Venice

by Clara Erskine Clement Waters

"The picture is like a book, more absolutely true than any chronicle, representing not only the looks and customs of the occasion, but the very scene. How eagerly the people must have traced it out when it first was made public, finding out in every group some known faces, some image all the more interesting because it was met in the flesh every day! Is that perhaps Zuan Bellini himself, with his hair standing out round his face, talking to his companions about the passing procession, pointing out the curious effects of light and shade upon the crimson capes and berettas, and watching while the line defiles with its glimmer of candles and sound of psalms against the majestic shadow of the houses?"

The fragment of the True Cross which performs, in this first painting, the miracle of a great cure, was presented to the Brotherhood of the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista by the Grand Chancellor of Cyprus, who had in turn received it from the Patriarch of Constantinople. This relic had performed so many wonders that the Confraternity felt the importance of recording them, so to speak, on these enormous canvases, that all the world might see and believe.

A second picture commemorates an occasion when the sacred relic was carried in procession to the Church of San Lorenzo, and when on the bridge near the church it was dropped into the canal. Many persons among the profane crowd which followed the procession leaped into the water, and are seen in the picture swimming about in search of the relic. Some boats also have come near for the same purpose; but not until Andrea Vendramini, the chief warden of the Scuola, descended into the canal in his full habit, could the precious object be found. For him it floated upright, because, as the tradition teaches, of his being granted this great privilege by miraculous favor.

This scene is even more characteristic of Venetian life than the first. The houses near the bridge are ornamented with draperies; and heads of women in coifs and hoods are seen in the windows. The bridge is crowded densely by the procession arrested to watch the search for the relic, and the light is thrown on the faces of the priests and monks who chiefly compose it. All along the Fondamenta is a concourse of richly dressed ladies in magnificent costumes and gorgeous jewels, whose shoulders and faces are increased in beauty by the thin veils that soften but do not conceal their features or their rich necklaces and coronets. They kneel closely together, and no doubt will follow the procession when it moves. They are not young, but in the height of womanly dignity and grace; and it is said that she who wears a crown is Caterina Cornaro, who has come from Asolo to see this ceremony at San Lorenzo. In one of the boats stands the priest of San Lorenzo, his hands clasped in prayer; and Ridolli declares that Gentile introduced his own portrait in the crowd at the side of the canal. Charles Blanc places great value on this picture on account of its accurate representation of the costumes and manners of the time, the ceremonials, buildings, bridges, and quays of Venice; but as a work of art he finds it inferior to the "Procession in the Piazza of St. Mark."

We have not space to speak with any justice of that marvellous series of nine pictures by Carpaccio, which tell the story of Saint Ursula with such power as to strike all beholders with astonishment. We can mention but one work by this master,—a work in the same vein as the two by Gentile Bellini of which we have spoken. It is called the "Patriarch of Grado;" and the bridge of the Rialto, then built of wood, is seen, as well as the gondolas, which were open, decked with garlands, and painted in colors, as if ready for a fête.

I can scarcely equal Mr. Ruskin in enthusiasm for Carpaccio; but it is certain that this man, whose origin is unknown and the date of whose death cannot be given, whose whole history, in fact, is enveloped in impenetrable shadows, was a great poetic artist; and Blanc well says: "His works are not precious to Venetians only; they have an infinite charm for all the world, because they reveal the imagination of an artist. In them one admires the ingenuousness of a precursor, and feels the soul of a poet; and nothing is more true than the saying of Zanetti, 'Carpaccio bears the truth in his heart.'"

The "Assumption" and "The Presentation of the Virgin" by Titian are among the invaluable treasures of the Accademia. As we gaze on the magnificent Assumption, we can but wonder, and even feel indignant, at the dense stupidity of those monks of the Frari for whom it was painted. They were like buzzing, stinging gnats about him while the work was going on, and only accepted it at last because a minister of Charles V. offered a goodly sum for it, and wished to take it away from Venice. Its only worth in their eyes depended on the fact that others wished to have it.

It is really in three parts. At the top is the Eternal Father, in resplendent glory, with arms open to receive the Holy Virgin, who ascends to him surrounded by an aureole of cherubim. Below the grand, colossal figures of the Apostles are grouped. The Virgin is modest, and yet triumphant. She has no mystic expression, but is of the same healthy, vigorous race which Titian saw all about him. She might be a sister or daughter of one of the bronzed apostles below. Her double mantle of red and blue, in its many folds, does not disguise the athletic grace of her superb form, in which there is neither languor nor effeminacy.

In this picture, in which the climax of Venetian painting was reached,—which is by its position and arrangement in the Academy the acknowledged Queen of Pictures,—a wonderful power of invention is displayed, and a boldness of execution is shown which Titian had not before employed, and which was much criticised at the time of its completion; but it has endured the chances and changes of almost four centuries only to be placed in the first rank of existing paintings.

In the "Presentation of the Virgin" we have a truly Venetian treatment of a subject which has been made of small effect in the hands of other masters. The nice little girl, with her plump face and blue gown, can have no possible conception of the meaning of her pale aureole. She is childishly innocent of what is to be done, and, in fact, has simply been used by Titian as an excuse for bringing together fifty people, an obelisk, a portico, the façade of a temple, a long flight of gray stone steps; and not content with these, he has added hillsides, mountains, and trees, with banks of clouds above all.