How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,
Its temples and its palaces did seem
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.
With this we may compare the following extract from a letter, addressed in May 1544 to Titian, by one of the most unprincipled of literary bandits who have ever disgraced humanity, but who nevertheless was solemnised to the spirit of true poetry by the grandiose aspect of nature as it appeared to him in Venice. That Pietro Aretino should have so deeply felt the charm of natural beauty in an age when even the greatest artists and poets sought inspiration in human life rather than the outer world, is a significant fact. It seems to illustrate the necessity whereby Venice became the cradle of the art of nature.[[266]] "Having, dear Sir, and my best gossip, supped alone to the injury of my custom, or, to speak more truly, supped in the company of all the boredoms of a cursed quartan fever, which will not let me taste the flavour of any food, I rose from table sated with the same disgust with which I had sat down to it. In this mood I went and leaned my arms upon the sill outside my window, and throwing my chest and nearly all my body on the marble, abandoned myself to the contemplation of the spectacle presented by the innumerable boats, filled with foreigners as well as people of the city, which gave delight not merely to the gazers, but also to the Grand Canal itself, that perpetual delight of all who plough its waters. From this animated scene, all of a sudden, like one who from mere ennui knows not how to occupy his mind, I turned my eyes to heaven, which, from the moment when God made it, was never adorned with such painted loveliness of lights and shadows. The whole region of the air was what those who envy you, because they are unable to be you, would fain express. To begin with, the buildings of Venice, though of solid stone, seemed made of some ethereal substance. Then the sky was full of variety—here clear and ardent, there dulled and overclouded. What marvellous clouds there were! Masses of them in the centre of the scene hung above the house-roofs, while the immediate part was formed of a grey tint inclining to dark. I gazed astonished at the varied colours they displayed. The nearer masses burned with flames of sunset; the more remote blushed with a blaze of crimson less afire. Oh, how splendidly did Nature's pencil treat and dispose that airy landscape, keeping the sky apart from the palaces, just as Titian does! On one side the heavens showed a greenish-blue, on another a bluish-green, invented verily by the caprice of Nature, who is mistress of the greatest masters. With her lights and her darks, there she was harmonising, toning, and bringing out into relief, just as she wished. Seeing which, I who know that your pencil is the spirit of her inmost soul, cried aloud thrice or four tines, 'Oh, Titian! where are you now?'"
In order to understand the destiny of Venice in art, it is not enough to concentrate attention on the peculiarities of her physical environment. Potent as these were in the creation of her style, the political and social conditions of the Republic require also to be taken into account. Among Italian cities Venice was unique. She alone was tranquil in her empire, unimpeded in her constitutional development, independent of Church interference, undisturbed by the cross purposes and intrigues of the Despots, inhabited by merchants who were princes, and by a free-born people who had never seen war at their gates. The serenity of undisturbed security, the luxury of wealth amassed abroad and liberally spent at home, gave a physiognomy of ease and proud self-confidence to all her edifices. The grim and anxious struggles of the Middle Ages left no mark on Venice. How different was this town from Florence, every inch of whose domain could tell of civic warfare, whose passionate aspirations after independence ended in the despotism of the bourgeois Medici, whose repeated revolutions had slavery for their climax, whose grey palaces bore on their fronts the stamp of mediæval vigilance, whose spirit was incarnated in Dante the exile, whose enslavement forced from Michael Angelo those groans of a chained Titan expressed in the marbles of S. Lorenzo! It is not an insignificant, though a slight, detail, that the predominant colour of Florence is brown, while the predominant colour of Venice is that of mother-of-pearl, concealing within its general whiteness every tint that can be placed upon the palette of a painter. The conditions of Florence stimulated mental energy and turned the forces of the soul inwards. Those of Venice inclined the individual to accept life as he found it. Instead of exciting him to think, they disposed him to enjoy, or to acquire by industry the means of manifold enjoyment. To represent in art the intellectual strivings of the Renaissance was the task of Florence and her sons; to create a monument of Renaissance magnificence was the task of Venice. Without Venice the modern world could not have produced that flower of sensuous and unreflective loveliness in painting, which is worthy to stand beside the highest product of the Greek genius in sculpture. For Athena from her Parthenon stretches the hand to Venezia enthroned in the ducal palace. The broad brows and earnest eyes of the Hellenic goddess are of one divine birth and lineage with the golden hair and superb carriage of the sea-queen.
It is in the heart of Venice, in the House of the Republic, that the Venetian painters, considered as the interpreters of worldly splendour, fulfilled their function with the most complete success. Centuries contributed to make the Ducal Palace what it is. The massive colonnades and Gothic loggias of the external basement date from the thirteenth century; their sculpture belongs to the age when Niccola Pisano's genius was in the ascendant. The square fabric of the palace, so beautiful in the irregularity of its pointed windows, so singular in its mosaic diaper of pink and white, was designed at the same early period. The inner court and the façade that overhangs the lateral canal, display the handiwork of Sansovino. The halls of the palace—spacious chambers where the Senate assembled, where ambassadors approached the Doge, where the Savi deliberated, where the Council of Ten conducted their inquisition—are walled and roofed with pictures of inestimable value, encased in framework of carved oak; overlaid with burnished gold. Supreme art—the art of the imagination perfected with delicate and skilful care in detail—is made in these proud halls the minister of mundane pomp. In order that the gold brocade of the ducal robes, that the scarlet and crimson of the Venetian senator, might, be duly harmonised by the richness of their surroundings, it was necessary that canvases measured by the square yard, and rendered priceless by the authentic handiwork of Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, should glow upon the walls and ceilings. A more insolent display of public wealth—a more lavish outpouring of human genius in the service of State pageantry, cannot be imagined.
