Venice.
As I floated down the lagunes in the full sunshine, and observed how the figures of the gondoliers in their motley costume, and as they rowed, lightly moving above the sides of the gondola, stood out from the bright green surface and against the blue sky, I caught the best and freshest type possible of the Venetian school. The sunshine brought out the local colours with dazzling brilliancy, and the shades even were so luminous, that, comparatively, they in their turn might serve as lights. And the same may be said of the reflection from the sea-green water. All was painted "chiaro nell chiaro," so that foamy waves and lightning flashes were necessary to give it a grand finish (um die Tüpfchen auf sie zu setzen).
Titian and Paul have this brilliancy in the highest degree, and whenever we do not find it in any of their works, the piece is either damaged or has been touched up.
The cupola and vaulting of St. Mark's, with its side-walls,—are covered with paintings—a mass of richly colored figures on a golden ground; all in mosaic work: some of them very good, others but poor, according to the masters who furnished the cartoons.
Circumstances here have strangely impressed on my mind how everything depends on the first invention, and that this constitutes the right standard—the true genius—since with little square-pieces of glass (and here not in the soberest manner), it is possible to imitate the good as well as the bad. The art which furnished to the ancients their pavements, and to the Christians the vaulted ceilings of their churches, fritters itself away in our days on snuff-box lids and bracelets-clasps. The present times are worse even than one thinks.
Venice, October 8, 1786.
In the Farsetti palace there is a valuable collection of casts from the best antiques. I pass over all such as I had seen before at Mannheim or elsewhere, and mention only new acquaintances. A Cleopatra in intense repose, with the asp coiled round her arm, and sinking into the sleep of death;—a Niobe shrouding with her robe her youngest daughter from the arrows of Apollo;—some gladiators;—a winged genius, resting in his flight;—some philosophers, both in sitting and standing postures.
They are works from which, for thousands of years to come, the world may receive delight and instruction, without ever being able to equal with their thanks the merits of the artists.
Many speaking busts transported me to the old glorious times. Only I felt, alas, how backward I am in these studies; however, I will go on with them—at least I know the way. Palladio has opened the road for me to this and every other art and life. That sounds probably somewhat strange, and yet not so paradoxical as when Jacob Böhme says that, by seeing a pewter platter by a ray from Jupiter, he was enlightened as to the whole universe. There is also in this collection a fragment of the entablature of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina in Rome.