The charm of Venice

by Unknown

VENICE

If you would see Venice as she is,

Wander by night in silence and alone

Among her towers and sculptured palaces

And read the story she has writ in stone;

Then, as you read, she will upon you cast

The fascination of her wondrous past.

Muse on, and let the silent gondolier

Wind at his will ’mid tortuous, twisting ways

And broad lagoons, with waters wide and clear,

On whose unruffled breast the moonbeam plays;

And move not, speak not, for the mystery

Of Venice is with you on the sea.

Pass, if you will, beneath the five great domes

Of old Saint Mark’s; watch how the glittering height

Soars in quick curves; see how each sunbeam roams

And fills the nave with soft pure amber light;

This is the heart of Venice, and the tomb

Which folds her story in its sacred gloom.

So leave her sunlight, enter now her cells,

By frowning black-browed ports and massy bars,

Where pestilence in foul dank vapour dwells,

Far, far from sun and day, from moon and stars

The only sound when whispering waters glide

In on the bosom of a sluggish tide.

Then turn again into her solitudes,—

Things of to-day will faint and fade like smoke;—

Drift through the darkened nooks where silence broods,

Let memory fall upon you like a cloak:

Venice will rise around you as of old.

Decked out in marble, amethyst, and gold.

But that was years ago; to-day the notes

Of wild free song have left her silver streets;

Her blazoned banner now no longer floats

In aureate folds, no more the sunrise greets;

She lives but in a past so strong and brave

It serves alike for monument and grave.

ALAN SULLIVAN.

GEORGE ELIOT’S IMPRESSION OF VENICE

From Padua to Venice! It was about ten o’clock on a moonlight night—the 4th of June—that we found ourselves apparently on a railway in the midst of the sea: we were on the bridge across the lagoon. Soon we were in a gondola on the Grand Canal, looking out at the moonlit buildings and water. What stillness! What beauty! Looking out from the high window of our hotel on the Grand Canal, I felt that it was a pity to go to bed. Venice was more beautiful than romances had feigned.

And that was the impression that remained, and even deepened, during our stay of eight days. That quiet which seems the deeper because one hears the delicious dip of the oar (when not disturbed by clamorous church bells), leaves the eye in full liberty and strength to take in the exhaustless loveliness of colour and form.

We were in our gondola by nine o’clock the next morning, and of course the first point we sought was the Piazza di San Marco. I am glad to find Ruskin calling the Palace of the Doges one of the two most perfect buildings in the world.... This spot is a focus of architectural wonders: but the palace is the crown of them all. The double tier of columns and arches, with the rich sombreness of their finely outlined shadows, contrast satisfactorily with the warmth and light and more continuous surface of the upper part. Even landing on the Piazzetta, one has a sense, not only of being in an entirely novel scene, but one where the ideas of a foreign race have poured themselves in without yet mingling indistinguishably with the pre-existent Italian life. But this is felt yet more strongly when one has passed along the Piazzetta and arrived in front of San Marco, with its low arches and domes and minarets. But perhaps the most striking point to take one’s stand on is just in front of the white marble guard-house flanking the great tower—the guard-house with Sansovino’s iron gates before it. On the left is San Marco, with the two square pillars from St. Jean d’Acre, standing as isolated trophies; on the right the Piazzetta extends between the Doge’s palace and the Palazzo Reale to the tall columns from Constantinople; and in front is the elaborate gateway leading to the white marble Scala dei Giganti, in the courtyard of the Doge’s palace. Passing through this gateway and up the staircase, we entered the gallery which surrounds the court on three sides, and looked down at the fine sculptured vase-like wells below. Then into the great Sala, surrounded with the portraits of the Doges: the largest oil-painting here—or perhaps anywhere else—is the ‘Gloria del Paradiso’ by Tintoretto, now dark and unlovely. But on the ceiling is a great Paul Veronese—the ‘Apotheosis of Venice’—which looks as fresh as if it were painted yesterday, and is a miracle of colour and composition—a picture full of glory and joy of an earthly, fleshly kind, but without any touch of coarseness or vulgarity. Below the radiant Venice on her clouds is a balcony filled with upward-looking spectators; and below this gallery is a group of human figures with horses. Next to this Apotheosis, I admire another Coronation of Venice on the ceiling of another Sala, where Venice is sitting enthroned above the globe with her lovely face in half-shadow—a creature born with an imperial attitude. There are other Tintorettos, Veroneses, and Palmas in the great halls of this palace; but they left me quite indifferent, and have become vague in my memory. From the splendours of the palace we crossed the Bridge of Sighs to the prisons, and saw the horrible dark damp cells that would make the saddest life in the free light and air seem bright and desirable.

