THE BIRTH OF VENETIAN ART
Venice ... rose from a lowly and troublous origin to heights of dazzling grandeur. When the barbarians of the North began their incursions and devastations into Italy in the fifth century, the inhabitants of that part of the Peninsula which was called Venetia fled from the peril to the islands rising in the lagoons of the Adriatic, where they found peace, safety, and liberty.... The inhospitable nature of their new home provided the refugees with but two elements only—and those the most indeterminate and universal—sky and sea. All the rest, all that we see to-day, has been artificially formed by the hand of man, who excluded vegetation, animals, every semblance of living things, and created for himself a world of stone, a landscape of architecture, and perspective. He has willed that this shall of itself be beautiful, not from any assistance from Nature, but by force of art and riches; not a collection of monuments, but one single monument in itself, and that so sublime and lasting as to admit of no comparison. The marvel which here strikes the spectator has no other example, for Venice is altogether the work of human art. An art, too, which is both poetry and history, and when we think of the history of those Venetians who became lords of a mighty commerce and conquerors of provinces, we see, as by an invincible law spreading out before our imagination, the marble mansions around the Piazza and along the Grand Canal; we see through the streets of the city a people proud of the wisdom of their statesmen and of the creations of their painters; we think of the golden Basilica, of the Palace of the Doges; we evoke the shapes of Titian, of Paolo Veronese, of Tintoretto.... The art of painting arose in Italy in the Trecento. This art, of slower growth than either architecture or sculpture in Venice, only flourished there well on in the fifteenth century. It must not, however, be concluded from this that painting was unknown in the early days of Venetian life, for leaving aside the question as to whether the first mosaicists were Byzantines or Venetians, it is certain that the art of colours was displayed with admirable feeling in the mosaics of St. Mark’s. In the Basilica, which lifts itself to heaven like a sublime hymn and blends in divine fulness Greek harmony with Eastern splendour, may be found the school of Venetian painters, the source of their inspiration, the golden book wherein is entered the pedigree of Venetian art. The colours sparkle, flash, and throw lightning gleams on to that building bright with matchless beauty. Mind and eye are alike filled with amazement and admiration at the sight of the many-hued marbles, the mosaics, and the gold flung round in regal profusion. Thus, in this atmosphere of light, like a serene flower, Venetian painting arose, warm and vivid in colour even when cold and lifeless in expression.
POMPEO MOLMENTI.
Translated by Alethea Wiel.
A VENETIAN PASTORAL
BY GIORGIONE[4]
Water, for anguish of the solstice,—yea,
Over the vessel’s mouth still widening,
Listlessly dipt to let the water in
With slow, vague gurgle. Blue, and deep away,
The heat lies silent at the brink of day.
Now the hand trails upon the viol-string
That sobs; and the brown faces cease to sing,
Mournful with complete pleasure. Her eyes stray
In distance; through her lips the pipe doth creep
And leaves them pouting; the green shadowed grass
Is cool against her naked flesh. Let be:
Do not now speak unto her lest she weep,
Nor name this ever. Be it as it was:
Silence of heat, and solemn poetry.
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
[4] In the Louvre.
GIORGIONE’S HOME
Born half-way between the mountains and the sea—that young George of Castelfranco—of the Brave Castle: Stout George they called him, George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was—Giorgione.
Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on—fair, searching eyes of youth? What a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots to the shore—of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble city—and became himself as a fiery heart to it?
A city of marble, did I say? Nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,—the men of Venice moved in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights; the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under their blood-red mantle folds. Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable—every word a fate—sat her senate. In hope and honour, lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each with his name written and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead. A wonderful piece of world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at evening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but for its power, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened through ether. A world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. No foulness, nor tumult, in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrilling silence. No weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, nor straw-built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and the finished setting of stones most precious. And around them, far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle could grow in the glancing fields. Ethereal strength of Alps, dream-like, vanishing in high procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduan hills, poised in the golden west. Above, free winds and fiery clouds ranging at their will—brightness out of the north, and balm from the south, and the stars of the evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched heaven and circling sea....
I do not find in Giorgione’s work any of the early Venetian monachist element. He seems to me to have belonged more to an abstract contemplative school. I may be wrong in this; it is no matter; suppose it were so, and that he came down to Venice somewhat recusant, or insentient, concerning the usual priestly doctrines of his day, how would the Venetian religion, from an outer intellectual standing-point, have looked to him?
He would have seen it to be a religion indisputably powerful in human affairs; often very harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows’ houses, and consuming the strongest and fairest from among the young; freezing into merciless bigotry the pokey of the old: also, on the other hand, animating national courage, and raising souls, otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the whole, always a real and great power; served with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; putting forth its claims, if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, not waiving any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in large measure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed: a goodly system, moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, harmonious, mysterious—a thing which had either to be obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned. A religion towering over all the city—many buttressed—luminous in marble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety shines over the sea; many-voiced also, giving, over all the eastern seas, to the sentinel his watchword, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips of all who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death.
JOHN RUSKIN.