There is another respect in which S. Mark’s is extremely Eastern. This is in the almost entire absence of figure-sculpture in its original construction. The subjects and figures on the columns of the baldachin are too delicate to be noticed from a distance, and it was not until A.D. 1394 that the choir-screen was introduced, with figures of the Apostles on either side of the rood, erected no doubt to supply a want which had been long felt before it was gratified. At the same time figures were added in niches between the gables of the exterior, but even now they form a small and inconsiderable part of the decoration of the church.
I have lingered on paper as I did in reality about S. Mark’s; but if we wish to see Venice we must tear ourselves away from it. We will go out by the baptistery, and here we are at once on the Piazzetta, the noble façade of the Ducal Palace on one side, and a great work of Sansovino’s—the library of S. Mark—on the other; at the end of the Piazzetta are two monolithic granite columns, one of which bears the lion of S. Mark, the other the figure of the ancient patron saint of Venice, S. Theodore; between them is seen the dark-blue line of the sea rippled into a thousand twinkling waves, and beyond this the Isola San Giorgio, remarkable for one of Palladio’s churches—a building, as I think, irredeemably ugly, but, nevertheless, much admired by many. If you walk down to the strand, where a hundred gondolas wait for hire—some black and funereal-like, others dressed up with gay awnings, and all of them proud and swan-like with their bright steel prows rising lightly and high out of the water—and then, turning round, look first down the Riva dei Schiavoni, towards the sea, taking in the long sea-front of the Ducal Palace, then the narrow gap bridged by the famous Bridge of Sighs, and on again, noting bridge after bridge, and the Gothic palace now turned into the Hôtel Danieli, and then on to the promontory running out towards the Adriatic, occupied by the Public Gardens and planted with the only trees that Venice boasts—how lovely is the scene! or if, looking back up the Piazzetta to S. Mark’s, noting the tall campanile and the quaint clock and clock-tower beyond, and the domes and turrets, niches and figures, which crown the church, how much more vividly does it not impress the mind!
Venice is full to excess of striking pictures, and it would be endless to say in how very many respects it has a character of its own which can never be forgotten. The strange silence of its watery streets, broken only by the cry of the gondolier or the delicate plash of his oar in the water, is not the least impressive thing to the stranger; and when, after trying in vain to thread on foot the labyrinth of passages which confuse him irrecoverably in a few minutes, he commits himself to the dark recesses of a gondola, how delightful is the quiet, smooth, and yet rapid way in which, without more labour than is necessary in looking about, he finds himself now following the narrow winding of some small canal, awakening the echoes between the high walls of palaces or warehouses on either side of the way, or anon, upon turning with a graceful sweep into the smooth broad reach of the Grand Canal, making his gondolier move gently and slowly, as one by one the great palaces which grace its banks and form its retaining walls are carefully scanned, whilst the various and ever-changing perspective of the whole is dwelt upon, to be remembered afterwards with such intense pleasure!
From S. Mark’s I remember trying to find my way to San Stefano; and, taking a map of Venice, and calculating upon the orientation of the churches being fairly correct, I flattered myself that I might without difficulty make my way: the result was simply that for half an hour I was threading the mazes of all the passages around the church, and at last reached it only by chance; and I found afterwards that it would not at all do to take the churches as marking the cardinal points of the compass, for, as may be seen from the campanile of S. Mark, there are scarcely two churches in the city exactly alike in their orientation.
But pleasant as it is to recall one’s recollections of highways and byways in Venice, I think, if we wish to understand her architecture thoroughly, we shall do well first of all to make a pilgrimage to Torcello, that sad and weird cathedral, standing forlorn and deserted on a wretched island in the lagoon, wherein we see the handiwork of the earliest Venetians, and the prototype of much of the later work in Venice itself. The story of Torcello has been told often—by no one with more feeling or more pathos than by Mr. Ruskin, and I need not attempt to repeat it. Suffice it to say that about A.D. 641 the church was first built, whilst in 864 it was restored, and being nearly decayed by age, was again most studiously repaired in 1008;[33] whilst in 1361, according to the testimony of Cornaro,[34] there were still standing on the same island divers churches (forty-two in number) adorned with columns of pietra dura, and with mosaics. Strange indeed is the difference here between then and now!
My first visit to Torcello was sad and sombre enough to begin with. We started early from Venice in a thick mist, making our way first to the cemetery, where there is a good tall campanile, then to Murano, and through its shabby water streets, passing the end of San Donato (which shall be described later), and then on through long canals edged on either side by miles of green mud, and thronged with market boats and noisy boatmen. Here and there across the lagoon we saw a tall campanile marking the position of each settlement or island in this waste of sea and mud, and, last of all, that of the cathedral of Torcello, some five minutes’ walk among decaying walls and unmown grass from the half-ruined landing-place to which our gondolier tied his boat. All that remains of the city is before us in small compass. On the left a fourteenth-century building, said to have been the Palazzo Publico; in front a stone seat or throne in the centre of what was once the market-place; on the right, the Byzantine church of Sta. Fosca; and beyond, and connected with Sta. Fosca by a cloister, the modernized-looking cathedral, plain, bare, and uninteresting on the outside, with a detached campanile near the east end. This is all Torcello has to shew; but, forlorn and decayed as everything in the place is, it is precious in the highest degree to the architect who cares about the growth of his art. The cathedral is full of interest, though much damaged by extensive repairs, carried on in a reckless mood by the Austrians, not long before they lost Venetia, when new roofs were put on, and the mosaics were so much damaged that I remember collecting a handful of fragments from a barrow of rubbish before it was shot into the canal; at the same time a scaffold was erected for a proposed restoration of the great western mosaic which, though threatened and indeed commenced in 1857, had not in 1872 been proceeded with. The exterior has been completely modernized. In plan the cathedral consists of three parallel naves of ten bays, all finished with apses. The columns dividing the nave from the aisles are of veined marble, with capitals of exquisite workmanship, founded, indeed, on Corinthian examples, but modified by Byzantine influence and by study of nature. The arches are stilted and high; above them is a small clerestory of very simple windows. The central apse retains its raised rows of seats, though their brickwork alone is left; the throne for the bishop is placed in the centre, and retains some of its marble inlay. Under this raised east end a descending passage is formed, connecting the two smaller apses, and with a small apse formed in the thickness of the east wall opening into it. Three bays of the church are given to the choir, which is fenced round with richly sculptured marble screens. On the west the screen has marble columns carrying a flat entablature, and below them is a solid portion some four feet high covered with panels of flat sculpture, one having two peacocks drinking out of the same vase, another two lions at the foot of a branching tree, and another a complicated interlacing pattern of foliage. Such a screen is the obvious prototype of that in S. Mark’s, and the sculptures with which it is adorned are evidently the work of some early Byzantine workman—whether brought from Aquileja from