Sublime over all allegories and histories depicted in those multitudes of paintings, sits Venezia herself enthroned and crowned, the personification of haughtiness and power. Figured as a regal lady, with yellow hair tightly knotted round a small head poised upon her upright throat and ample shoulders, Venice takes her chair of sovereignty—as mistress of the ocean to whom Neptune and the Tritons offer pearls, as empress of the globe at whose footstool wait Justice with the sword and Peace with the olive branch, as a queen of heaven exalted to the clouds. They have made her a goddess, those great painters; they have produced a mythus, and personified in native loveliness that bride of the sea, their love, their lady. The beauty of Venetian women and the glory of Venetian empire find their meeting point in her, and live as the spirit of Athens lived in Pallas Promachos. On every side, above, around, wherever the eye falls in those vast rooms, are seen the deeds of Venice—painted histories of her triumphs over emperors and popes and infidels, or allegories of her greatness—scenes wherein the Doges perform acts of faith, with S. Mark for their protector, and with Venezia for their patroness. The saints in Paradise, massed together by Tintoretto and by Palma, mingle with mythologies of Greece and Rome, and episodes of pure idyllic painting.
Religion in these pictures was a matter of parade, an adjunct to the costly public life of the Republic. We need not, therefore, conclude that it was unreal. Such as it was, the religion of the Venetian masters is indeed as genuine as that of Fra Angelico or Albert Dürer. But it was the faith, not of humble men or of mystics, not of profound thinkers or ecstatic visionaries, so much as of courtiers and statesmen, of senators and merchants, for whom religion was a function among other functions, not a thing apart, not a source of separate and supreme vitality. Even as Christians, the Venetians lived a life separate from the rest of Italy. Their Church claimed independence of the see of Rome, and the enthusiasm of S. Francis was but faintly felt in the lagoons. Siena in her hour of need dedicated herself to Madonna; Florence in the hour of her regeneration gave herself to Christ; Venice remained under the ensign of the leonine S. Mark. While the cities of Lombardy and Central Italy ran wild with revivalism and religious panics, the Venetians maintained their calm, and never suffered piety to exceed the limits of political prudence. There is, therefore, no mystical exaltation in the faith depicted by her artists. That Tintoretto could have painted the saints in glory—a countless multitude of congregated forms, a sea whereof the waves are souls—as a background for State ceremony, shows the positive and realistic attitude of mind from which the most imaginative of Venetian masters started, when he undertook the most exalted of religious themes. Paradise is a fact, we may fancy Tintoretto reasoned; and it is easier to fill a quarter of an acre of canvas with a picture of Paradise than with any other subject, because the figures can be arranged in concentric tiers round Christ and Madonna in glory.
There is a little sketch by Guardi representing a masked ball in the Council Chamber where the "Paradise" of Tintoretto fills a wall. The men are in periwigs and long waistcoats; the ladies wear hoops, patches, fans, high heels, and powder. Bowing, promenading, intriguing, exchanging compliments or repartees, they move from point to point; while from the billowy surge of saints, Moses with the table of the law and the Magdalen with her adoring eyes of penitence look down upon them. Tintoretto could not but have foreseen that the world of living pettiness and passion would perpetually jostle with his world of painted sublimities and sanctities in that vast hall. Yet he did not on that account shrink from the task or fail in its accomplishment. Paradise existed: therefore it could be painted; and he was called upon to paint it here. If the fine gentlemen and ladies below felt out of harmony with the celestial host, so much the worse for them. In this practical spirit the Venetian masters approached religious art, and such was the sphere appointed for it in the pageantry of the Republic. When Paolo Veronese was examined by the Holy Office respecting some supposed irreverence in a sacred picture, his answers clearly proved that in planning it he had thought less of its spiritual significance than of its æsthetic effect.[[267]]
In the Ducal Palace the Venetian art of the Renaissance culminates; and here we might pause a moment to consider the difference between these paintings and the mediæval frescoes of the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena.[[268]] The Sienese painters consecrated all their abilities to the expression of thoughts, theories of political self-government in a free State, and devotional ideas. The citizen who read the lesson of the Sala della Pace was instructed in his duties to God and to the State. The Venetian painters, as we have seen, exalted Venice and set forth her acts of power. Their work is a glorification of the Republic; but no doctrine is inculcated, and no system of thought is conveyed to the mind through the eye. Daily pacing the saloons of the palace, Doge and noble were reminded of the greatness of the State they represented. They were not invited to reflect upon the duties of the governor and governed. Their imaginations were dilated and their pride roused by the spectacle of Venice seated like a goddess in her home. Of all the secular States of Italy the Republic of S. Mark's alone produced this mythical ideal of the body politic, self-sustained and independent of the citizens, compelling their allegiance, and sustaining them through generations with the life of its organic unity.[[269]] The artists had no reason to paint thoughts and theories. It was enough to set forth Venice and to illustrate her acts.