Amid these artistical and historical curiosities, we are pointed to an inlaid red and white place in the pavement, at the principal entrance, marking the spot where Pope Alexander III. and Frederick Barbarossa, the bold, red-bearded emperor of Germany, who did so much to raise the secular power of his kingdom in opposition to arrogated papal supremacy, met and were reconciled. In other words, here is where, in 1177, Frederick rather "knocked under" to the pope.
Passing in at the portal, the spectator is amazed at the vast mass of elegant columns of marble, porphyry, verd antique, agate, and other elegant stone, superb mosaics, gilding and ornament in profusion that meet his view on every side. This church was, in fact, a sort of treasure-house to the Venetians. Every ship that went out from the republic when it was building was enjoined to bring back material for it; the doges lavished their wealth upon it, and great artists left their work upon its walls, while the wealth which rich sinners paid in, in offerings, in the hope of purchasing with money immunity from divine wrath for their cruelties and crime, was expended on it with unsparing hand.
It is like many other old cathedrals in other countries—a monument of the nation of the past, and not of the present. So St. Mark's is a symbol of old Venice as it was, and of which we read in history and romance; and as we stand upon its pavement, uneven in marble billows, we look for solemn, long-bearded doges, priests in their vestments, with swinging censers, moving amid the pillars; or a group of crusaders around the octagon pulpit, with a Maltese cross in its panel, instead of a few modern dressed tourists in the midst of its dim-lighted splendor.
The church is built in the form of a Greek cross, with a great dome over the centre, and also one over each arm of the cross. The walls and columns of the interior are of marbles of the richest and most elegant description; there are said to be five hundred of the columns, and the various portions of the interior, with its different style of architecture, Grecian, Gothic, and Saracenic, would take a volume to describe. In fact the visitor hardly knows where to begin first to examine this incongruous mass of architectural defects, historic interests, splendor, and collection of rare works of art badly displayed. The interior of this wonderful old church can no more be described in a tourist's sketch, than it can be seen in a single visit.
There is the very porphyry basin which holds the holy water set on a pedestal that was once a Greek altar, upon which the Achaians sacrificed to their gods. There is the superb marble colonnade separating the nave from the choir, supported by columns of black and white porphyry, and upholding fourteen elegant marble statues, seven on each side, with a huge cross bearing the figure of the Saviour, in solid silver, in the centre. There is a magnificent high altar; with its four richly-wrought columns, elegant bronze statues, its costly mosaics, its pictures in gems and enamel of scenes in the life of St. Mark, its rich bass-relief and gorgeous canopy. The canopy of another altar is supported by four fluted spiral pillars brought from the Temple of Jerusalem, two of them of translucent alabaster. The sacristy, with its roof covered with rich mosaics; the curious tessellated floor, and the wonderfully decorated roof above; the different chapels and altars, each one of which is a specimen of the art of a different time, are seen here.
There were the splendid tomb of Cardinal Zeno, built in 1515; bronze doors made in Venice in the year 1100; the marble columns taken from Constantinople in 1205; the bronze statue of St. John, by Segala in 1565; the altar table made from a slab of stone brought from Tyre in 1126; monument of the last doge buried in St. Mark in 1354; the figure of Christ, in silver, 1594; Greek, Byzantine, and Gothic specimens of art. The church is a study of marbles, pillars, and colonnades; every part of it seems to have a history, and the eye becomes wearied with an endless succession of different objects, and the mind confused in endeavoring to grasp and retain distinct impressions of various portions, which it only preserves, at last, as one general picture.
