Then, if you showed curiosity and wanted to know further, the gondolier would have told you more about this strange man.
The canals of Venice are the highways, and the gondoliers are like ’bus-drivers in Piccadilly—they know everybody and are in close touch with all the Secrets of State. When you get to the Gindecca and tie up for lunch, over a bottle of Chianti, your gondolier will tell you this:
The hunchback there in the gondola, rowed by the Master, is the Devil, who has taken that form just to be with and guard the greatest artist the world has ever seen. Yes, Signor, that clean-faced man with his frank, wide-open, brown eyes is in league with the Evil One. He is the man who took young Tiziano from Cadore into his shop, right out of a glass-factory, and made him a great artist, getting him commissions and introducing him everywhere! And how about the divine Giorgione who called him father? Oho!
And who is Giorgione? The son of some unknown peasant woman. And if Bellini wanted to adopt him, treat him as his son indeed, kissing him on the cheek when he came back just from a day’s visit to Mestre, whose business was it! Oho!
Beside that, his name isn’t Giorgione—it is Giorgio Barbarelli. And didn’t this Giorgio Barbarelli, and Tiziano from Cadore, and Espero Carbonne, and that Gustavo from Nuremberg, and the others paint most of Gian’s pictures? Surely they did. The old man simply washes in the backgrounds and the boys do the work. About all old Gian does is to sign the picture, sell it and pocket the proceeds. Carpaccio helps him, too—Carpaccio who painted the loveliest little angel sitting cross-legged playing the biggest mandolin you ever saw in your life.
That is genius, you know, the ability to get some one else to do the work, and then capture the ducats and the honors for yourself. Of course, Gian knows how to lure the boys on—something has to be done in order to hold them. Gian buys a picture from them now and then; his studio is full of their work—better than he can do. Oh, he knows a good thing when he sees it. These pictures will be valuable some day, and he gets them at his own price. It was Antonello of Messina who introduced oil-painting into Venice. Before that they mixed their paints with water, milk or wine. But when Antonello came along with his dark, lustrous pictures, he set all artistic Venice astir. Gian Bellini discovered the secret, they say, by feigning to be a gentleman and going to the newcomer and sitting for his picture. He it was who discovered that Antonello mixed his colors with oil. Oho!
Of course, not all of the pictures in his studio are painted by the boys: some are painted by that old Dutchman what’s-his-name—oh, yes, Durer, Alberto Durer of Nuremberg. Two Nuremberg painters were in that very gondola last week just where you sit—they are here in Venice now, taking lessons from Gian, they said. Gian was up there to Nuremberg and lived a month with Durer—they worked together, drank beer together, I suppose, and caroused. Gian is very strict about what he does in Venice, but you can never tell what a man will do when he is away from home. The Germans are a roystering lot—but they do say they can paint. Me? I have never been up there—and do not want to go, either—there are no canals there. To be sure, they print books in Nuremberg. It was up there somewhere that they invented type, a lazy scheme to do away with writing. They are a thrifty lot—those Germans—they give me my fare and a penny more, just a single penny, and no matter how much I have talked and pointed out the wonderful sights, and imparted useful information, known to me alone—only one penny extra—think of it!
Yes, printing was first done at Mayence by a German, Gutenberg, about sixty years ago. One of Gutenberg’s workmen went up to Nuremberg and taught others how to design and cast type. This man, Alberto Durer, helped them, designing the initials and making their title-pages by cutting the design on a wood block, then covering this block with ink, laying a sheet of paper upon it, placing it in a press, and then when the paper is lifted off it looks exactly like the original drawing. In fact, most people couldn’t tell the difference, and here you can print thousands of them from the one block.
Bellini makes drawings for title-pages and initials for Aldus and Nicholas Jenson. Venice is the greatest printing place in the world, and yet the business began here only thirty years ago. The first book printed here was in Fourteen Hundred Sixty-nine, by John of Speyer. There are two hundred licensed printing-presses here, and it takes usually four men to a press—two to set the type and get things ready, and two to run the press. This does not count, of course, the men who write the books, and those who make the type and cut the blocks from which they print the pictures for the illustrations. At first, you know, the books they printed in Venice had no title-pages, initials or illustrations. My father was a printer and he remembers when the first large initials were printed—before that the spaces were left blank and the books were sent out to the monasteries to be completed by hand.
Gian and Gentile had a good deal to do about cutting the first blocks for initials—they got the idea, I think, from Nuremberg. And now there are Dutchmen down here from Amsterdam learning how to print books and paint pictures. Several of them are in Gian’s studio, I hear—every once in a while I get them for a trip to the Lido or to Murano.