CHAPTER VIII.
“Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”
Tennyson.
Padua and Venice Railway—Venice: Piazza and Church of S. Mark—Torcello—The Lagoon—Murano—Sta. Maria dei Frari—SS. Giovanni e Paolo—Sta. Maria dell’ Orto—Other Churches—Domestic Architecture—Fondaco de’ Turchi—Other Byzantine Palaces—The Ducal Palace—Foscari Palace—Ca’ d’Oro—Other Gothic Palaces—Balconies—Venetian Architecture—A Festival—Paintings.
LITTLE is to be seen as one leaves Padua to distinguish the city at all vividly, save the oriental-looking cupolas of Sant’ Antonio, and the great roof of the Sala della Ragione, looking like the inverted hull of some great ship, with its convex sides towering up above the otherwise not remarkable-looking city.
And now our destination was Venice, and anxiously we looked out ever and anon, impatient, long before the time, to see the tall outline of S. Mark’s campanile against the horizon. The view was too contracted to be really beautiful; on each side of the railway rank and luxuriant hedges of acacia sprouted their tall branches above the carriages, and beyond them might be seen plantations of maize, flax, and other crops, all remarkable for their prodigious growth and size, and watered by countless small canals, and here and there with turgid, muddy-looking streams rushing on from the mountains to discharge themselves into the Adriatic, and gliding between great artificial banks which gave them the appearance rather of large canals than rivers. Nothing breaks the dead monotony of the scene, for it is misty, and the Tyrolese Alps, which ought to show their jagged peaks to the north, are invisible. The stations follow each other in quick succession, and at each stands some diligence or carriage whose ingrained panoply of white dust, added to that which rises here and there white and cloud-like in the dry glare of the Italian sun which beams overhead, makes one feel grateful that—however unpoetical such a mode of approach may be—a railroad carries us to Venice. Nor is such a country as this along which one passes from Padua to Venice without its moral. I suppose there is nothing more certain than that, ordinarily, the appreciation of high art, and success in its practice, have never been so marked in countries whose natural features are lovely as in those in which the devoutest student of nature’s beauties can see nothing to admire or love. So Venice, surrounded by waters, and then by a country which would be entirely tame and uninteresting, were it not for the exquisite distant views of the Friulan Alps, fell back on her own resources, and provided herself with that substitute for the loveliness of nature which—alone of man’s works—the loveliness of beautiful art can be. And perhaps, it is better for the traveller, that no interest should be felt save in the end of the journey, where the journey has so brave an end!
At last, however, the broad watery level of the Lagoon is reached; Venice rises out of the water at a distance of some two miles; and then across an almost endless bridge the railway takes us into the outskirts of the city; a confused idea of steeples and domes is all that is obtained, and one finds oneself going through that most painful of processes to an excitable man, the usual examination of luggage; at last, however, we are outside the station, the Grand Canal lies before us, and we are vehemently urged to get at once into an omnibus-gondola. But no, this is too absurd a bathos for our first act on entering Venice, and we step therefore into a private gondola, and, propelled rapidly and lightly over the still, unruffled water, sink at once into that dreamy kind of happiness which of all conveyances in the world the gondola is best calculated to encourage. A short reach of the Grand Canal is soon passed, and then, with the picturesque cry of warning, “Ah, stalì!” we turn sharply into a narrow canal to the right, and, shooting down the tortuous street of water, presently cross the Grand Canal again midway between the Rialto and the Foscari palace, dive into another canal still narrower than the former, and at last, after frequent glimpses of mediæval houses and palaces, find ourselves safely housed at our hotel close to the Grand Canal, and within two or three minutes’ walk of the Piazza San Marco.
