Venice and its Story Part 11

Erasmus acted for a short time as editor and reader, and the great Dutch humanist had his translations of Euripides and his _Adagia_ printed there. Erasmus and Aldus were good friends and would have been better if the fare provided at dinner had been less Lenten. The scholar's heart to-day warms to Aldus, whose steady, glowing enthusiasm carried him through his great task amid all the stress of the wars of the League of Cambrai. He founded at his house the famous _Accademia di Aldo_, where a symposium of humanists met for the study and emendation of the Greek cla.s.sics. The rules were drawn up and the discussions conducted in Greek. Before Aldus died, in 1515, he had published twenty-eight _editiones principes_ of the Greek masterpieces. He was the first of modern publishers, the first to break down the monopoly of the rich in books. His charming little octavo volumes with their familiar device of the anchor and the dolphin, so precious to the modern bibliophile, were sold at prices averaging about two shillings of our money. They were well read, for of the 24,000 copies printed of Erasmus' "Praise of Folly," only one copy has survived, and that in an imperfect state. He died a poor man and his kinsmen and descendants carried on the good work for a century.

If we turn from printing to literature we are met by a remarkable and impressive fact. Alone among the nations of Europe, Venice has given birth to no great literature. Save her crumbling architecture all that she conceived of the beautiful is expressed in painting. It is a great inheritance and immortalises a people of merchant princes, proud, sensuous, resourceful, with a firm grip of the realities of life, deeply religious in its own way, but without the spiritual idealism of the Tuscan. Through the millennial tale of her existence as a State, no great poet, no great thinker, no great dramatist meets us; none save a fluent and graceful writer of comedies of the Decadence, who was descended from a Modenese, and whose best work was written in a foreign tongue for a foreign capital.[79]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A VENETIAN WOMAN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of Venice.]

PART II.--THE CITY

"They might chirp and chaffer, come and go For pleasure or profit, her men alive-- My business is hardly with them I trow, But with the empty cells of the human hive; --With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch, The church's apsis, aisle or nave, Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch, Its face set full for the sun to shave."

--_Browning._

SECTION I

_Arrival--The Piazza_

That traveller will best attune himself to the peculiar charm of Venice, who arrives after sunset, when evening has veiled the somewhat unlovely approach to the city by railway. For the great lagoon State ever set her face to the sea and adorned herself to welcome her guests as they were rowed from Fusina, or as they sailed up from the Adriatic, to land at the Molo, the chief landing-stage by the Piazzetta. The modern visitor arriving by train is like one who should enter a stately mansion by the stables. Once, however, in his gondola, the "black Triton" of the lagoons, gliding along the waterways to the strangers' quarter by lines of houses and palaces, whose walls, timeworn or neglected, sometimes degraded, will be mellowed under the dim light of the infrequent lamps, he will be caught by the spell which Venice casts over those who come to her.

But there are two Venices: the Venice of the ca.n.a.ls and the Venice of the streets. The traveller will do well therefore to go on foot to some of the sights he would see, for by no other means can he do justice to the varied beauty of the streets, the quaint fragmentary remains of ancient architecture, the brilliant patches of colour, the little shrines, and all the countless details that go to make the by-ways of the city so full of surprise and pleasure to the pedestrian. The difficulty of finding one's way from point to point has been greatly exaggerated. Anyone with a map and a normal sense of direction can with a little patience reach his destination. The churches are usually situated on or near a _campo_; a stream of people will generally be found pa.s.sing along the streets and over the bridges between the _campi_, and a well-worn track marks the more frequented ways. If he should find himself blocked by a ca.n.a.l or a blind alley, a short deviation to the right or left will generally lead to one of the 380 bridges by which, to use Evelyn's picturesque phrase, the city is tacked together. Even if hopelessly lost, a _soldino_ given to a boy will soon bring him to where he would go.

The waterways, 150 in all, are divided into _ca.n.a.li_ and _rii_. The _ca.n.a.le_ is the broader, the _rio_ the narrower stream. The _rii_ are by far the greater in number. But the pedestrian is more concerned with street nomenclature. A _fondamenta_ is a way alongside a _ca.n.a.le_ or _rio_; a _calle_ is a street with houses on either side; _ruga_ or _rughetta_ (French _rue_, _ruelle_) was first applied to streets with a few new houses here and there; the appellation was retained in later times when the houses or shops became continuous; a _salizzada_ is one of the earliest of the paved streets, generally near a church; a _rio terra_, a _rio_ filled up and paved; a _piscina_, a fish-pond treated in the same way; a _ponte_, a bridge; a _campo_, a paved, open place, formerly a field; a _campiello_, a smaller _campo_; a _corte_, a court.

Avoid a _vico cieco_, or a _viccolo cieco_, which have no thoroughfare.

