A noble statue—Bartolommeo Colleoni—Verrocchio—A Dominican church—Mocenigo Doges—The tortured Bragadino—The Valier monument—Leonardo Loredano—Sebastian Venier—The Chapel of the Rosary—Sansovino—An American eulogy—Michele Steno—Tommaso Mocenigo—A brave re-builder—The Scuola di S. Marco.
It is important to reach SS. Giovanni e Paolo by gondola, because the canals are particularly fascinating between this point and, say, the Molo. If one embarks at the Molo (which is the habit of most visitors), the gondolier takes you up the Rio Palazzo, under the Ponte di Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs, past the superb side walls of the Ducal Palace; then to the right, with relics of fine architecture on either side, up the winding Rio di S. Maria Formosa, and then to the right again into the Rio di S. Marina and the Rio dei Mendicanti (where a dyer makes the water all kinds of colours). A few yards up this canal you pass the Fondamenta Dandolo on the right, at the corner of which the most commanding equestrian statue in the world breaks on your vision, behind it rising the vast bulk of the church. All these little canals have palaces of their own, not less beautiful than those of the Grand Canal but more difficult to see.
Before entering the church—and again after coming from it—let us look at the Colleoni. It is generally agreed that this is the finest horse and horseman ever cast in bronze; and it is a surprise to me that South Kensington has no reproduction of it, as the Trocadero in Paris has. Warrior and steed equally are splendid; they are magnificent and they are war. The only really competitive statue is that of Gattamalata (who was Colleoni's commander) by Donatello at Padua; but personally I think this the finer.
Bartolommeo Colleoni was born in 1400, at Bergamo, of fighting stock, and his early years were stained with blood. The boy was still very young when he saw his father's castle besieged by Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and his father killed. On becoming himself a condottiere, he joined the Venetians, who were then busy in the field, and against the Milanese naturally fought with peculiar ardour. But on the declaration of peace in 1441 he forgot his ancient hostility, and in the desire for more battle assisted the Milanese in their campaigns. Fighting was meat and drink to him. Seven years later he returned to the Venetians, expecting to be appointed Captain-General of the Republic's forces, but failing in this wish he put his arm again at the service of the Milanese. A little later, however, Venice afforded him the coveted honour, and for the rest of his life he was true to her, although when she was miserably at peace he did not refrain from a little strife on his own account, to keep his hand in. Venice gave him not only honours and money but much land, and he divided his old age between agriculture and—thus becoming still more the darling of the populace—almsgiving.
Colleoni died in 1475 and left a large part of his fortune to the Republic to be spent in the war with the Turks, and a little for a statue in the Piazza of S. Mark. But the rules against statues being erected there being adamant, the site was changed to the campo of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and Andrea Verrocchio was brought from Florence to prepare the group. He began it in 1479 and died while still working on it, leaving word that his pupil, Lorenzo di Credi, should complete it. Di Credi, however, was discouraged by the authorities, and the task was given to Alessandro Leopardi (who made the sockets for the three flagstaffs opposite S. Mark's), and it is his name which is inscribed on the statue. But to Verrocchio the real honour.
Among the Colleoni statue's great admirers was Robert Browning, who never tired of telling the story of the hero to those unacquainted with it.
The vast church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo does for the Dominicans what the Frari does for the Franciscans; the two churches being the Venetian equivalents of Florence's S. Maria Novella and Santa Croce. Like too many of the church façades of Venice, this one is unfinished and probably ever will be. Unlike the Frari, to which it has a general resemblance, the church of John and Paul is domed; or rather it possesses a dome, with golden balls upon its cupola like those of S. Mark. Within, it is light and immense but far inferior in charm to its great red rival. It may contain no Titian's ashes, but both Giovanni and Gentile Bellini lie here; and its forty-six Doges give it a cachet. We come at once to two of them, for on the outside wall are the tombs of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo, who gave the land for the church, and of his son, Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo.
BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI FROM THE STATUE BY ANDREA VERROCCHIO