A Wanderer in Venice

by E. V. Lucas

Just within we find Alvise Mocenigo (1570-1577) who was on the throne when Venice was swept by the plague in which Titian died, and who offered the church of the Redentore on the Guidecca as a bribe to Heaven to stop the pestilence. Close by lie his predecessors and ancestors, Pietro Mocenigo, the admiral, and Giovanni Mocenigo, his brother, whose reign (1478-1485) was peculiarly belligerent and witnessed the great fire which destroyed so many treasures in the Ducal Palace. What he was like you may see in the picture numbered 750 in our National Gallery, once given to Carpaccio, then to Lorenzo Bastiani, and now to the school of Gentile Bellini. In this work the Doge kneels to the Virgin and implores intercession for the plague-stricken city. Pietro's monument is the most splendid, with a number of statues by Pietro Lombardi, architect of the Ducal Palace after the same fire. S. Christopher is among these figures, with a nice little Christ holding on to his ear.

In the right aisle we find the monument of Bragadino, a Venetian commander who, on the fall of Cyprus, which he had been defending against the Turks, was flayed alive. But this was not all the punishment put upon him by the Turks for daring to hold out so long. First his nose and ears were cut off; then for some days he was made to work like the lowest labourer. Then came the flaying, after which his skin was stuffed with straw and fastened as a figure-head to the Turkish admiral's prow on his triumphant return to Constantinople. For years the trophy was kept in the arsenal of that city, but it was removed by some means or other, purchase or theft, and now reposes in the tomb at which we are looking. This monument greatly affected old Coryat. "Truly," he says, "I could not read it with dry eyes."

Farther on is the pretentious Valier monument, a triumph of bad taste. Here we see Doge Bertucci Valier (1656-1658) with his courtly abundant dame, and Doge Silvestro Valier (1694-1700), all proud and foolish in death, as I feel sure they must have been in life to have commissioned such a memorial. In the choir are more Doges, some of sterner stuff: Michele Morosini (1382), who after only a few months was killed by a visitation of the plague, which carried off also twenty thousand more ordinary Venetians, but who has a tomb of great distinction worthy of commemorating a full and sagacious reign; Leonardo Loredan (1501-1521) whose features we know so well by reason of Bellini's portrait in the National Gallery, the Doge on the throne when the League of Cambray was formed by the Powers to crush the Republic; and Andrea Vendramini (1476-1478) who has the most beautiful monument of all, the work of Tullio and Antonio Lombardi. Vendramini, who came between Pietro and Giovanni Mocenigo, had a brief and bellicose reign. Lastly here lies Doge Marco Corner (1365-1368), who made little history, but was a fine character.

In the left transept we find warlike metal, for here is the modern statue of the great Sebastian Venier whom we have already seen in the Ducal Palace as the hero of the battle of Lepanto in 1571, and it is peculiarly fitting that he should be honoured in the same church as the luckless Bragadino, for it was at Lepanto that the Turks who had triumphed at Cyprus and behaved so vilely were for the moment utterly defeated. On the death of Alvise Mocenigo, Venier was made Doge, at the age of eighty, but he occupied the throne only for a year and his end was hastened by grief at another of those disastrous fires, in 1576, which destroyed some of the finest pictures that the world then contained. This statue is vigorous, and one feels that it is true to life, but for the old admiral at his finest and most vivid you must go to Vienna, where Tintoretto's superb and magnificent portrait of him is preserved. There he stands, the old sea dog, in his armour, but bare-headed, and through a window you see the Venetian fleet riding on a blue sea. It is one of the greatest portraits in the world and it ought to be in Venice.

The chapel of the Rosary, which is entered just by the statue of Venier, was built in honour of his Lepanto victory. It was largely destroyed by fire in 1867, and is shown by an abrupt white-moustached domineering guide who claims to remember it before that time. Such wood carving as was saved ("Saved! Saved!" he raps out in tones like a pistol shot) is in the church proper, in the left aisle. Not to be rescued were Titian's great "Death of S. Peter, Martyr" a copy of which, presented by King Victor Emmanuel, is in the church, and a priceless altar-piece by Giovanni Bellini. The beautiful stone reliefs by Sansovino are in their original places, and remain to-day as they were mutilated by the flames. Their unharmed portions prove their exquisite workmanship, and fortunately photography has preserved for us their unimpaired form. An American gentleman who followed me into the church, after having considered for some time as to whether or not he (who had "seen ten thousand churches") would risk the necessary fifty centimes, expressed himself, before these Sansovino masterpieces, as glad he came. "These reliefs," he said to me, "seem to be of a high order of merit." The restoration of the chapel is being carried out thoroughly but slowly. Modern Sansovinos, in caps made from the daily paper, are stone-cutting all day long, and will be for many years to come.

Returning to the church proper, we find more Doges. An earlier Venier Doge, Antonio (1382-1400), is here. In the left aisle is another fine Ducal monument, that of Pasquale Malipiero (1457-1462), who succeeded Foscari on his deposal and was the first Doge to be present at the funeral of another, for Foscari died only ten days after his fall. Here also lie Doge Michele Steno (1400-1413), who succeeded Antonio Venier, and who as a young man is credited with the insult which may be said to have led to all Marino Faliero's troubles. For Steno having annoyed the Doge by falling in love with a maid of honour, Faliero forbade him the palace, and in retaliation Steno scribbled on the throne itself a scurrilous commentary on the Doge's wife. Faliero's inability to induce the judges to punish Steno sufficiently was the beginning of that rage against the State which led to his ruin. It was during Steno's reign that Carlo Zeno was so foolishly arrested and imprisoned, to the loss of the Republic of one of its finest patriots.

MADONNA WITH THE MAGDALEN AND S. CATHERINE
from the painting by giovanni bellini
In the Accademia

The next Ducal tomb is the imposing one of the illustrious Tommaso Mocenigo (1413-1423) who succeeded Steno and brought really great qualities to his office. Had his counsels been followed the whole history of Venice might have changed, for he was firm against the Republic's land campaigns, holding that she had territory enough and should concentrate on sea power: a sound and sagacious policy which found its principal opponent in Francesco Foscari, Mocenigo's successor, and its justification years later in the calamitous League of Cambray, to which I have referred elsewhere. Mocenigo was not only wise for Venice abroad, but at home too. A fine of a thousand ducats had been fixed as the punishment of anyone who, in those days of expenses connected with so many campaigns, chiefly against the Genoese, dared to mention the rebuilding or beautifying of the Ducal Palace. But Mocenigo was not to be deterred, and rising in his place with his thousand ducat penalty in his hand, he urged with such force upon the Council the necessity of rebuilding that he carried his point, and the lovely building much as we now know it was begun. That was in 1422. In 1423 Mocenigo died, his last words being a warning against the election of Foscari as his successor. But Foscari was elected, and the downfall of Venice dates from that moment.