The city is divided into six _sestieri_ or wards, subdivided into _parocchie_ or parishes. The houses are numbered by _sestieri_, the numbers reaching to thousands. The Merceria, a crowded thoroughfare, leads from under the Clock Tower in St Mark's Square, after many kinks and turns, to the Rialto bridge over the Grand Ca.n.a.l, which is spanned by two other bridges about equidistant from the Rialto bridge.

E. and W. of the Rialto, in addition to these bridges, numerous ferries (_traghetti_) make either bank of the Grand Ca.n.a.l easy of access, and small steamers (_vaporetti_) call at frequent piers the whole length of the chief waterway. Travelling by gondola, therefore, is to be regarded as a luxury rather than a necessity. The gondola bears the same relation to Venetian life as does the cab or carriage to the dweller in an ordinary town. The average tide is about twenty inches: on exceptional occasions, the difference between high and low tides has been six feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: La Piazzetta]

The Piazza of S. Marco offers to the traveller a scene of unparalleled interest. Eastwards it is adorned by the most wonderful group of Byzantine and Gothic architecture in Europe. To the N. is the rhythmic symmetry of Pietro Lombardo's Procuratie Vecchie, ending with the Clock Tower[80]; to the S. are the Procuratie Nuove, Scamozzi's tasteless elaboration of Sansovino's lovely design for the Libreria Vecchia on the Piazzetta. Westward is the baser structure of Napoleonic times. Opposite the Porta della Carta of the Ducal Palace stood for a thousand years the old Campanile, like a giant sentinel set towards the lagoons to watch over the city. On the morning of July 14th, 1902, to the stupefaction of the Venetians, the huge tower, which in its ma.s.sive strength seemed to defy the tooth of time, gently collapsed, as though weary of its millennial watch, crushing in its fall Sansovino's beautiful Loggetta and the N. side of the Libreria Vecchia, but miraculously doing no further hurt. When the Venetians recovered from the shock and learned how mercifully exempt from toll of human life the disaster had been, and that St Mark's and the Ducal Palace were unscathed, they remembered their protector and said: _e stato galant'uomo S. Marco_ (St Mark has been a good fellow). Ten months later, when the King and Queen of Italy, during their visit to Venice, turned to look at the site of the old tower, a lament was heard in the crowd of people: _I varda dove gera el nostro pavaro morto_ (They are going where our poor dead one lies). The foundations laid a thousand years before, were found to be as sound as ever, and a new Campanile has now been raised to replace, though it cannot restore, the old one, which, with all its dramatic history and romantic a.s.sociations, has disappeared for ever.

It is not by accident that the chief buildings of Venice stand where they do, for this part of the Rialtine islands, called _il Morso_, offered a soil harder[81] and more tenacious than any other. In early ages the Piazza was a gra.s.s-grown field, called the Broglio or Garden, scarce a third of its present area, and a large elder tree flourished on the site of the Campanile. It was bounded on the W. by a rio which ran from N. to S. a few yards beyond the Campanile and discharged into the Grand Ca.n.a.l to the W. of the present Zecca (mint). On the W. bank of the rio, facing the basilica of St Mark, stood the old church of S.

Giminiano. In 1176 Doge Ziani filled up the rio, razed the fortifications and extended and paved the Piazza, to its present boundary westward. The church of S. Giminiano was rebuilt at the W. end.

It was again rebuilt by Sansovino in 1556 and finally demolished by Napoleon I. to extend the Royal Palace. Houses on the S. ab.u.t.ted on the Campanile. The Piazza was enclosed by stately mansions with columns and arcades on the first floor, "where one walked round as in a theatre."[82] When Scamozzi built the Procuratie Nuove in 1584, the houses on the S. were demolished and the Piazza set back to its present line. If we would restore its aspect in the fulness of Venetian prosperity, we must imagine a scene brilliant with colour. The archivolts, capitals, friezes and sculptures generally of St Mark's and the Ducal Palace were richly decorated with gold and vermilion and blue.

The Porta della Carta glowed so with gold that it was known as the _Porta dorata_ (the gilded portal). The bronze horses were gilded; so was St Mark's Lion and St Theodore in the Piazzetta. From Leopardi's beautiful bronze sockets three tall masts upheld the standards symbolising dominion over Greece, Cyprus and Crete.

