a white light kisses on the forehead, and cradles them in a double sky. The small boats and big ships which are able to ascend it seem to be made fast for the express purpose of serving as set-offs or ground-plans for the convenience of the decorators....

Each bit of wall narrates a story; every house is a palace; at each stroke of the oars the gondolier mentions a name which was as well known in the times of the Crusades as it is to-day; and this continues both to left and right for a distance of more than half a league. We have made a list of these palaces, not of all, but the most remarkable, and we do not dare to transcribe it here on account of its length. It covers five or six pages: Pierre Lombard, Scamozzi, Sansovino, Sebastiano Mazzoni, Sammich.e.l.li, the great architect of Verona; Selva, Domenico Rossi, Visentini, have drawn the plans and directed the construction of these princely dwellings, without reckoning the unknown artists of the Middle Ages who built the most picturesque and most romantic of them--those which give Venice its stamp and its originality.

On both banks, facades altogether charming and beautifully diversified succeed one another without interruption. After an architecture of the Renaissance with its columns comes a palace of the Middle Ages in Gothic Arab style, of which the Ducal Palace is the prototype, with its balconies, lancet windows, trefoils, and acroteria. Further along is a facade adorned with marble placques of various colors, garnished with medallions and consoles; then a great rose-colored wall in which is cut a large window with columnets; all styles are found there--the Byzantine, the Saracen, the Lombard, the Gothic, the Roman, the Greek, and even the Rococo; the column and the columnet; the lancet and the semicircle; the fanciful capital, full of birds and of flowers, brought from Acre or from Jaffa; the Greek capital found in Athenian ruins; the mosaic and the bas-relief; the cla.s.sic severity and elegant fantasy of the Renaissance. It is an immense gallery open to the sky, where one can study from the bottom of his gondola the art of seven or eight centuries. What treasures of genius, talent, and money have been expended on this s.p.a.ce which may be traversed in less than a quarter of an hour! What tremendous artists, but also what intelligent and munificent patrons! What a pity that the patricians who knew how to achieve such beautiful things no longer exist save on the canvases of t.i.tian, of Tintoretto, and du Moro!

Even before reaching the Rialto, you have, on the left, in ascending the Ca.n.a.l, the Palace Dario, in Gothic style; the Palace Venier, which presents itself by an angle, with its ornamentation, its precious marbles and medallions, in the Lombard style; the Fine Arts, a cla.s.sic facade joined to the old Ecole de la Charite and surmounted by a figure riding upon a lion; the Contarini Palace, in architectural style of Scamozzi; the Rezzonico Palace with three superimposed orders; the triple Giustiniani Palace, in the style of the Middle Ages, in which resides M. Natale Schiavoni, a descendant of the celebrated painter Schiavoni, who possesses a gallery of pictures and a beautiful daughter, the living reproduction of a canvas painted by her ancestor; The Foscari Palace, recognizable by its low door, by its two stories of columnets supporting lancets and trefoils, where in other days were lodged the sovereigns who visited Venice, but now abandoned; the Balbi Palace, from the balcony of which the princes leaned to watch the regattas which took place upon the Grand Ca.n.a.l with so much pomp and splendor, in the palmy days of the Republic; the Pisani Palace, in the German style of the beginning of the fifteenth century; and the Tiepolo Palace, very smart and relatively modern. On the right, there nestles between two big buildings, a delicious little palace which is composed of a window and a balcony; but such a window and balcony! A guipure of stone, of scrolls, of guillochages, and of open-work, which would seem possible of execution only with a punching machine upon one of those sheets of paper which cover baptismal sugar-plums, or are placed upon globes of lamps.

We greatly regretted not having twenty-five thousand francs about us to buy it, since that was all that was demanded for it....

The Rialto, which is the most beautiful bridge in Venice, with a very grandiose and monumental air, bestrides the ca.n.a.l by a single span with a powerful and graceful curve. It was built in 1691, under the Dogeship of Pasquale Cigogna, by Antonio da Ponte, and replaced the ancient wooden drawbridge. Two rows of shops, separated in the middle by a portico in the form of an arcade and permitting a glimpse of the sky, burden the sides of the bridge, which can be crossed by three paths; that in the center and the exterior pa.s.sageways furnished with bal.u.s.trades of marble.

Around the Bridge of the Rialto, one of the most picturesque spots of the Grand Ca.n.a.l, are gathered the oldest houses in Venice, with platformed roofs, on which poles are planted to hang banners; their long chimneys, their bulging balconies, their stairways with disjointed steps, and their plaques of red coating, the fallen flakes of which lay bare the brick walls and the foundations made green by contact with the water. There is always near the Rialto a tumult of boats and gondolas and of stagnant islets of tied-up craft drying their tawny sails, which are sometimes traversed by a large cross....

Below and beyond the Rialto are grouped on both banks the ancient Fondaco dei Tedeschi, upon the colored walls of which, in uncertain tints, may be devined some frescoes of t.i.tian and Tintoretto, like dreams which come only to vanish; the fish-market, the vegetable market, and the old and new buildings of Scarpagnino and of Sansovino, almost fallen in ruins, in which are installed various courts....

On the right rises the Palace della Ca d'Oro, one of the most charming on the Grand Ca.n.a.l. It belongs to Mademoiselle Taglioni,[45] who has restored it with most intelligent care. It is all embroidered, fringed, carved in a Greek, Gothic, barbaric style, so fantastic, so light, so aerial, that it might be fancied to have been built expressly for the nest of a sylph. Mlle. Taglioni has pity for these poor, abandoned palaces. She has several of them en pension, which she maintains out of pure commiseration for their beauty; we were told of three or four upon which she has bestowed this charity of repair....

In going to a distance from the heart of the city, life is extinct. Many windows are closed or barred with boards; but this sadness has its beauty; it is more perceptible to the soul than to the eyes, regaled without cessation by the most unforeseen accidents of light and shade, by buildings so varied that even their dilapidation only renders them more picturesque, by the perpetual movement of the waters, and that blue and rose tint which composes the atmosphere of Venice.

ST. MARK'S CHURCH[46]

BY JOHN RUSKIN

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 mult.i.tude of pillars and white domes, cl.u.s.tered into a long low pyramid of colored 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, clear 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, sceptered 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 morning 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, 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 continuous chain of language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers--a confusion of delight, amid which the b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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, hoa.r.s.e-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 splendor on those who pa.s.s beneath it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St.

Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and poor, pa.s.s by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them that sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the venders 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 cla.s.ses lounge, and read empty journals; in its center the Austrian bands[47]

play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes--the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them--a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest cla.s.ses, unemployed 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 hoa.r.s.e 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....

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 cas.e.m.e.nt wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors 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 pa.s.s them, and sink again into the gloom.

Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture pa.s.sing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful 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 pa.s.sions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the cross, lifted and 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 altho 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 G.o.d," she is not here the presiding deity. It is the cross that is first seen, and always, burning in the center 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 worshipers 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 renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark's; and hardly a moment pa.s.ses from early morning to sunset in which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch, cast itself into long abas.e.m.e.nt on the floor of the temple, and then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a pa.s.sionate 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....