The interior of St. Mark’s is full of interest, but not of beauty: it is dark and heavy, and ill-suited to the Catholic worship, for the massive piers that obstruct the view everywhere shut out the sight of ceremony and procession, as we witnessed at our leisure on the day of the great procession of Corpus Christi. But everywhere there are relics of gone-by art to be studied, from mosaics of the Greeks to mosaics of later artists than the Zuccati; old marble statues, embrowned like a meerschaum pipe; amazing sculptures in wood; Sansovino doors, ambitious to rival Ghiberti’s; transparent alabaster columns; an ancient Madonna, hung with jewels, transported from St. Sophia, in Constantinople; and everywhere the venerable pavement, once beautiful with its starry patterns in rich marble, now deadened and sunk to unevenness like the mud floor of a cabin.

Then outside, on the archway of the principal door, there are sculptures of a variety that makes one renounce the study of them in despair at the shortness of one’s time—blended fruits and foliage, and human groups and animal forms of all kinds. On our first morning we ascended the great tower, and looked around on the island-city and the distant mountains and the distant Adriatic. And on the same day we went to see the Pisani Palace—one of the grand old palaces that are going to decay.... After this we saw the Church of San Sebastiano, where Paul Veronese is buried, with his own paintings around, mingling their colour with the light that falls on his tombstone. There is one remarkably fine painting of his here: it represents, I think, some Saints going to martyrdom, but apart from that explanation, is a composition full of vigorous, spirited figures....

Santa Maria della Salute, built as an ex voto by the Republic on the cessation of the plague, is one of the most conspicuous churches in Venice, lifting its white cupolas close on the Grand Canal, where it widens out towards the Giudecca. Here there are various Tintorettos, but the only one which is not blackened so as to be unintelligible is the Cena, which is represented as a bustling supper-party, with attendants and sideboard accessories, in thoroughly Dutch fashion!... But of all Tintoretto’s paintings, the best preserved, and perhaps the most complete in execution, is the Miracle of St. Mark at the Accademia. We saw it the oftener because we were attracted to the Accademia again and again by Titian’s Assumption, which we placed next to Peter the Martyr among the pictures at Venice. For a thoroughly rapt expression I never saw anything equal to the Virgin in this picture; and the expression is the more remarkable because it is not assisted by the usual devices to express spiritual ecstasy, such as delicacy of feature and temperament or pale meagreness. Then what cherubs and angelic heads bathed in light! The lower part of the picture has no interest; the attitudes are theatrical; and the Almighty above is as unbeseeming as painted Almighties usually are: but the middle group falls short only of the Sistine Madonna.

Among the Venetian painters Giovanni Bellini shines with a mild, serious light that gives one an affectionate respect towards him. In the Church of the Scalzi there is an exquisite Madonna by him—probably his chef-d’œuvre—comparable to Raphael’s for sweetness.

And Palma Vecchio, too, must be held in grateful reverence for his Santa Barbara, standing in calm, grand beauty above an altar in the Church of Santa Maria Formosa. It is an almost unique presentation of a hero-woman, standing in calm preparation for martyrdom, without the slightest air of pietism, yet with the expression of a mind filled with serious conviction.

We made the journey to Chioggia.... Of all dreamy delights, that of floating in a gondola along the canals and out on the lagoon is surely the greatest. We were out one night on the lagoon when the sun was setting, and the wide waters were flushed with the reddened light. I should have liked it to last for hours: it is the sort of scene in which I could most readily forget my own existence, and feel melted into the general life.