A throng of merchants and strangers from all the corners of the earth, an ever-changing pageant of quaint and gorgeous costumes, pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed. So many strange tongues would you hear, says an old writer,[83] that the Piazza might not inaptly be called the _forum orbis non urbis_--not the market-place of a city but of the world. Strange tongues are still heard in the Piazza, but of those who come for the pleasure, not for the business of the world: the heart of commerce no longer beats at Venice. The Piazza is, however, a scene of much animation on public holidays when the band is playing. We will sit outside Florian's coffee-house, as a good Venetian should, and observe the women of the people pa.s.sing, with their graceful carriage and simple costume, their wealth of hair so charmingly treated; the gondolier, lithe of body and superb in gait; the _signore_ and _signorine_ with their more modern finery; the fashionable youth, dressed, as he fondly imagines, _all' inglese_; rich and poor, _borghese_ and _popolano_, bearing themselves with that ease of manner, vivacity of spirit and social equality so characteristic of the Venetians. In the height of summer, when the rich merchants of Milan and other cities of North Italy with their women folk come to Venice for the Italian season, the Piazza after dinner and far into the night becomes one vast open-air salon, crowded with visitors in the most _chic_ of costumes, many of the ladies promenading in evening dress. As one sits in the Piazza at setting sun, the atmosphere, exquisitely delicate and clear, changes from pale blue to amethyst, pink, turquoise, dark blue and indigo; and the night is lovelier than the day.

SECTION II

_The Basilica of St Mark_

Few things in the history of art are more remarkable than the revulsion of taste that has taken place with regard to the architecture of Venice.

In the early part of the nineteenth century, before Ruskin wrote "The Stones of Venice," an English architect,[84] giving expression to the professional judgment of the age, speaks of "the lumpy form of the Cathedral which surprises you by the extreme ugliness of its exterior; of the lower part built in the degraded Roman we call Norman; of the gouty columns and ill-made capitals, all in bad taste." "The Ducal Palace is even more ugly than anything previously mentioned," vastly inferior to Palladio's churches of S. Giorgio and the Redentore.

Disraeli echoes in "Contarini Fleming" the conventional lay praise of Palladio, and writes of the "barbarous although picturesque buildings called the Ducal Palace." Even to-day the stranger fresh from the North with memories of the ma.s.sive towers and lofty spires of his own architecture will hardly escape a sense of disappointment as he stands before St Mark's. The fabric will seem to lack majesty and to be even less imposing than the Ducal Palace. It must, however, be remembered that the raising of the level of the Piazza has somewhat detracted from the elevation of both the basilica and the Palace. Fynes Moryson notes in his Itinerary (1617) that "there were stairs of old to mount out of the market-place into the church till the waters of the channel increasing they were forced to raise the height of the market-place."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GONDOLIER.]

Whether there were any such intention in the minds of the builders is doubtful, but in all communities where the sense of munic.i.p.al liberty or of secular independence is strong, the dominant civic power is actualised in architecture. In Flemish towns the Hotel de Ville and not the cathedral is often the more important structure; even so in Venice the subordinate position of the church is marked by the accessory character of the ecclesiastical building, which in its origin indeed was but the official chapel of the Doge, and only became the Cathedral in 1807, when Napoleon transferred the patriarchate from S. Pietro in Castello--itself a poor thing architecturally--to St Mark's.

Joseph Woods gave a shrewd criticism of Venetian architecture when he characterised it as showing riches and power rather than just proportions. St Mark's was erected by a merchant folk, with all the merchant's love of display of wealth. Their taste was for costly material rather than for n.o.bility and grandeur of design. For centuries the East was ransacked for precious stones to adorn the sanctuary of their patron saint, and the captain of every ship that traded in the Levant was ordered to bring home marbles or fine stones for the builders. St Mark's is a jewelled casket wrought to preserve the Palladium of the Venetian people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. MARCO--MAIN PORTAL]

The fabric dates from the early eleventh to the late fourteenth centuries. Its core is of brick, of which most Venetian churches are built, and it is veneered with marble[85] and decorated with mosaic and sculpture. When the eye turns from the whole to examine details, the facade is seen to be composed of two tiers of arches--the lower of seven, the upper of five spans. Of the seven, two form the N. and S.

porticos; five the western doors, whose recesses are enriched with rows of columns wanting in unity of design, but of exceeding richness and variety of material. They are mainly the spoils of Eastern churches, and, if closely scrutinised, will be found to be incised with Eastern crosses and curious inscriptions in Greek and oriental characters. The capitals flanking the main portal, with carving of leaves blown by the wind, are probably from the East, their prototype being at the Church of St Sophia in Thessalonica, built in the later years of Justinian's reign. The main portal is spanned by an inner triple archivolt and an outer main one. The under side of the inner arc of the former, over the relief of St Mark and the Angel, is wrought with sculptures, whose subjects are symbolical, and will be met with again and again in early Venetian decoration: a naked man and woman seated on dragons; a child in the open jaws of a lion; an eagle pecking at a lamb; a lion devouring a stag; camels and other animals, wild and tame, in various groups. On the outer face are similar carvings of boys fighting and robbing birds'

nests; men shooting birds with bows and arrows, and hunting wild beasts.

