All these I must see, and more. More in out-of-the-way churches like San Giorgio della Schiavoni, with the Carpaccios that are still as brilliant as when the great painter laid down his brush. More in the Gesuati up the Zattere, with its exquisite Tiepolos. Infinitely more in the school of San Rocco, especially behind the altars and under the choir-loft; in the Frari next door, and in a dozen other picturesque churches; and away out to Torcello, the mother of Venice, with its one temple,—the earliest of Venetian cathedrals,—its theatre-like rows of seats, and the ancient slate shutters swinging on huge hinges of stone.
But to return to the Professor, who is still gazing up into the exquisite ceiling of the salon of the Contessa, pointing out to me the boldness and beauty of the design, a white sheet drawn taut at the four corners by four heroic nude figures, its drooping folds patted up against the ceiling proper by a flutter of life-sized, winged cupids flying in the air, in high relief, or half smothered in its folds.
“Nothing gives you so clear an idea of the lives these great nobles lived,” said the Professor, “as your touching something they touched, walking through their homes—the homes they lived in—and examining inch by inch the things they lived with. Now this Palazzo Albrizzi is, perhaps, less spacious and less costly than many others of the period; but, for all that, look at the grand hall, with its sides a continuous line of pictures! Its ceiling a marvel of stucco and rich-colored canvases! Do you find anything like this outside of Venice? And now come through the salon, all white and gold, to the bridge spanning the canal. Here, you see, is where my lady steps across and so down into her garden when she would be alone. You must admit that this is quite unique.”
The Professor was right. A bridge from a boudoir to a garden wall, sixty or more feet above the water-line, is unusual, even in Venice.
And such a bridge! All smothered in vines, threading their way in and out the iron lattice-work of the construction, and sending their tendrils swinging, heads down, like acrobats, to the water below. And such a garden! Framed in by high prison walls, their tops patrolled by sentinels of stealthy creepers and wide-eyed morning-glories! A garden with a little glass-covered arbor in the centre plot, holding a tiny figure of the Virgin; circular stone benches for two, and no more; tree-trunks twisted into seats, with encircling branches for shoulders and back, and all, too, a thousand miles in the wilderness for anything you could hear or see of the life of the great city about you. A garden for lovers and intrigues and secret plots, and muffled figures smuggled through mysterious water-gates, and stolen whisperings in the soft summer night. A garden so utterly shut in, and so entirely shut out, that the daughter of a Doge could take her morning bath in the fountain with all the privacy of a boudoir.
“Yes,” said the Professor, with a slight twinkle in his eye, “these old Venetians knew; and perhaps some of the modern ones.”
WIDE PALATIAL STAIRCASES
And so we spent the day, rambling in and out of a dozen or more of these legacies of the past, climbing up wide palatial staircases; some still inhabited by the descendants of the noble families; others encumbered with new and old furniture, packing-boxes and loose straw, now magazines for goods; gazing up at the matchless equestrian statue of Colleoni, the most beautiful the world over; rambling through the San Giovanni e Paolo; stopping here and there to sketch, perhaps the Madonna over the gate next the Rezzonico, or some sculptured lion surmounting the newel-post of a still more ancient staircase; prying into back courts or up crumbling staircases, or opening dust-begrimed windows only to step out upon unkept balconies overhanging abandoned gardens; every carving, pillar, and rafter but so much testimony to the wealth, power, and magnificence of these rulers of the earth.
“And now to the Caffè Calcina for luncheon, Espero.”