Another charm of evening time was to walk up and down the Piazza of San Marco as the stars were brightening and look at the grand dim buildings, and the flock of pigeons flitting about them; or to walk on to the Bridge of La Paglia and look along the dark canal that runs under the Bridge of Sighs—its blackness lit up by a gaslight here and there, and the plash of the oar of blackest gondola slowly advancing....

Farewell, lovely Venice! and away to Verona, across the green plains of Lombardy, which can hardly look tempting to an eye still filled with the dreamy beauty it has left behind.

GEORGE ELIOT’S LIFE AS RELATED IN HER
LETTERS AND JOURNALS.

BEFORE ‘A SURVEY OF THE CITY OF VENICE’

THAT EXQUISITE LARGE PEECE

Could any state on earth immortal be,

Venice by her rare Government is she....

Though, Syren-like, on shore and sea, her face

Enchants all those whom once she doth embrace.

Nor is there any can her beauty prize

But he who hath beheld her with his eyes....

Venus and Venice are, Great Queens in their degree;

Venus is Queen of love, Venice of policy.

JAMES HOWELL.

VENICE: THE GEM OF THE WORLD

AN EPITOME

Having now so amply declared unto you most of the principall things of this thrise-renowned and illustrious citie, I will briefly by way of epitome mention most of the other particulars thereof, and so finally shut up this narration: There are reported to be in Venice and the circumjacent islands two hundred Churches in which are one hundred forty three paire organs, fifty foure Monasteries, twenty sixe Nunneries, fifty sixe Tribunals or places of judgment, seventeene Hospitals, sixe Companies or Fraternities; one hundred sixty five marble statues of worthy personages, partly equestriall, partly pedestriall, which are erected in sundry places of the citie, to the honour of those that eyther at home have prudently administered the Commonweale, or abroad valiantly fought for the same. Likewise of brass there are twenty three, whereof one is that of Bartholomew Coleon. Also there are twentie seven publique clocks, ten brasen gates, a hundred and fourteene Towers for bels to hang in, ten brasen horses, one hundred fifty wels for the common use of the citizens, one hundred eighty five delectable gardens, ten thousand Gondolaes, foure hundred and fifty bridges partly stony, partly timber, one hundred and twenty Palaces, whereof one hundred are very worthy of that name, one hundred seventy foure courts: and the totall number of soules living in the citie and about the same is thought to be about five hundred thousand, something more or lesse. For sometimes there is a catalogue made of all the persons in the citie of what sexe or age soever they be; as we may reade there was heretofore in Rome in the time of Augustus Cæsar: and at the last view there were found in the whole city as many as I have before spoken.

Thus have I related unto thee as many notable matters of this noble citie, as either I could see with mine eyes, or heare from the report of credible and worthy persons, or derive from the monuments of learned and authenticke writers that I have found in the citie.... And so at length I finish the treatise of this incomparable city, this most beautifull Queene, this untainted virgine, the Paradise, the Tempe, this rich Diademe and most flourishing garland of Christendome: of which the inhabitants may as proudly vaunt, as I have reade the Persians have done of their Ormus, who say that if the world were a ring, then should Ormus be the gemme thereof: the same (I say) may the Venetians speake of their citie, and much more truely. The sight whereof hath yeelded unto me such infinite and unspeakable contentment (I must needes confesse) that even as Albertus Marquesse of Guasto said, were he put to his choice to be Lord of foure of the fairest cities of Italy, or the Arsenall of Venice, he would prefer the Arsenall: In like manner I say, that had there bin an offer made unto me before I took my journey to Venice, eyther that foure of the richest mannors of Somerset-shire (wherein I was borne) should be gratis bestowed upon me if I never saw Venice, or neither of them if I should see it; although certainly those mannors would do me much more good in respect of a state of livelyhood to live in the world, then the sight of Venice: yet notwithstanding, I will ever say while I live, that the sight of Venice and her resplendent beauty, antiquities, and monuments, hath by many degrees more contented my mind, and satisfied my desires, then those foure Lordshippes could possibly have done.

Thus much of the glorious citie of Venice.

THOMAS CORYAT (1611).