We stopped but a short time here, so impatient were we to obtain our first glimpse of the church and palace of S. Mark, to which Venice owes so much of her fame. We passed along some narrow winding alleys, lined on either side with open shops, on the counters of which lie exposed for sale not over dainty-looking edibles, and in whose dim interiors little light of day seems ever to enter to help the busy workmen who may always be seen there plying their trade; and then, going under an archway crowded with busy folk in rather noisy consultation, we found ourselves, in four or five minutes, standing under the arcade at the upper end of the great Piazza San Marco. Long lines of regular architecture, arcaded below, heavy with cornices and elaborated windows above, carry the eye not unpleasantly down to the lower end of the piazza, at the right-hand angle of which towers up into the air a vast campanile, simple and unbroken in its outline, without visible window or any buttress-like projection, until its upper stage, where it has a very simple open arcaded belfry, capped with a pyramidal roof; and then across nearly the whole width of the piazza, and partly concealed by the curiously irregular position of its campanile, stretches the low singular and Eastern-looking church of S. Mark. Before it rise the masts from which of yore hung waving in the wind the banners of the old Venetian state, and crowds of pigeons, fed here by civic liberality, cover the pavement with their pleasant fluttering presence. The charm of the west front is certainly most indescribable; and I confess to feeling a doubt, as I looked at it, whether it was not more akin to some fairy-like vision, such as one might see in dreams, than to any real and substantial erection of stone and mortar; for, indeed, to a mind educated in and accustomed to the traditions of northern Gothic, there is something so very outré in the whole idea, something so startling in its novelty, that it is hard at first to know whether to admire or not. It is far from imposing in size, but yet, as it is looked at more and more carefully, it grows much and rapidly on one’s love, and at last imprints itself on the mind as a real work of art of a very beautiful and unusual kind, wrought out with an abundance of beautiful detail, but in such a way as to prevent its being possible that it could ever be absolutely reproduced or taken as a model.
As you pace down the broad level space of the Piazza, the feeling of the strangeness of the whole scene increases. There are of course no horses, and no vehicles of any kind; it is a large square in which all the space is footpath, and on which, in addition to the many men who pace it rapidly with busy brow, or idly lounge whilst enjoying the weather and the place, hundreds of pigeons are constantly fluttering or walking about in quiet confidence, sure that they will not be molested by any one. And then, as one draws near to the church, it is easy to understand rather better than at first in what its real charm lies; this is no doubt before anything else in its beautiful colour; the whole front is shafted to a greater extent than almost any building I know, the shafts all rather heavy, but of marble of the richest kind; the groining of the seven entrance arches is filled with mosaics, and the walls are encrusted everywhere with marble. Instead of ordinary gables masking the roof, the front is finished with great ogee gables most extravagantly crocketed, and obviously a modern alteration of the original Romanesque finish; behind these a cluster of fourteenth-century cupolas completes the view. Of the seven arches which compose the façade, four have doorways; the outer arches on either side are very narrow, and answer in width to the kind of cloister which masks the church on the south, west, and north sides; and the central arch is much wider and loftier than the others, rising indeed so high as to break through the line of balustrading which runs across the front just above the other arches.
Within this central arch is a grand doorway, the stilted semicircular arch of which is of three orders, the central plain, the others covered with carvings. The piers supporting the main arches have tiers of shafts in two heights; the lower tier corresponding in height with those of the doors pierced within the arches, and the others, which are smaller in diameter, and more numerous than those which support them, rising to the springing-line of the main arches. The side doorways have very Eastern-looking arches, the semi-circular line being carried on nearly to the centre, and then turned up into an ogee. These and some other portions as, e.g., the windows over two of the doors, and the pinnacles between the gables, belong to the fourteenth century, whilst the finish of the gables themselves—great ogee crocketed gables with figures at the apex of each—is probably of the fifteenth century. All these archways open into the cloister, or narthex already mentioned. Here, where the roofs still glow with the most precious early mosaics, and the walls with marble, either used as inlays or for shafts, one gets a first and not unworthy hint of the beauty which awaits one in the interior.
And then, on entering the nave, the deep tones of an organ are heard reverberating through the old building; many people kneel devoutly at their prayers around us; the hot glare of the sun has gone, and in its place a cool, quiet, dim light reveals the whole magnificence of the design. It is quite in vain to describe this in formal architectural terms. The colour is so magnificent that one troubles oneself but little about the architecture, and thinks only of gazing upon the expanse of gold and deep richly-tinted mosaic all harmonized together into one glorious whole. The mosaics commence throughout the church at the level of the crown of the main arches dividing the nave from the aisles, and are continued up the remainder of the wall and into the domes; even the angles or arrises of the walls and arches are covered with gold mosaic; so that all architectural lines of moulding are entirely lost, and nothing but a soft swelling and undulating sea of colour is perceived. There is nothing violent or garish in all this profuse decoration. The gold mosaic, used as it always is in early works, set irregularly in, and surrounded by a white line or joint of plaster, is never conspicuously bright; the drawing of the figures and subjects may be criticized, but at any rate it is always direct, simple, and intelligible, and the colours of the draperies bright and harmonious, whilst the arcading and wall-lining which fills the lower part of the walls is all of marble, which has now a rich, warm, but quiet tint, singularly suitable as a base to the more gorgeous colouring of the upper part of the walls and domes.