In Venice the tourist cannot but be struck, as elsewhere in Italy, with the splendor of the churches, the wealth of gold, silver, and bullion locked up idle, dormant, and useless, contrasted with the abundance of the beggars that in grisly crowds beset the very doors of these splendid temples. Cathedrals, whose wealth would build a hundred such religious edifices as we erect in America, and which contribute nothing to the expense of the state, maintain little more than a corporal's guard of bedizened priests, while hundreds of gaunt, famine-stricken wretches are perishing at their very threshold for the necessaries of life. It seemed wicked to look upon great solid silver busts of forgotten archbishops, gem-crusted crosiers and mitres that make their public appearance but once in a year in a church ceremonial; altars with borders of solid gold and flashing jewels, hidden from public view, and unveiled only on the occasion of church festivals, or for the tourist's shilling, while the poor, ignorant followers of the church vainly plead in misery at its portals.
The wealth that has been lavished here on the churches seems to have been poured out with as free a hand as if the coffers of the church were exhaustless. In the Chiesa de Gesuiti, or Church of the Jesuits, the luxurious magnificence of the interior is almost indescribable. The walls of this edifice are completely sheathed in carved marble, polished to the highest degree, and inlaid with other colored marbles in flowers and running vines. Up, around, and near the pulpit are heavy, massive, and rich hangings, apparently of white and blue brocatelle, graceful, rich, and luxurious; but you find it to be solid inlaid marble, fashioned by the cunning of the artificer into the semblance of drapery. There it is with fringe and fold, tassel and variegated pattern, wrought with costly and laborious toil from the solid stone. Great twisted columns of verd antique uphold the altar, and a costly mosaic pavement covers the space before it; the altar itself is rich with many-colored marbles, agate, and jasper, and all around the church the sculptors have wrought out the marble into a counterfeit resemblance of rich draperies—a wondrous work of art. In this magnificent temple, in front of the great altar, is a slab marking the last resting-place of the last doge of Venice, Manini—the Latin inscription telling that "the ashes of Manini are transmitted to eternity."
The Church of Santa Maria de Frari, built nearly six hundred years ago, is another edifice rich in artistic works and monuments. Here is a mausoleum erected to the doge Pesaro, who died in 1659, and of which all tourists speak; and well they may. It is a great marble temple, eighty feet high, its lower story of a sort of Moorish architecture, open; and in the centre sits a statue of the departed doge upon a sarcophagus upheld by dragons, while two obliging bronze skeletons hold in their bony hands scrolls for the purpose of revealing the virtues of the great departed to posterity. But this is not all of this remarkable monument. At the four corners of the pillars, upholding the temple, stand four huge Nubians carved in marble; their tunics are of white marble, their legs and faces black, and seen through rents in their white marble garments appears the black as of their skins—a novel effect of sculpture, most certainly.
The beautiful monument to Titian, completed in 1853, is another of the artistic wonders of this church. Upon a marble platform of three steps rises, first, a great marble base or pedestal about thirty feet long, at each end of which are seated two allegorical figures of men, with tablets upon which they have written inscriptions. One of the figures is of a man in the full vigor of life, and the other of extreme old age; between these two rises another huge pedestal or ornamental marble cornice, ten feet high, bearing upon its face two angels in bass-reliefs, supporting a wreath enclosing the names of Titian, and King Ferdinand, who completed the monument; upon this second pedestal four richly-decorated Corinthian columns support a lofty Corinthian canopy, looking, in fact, like the grand arched entrance to a temple, the centre being the widest, highest, and composed of an arch. Seated in the centre is a grand statue of the great artist, with the figure of an angel at his side; between, and at the sides of the tall columns supporting the canopy above, are colossal marble statues of four female allegorical figures, and on the background, behind these groups, upon the walls of this marble temple as it were, are sculptured elegant bass-reliefs of the painter's greatest works, the Assumption, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, and Peter Martyr; upon the wings of the great arch, above the column supports, are other beautiful bass-reliefs, and surmounting the whole, the winged lion, in sculptured marble. The whole structure is very beautiful in its workmanship and elaborate in detail, the eight colossal statues finely done, the marble drapery strikingly natural. Even a picture of this elegant monument is something to study and admire, and to be able to stand before the structure itself is more than doubly gratifying.