The work is exceedingly quaint, and affords a fruitful theme for interpretation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. MARCO--DETAIL OF ARCHIVOLT]

The sculptures on the under side of the outer arc symbolise the months of the year, with their appropriate celestial signs. May, a seated figure holding a rose and crowned with flowers by two maidens, is most beautiful and original in treatment.

On the outer face of the archivolt are represented the Beat.i.tudes and the Virtues, eight on either side of the keystone, which symbolises Constancy.

On the under surface of the main archivolt are fourteen most beautiful carvings, representing the chief guilds and crafts of Venice. To the L.,[86] at the bottom, is a seated figure with finger on lip, said by Ruskin to represent the rest of old age; by tradition it is the portrait of the architect of the building, of whom the following story is told.

When Doge Pietro Orseolo determined to restore the church after the fire of 976, a queer, unknown man, lame in both legs, offered to make St Mark's the most beautiful structure ever erected, if, on completion, his statue were placed in a conspicuous part of the building. His terms were accepted, but after the work had progressed some time, the stranger incautiously let fall a remark to the effect that the church would have been much more magnificent if certain difficulties had not intervened.

Word was sent to the Doge, and the statue was set in its present obscure position.

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. MARCO--DETAIL OF MAIN DOOR]

On either side of the main portal are two doorways, spanned by richly decorated Byzantine arches; that to the L., has the figure of Christ in the keystone and two prophets with scrolls in the spandrils; that to the R. has the keystone defaced; in the spandrils to the R. and L. are the archangels Michael and Gabriel. The lateral doorway to the L. has in the lunette a winged figure on horseback and symbols of the Evangelists; on the lintel are some fine Gothic reliefs. The pierced screen-work in the lunette windows should be noted, for in olden times the whole of the window s.p.a.ces in the domes were thus treated. The corresponding doorway to the R. has in the spandrils, carvings of two archangels, and on the keystone the Virgin and Child.

The beautiful lily capitals are at either end of the facade, and support the arches that span the N. and S. porticos.

The late fifteenth-century Gothic additions consist of pinnacles and gables of no structural value. They are seen in Gentile Bellini's picture,[87] dated 1496, of the Procession in St Mark's Square, but are absent in the extant thirteenth-century mosaic on the facade.

The mosaics in the lunettes of the five doorways are, with one exception, poor in craftsmanship, but interesting in their storiation.

That of the central portal is a feeble representation of the Last Judgment. Salandri, who executed it in 1836-38, had already been mulcted for bad workmanship. The remaining four tell of the discovery and translation of the body of St Mark. In the fifth porch, to the N., the body of the saint being carried into St Mark's, though largely renewed, is a precious relic of the beautiful thirteenth-century mosaics that covered the front in Gentile Bellini's time, as may be seen from the picture already referred to. The four mosaics in the lunettes on either side of the great window above, represent the Deposition from the Cross, the Descent into Hades, the Resurrection, the Ascension--all seventeenth-century work. Beneath the great window stand the four bronze horses, part of the spoils sent from Constantinople by Enrico Dandolo in 1204. They are said to be Greek work of the fourth century B.C., and to have been sent from Rome to the new capital of the Empire by Constantine. They remained in their present position until 1797, when the "gran ladrone," Napoleon I., sent them to Paris to adorn the Arc du Carrousel. In 1815 they were restored to Venice by Francis I. of Austria, as the Latin inscription under the archivolt beneath tells. A magnificent festa was organised when they were raised to their old position in the presence of the Austrian. The Piazza was bright with gorgeous decorations; a superb loggia erected for the Imperial family; an amphitheatre for the Venetian n.o.bility. Nothing was wanting--but an audience. The amphitheatre was empty; a few loungers idled about the square. Cannons were fired; the bells rang a double peal; the music played; the horses were drawn up--but not a cheer followed them. The Emperor and his suite had the show to themselves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: N.E.

BYZANTINE RELIEF, NORTH SIDE, S. MARCO]

In the lunette of the N. portal, which gives on the Piazzetta dei Leoni, with its two double cusped inner arches, is an early relief of the Nativity, a work of great beauty, framed by the vine decoration so beloved of the early sculptors. Among the many Byzantine reliefs with which this facade is jewelled the most perfect is that of the Twelve Apostles, symbolised as sheep, with the Lamb enthroned in the centre and palm trees on either side. This exquisite carving will be found in the last recess R. of the doorway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BYZANTINE RELIEF FROM SOUTH SIDE, S. MARCO]

The S. facade, looking as it does towards the Molo, would in olden times arrest the eye of the traveller as he entered the city. It is most lavishly decorated. The reliefs and marble facings towards the Porta della Carta are some of the finest that remain of the ancient basilica.