“Strange how there is nothing like St. Mark’s in Venice, nothing of the same kind as the great church. It would have seemed as if, standing here for so many centuries, and always profoundly loved and honored, it would almost of necessity have influenced the minds of the generations of architects, and shown its power in their works. But there seems to be no sign of any such influence. It stands alone.”
Dr. Brooks noted that Venice had “two aspects, one sensuous and self-indulgent, the other lofty, spiritual, and even severe. Both aspects,” he continues, “are in its history and both are also in its art. Titian often represents the former. The loftier, nobler Tintoretto gives us the second. There is something in his greatest pictures, as, for instance, in the Crucifixion, at St. Rocco, which no other artist approaches. The lordly composition gives us an impression of intellectual grasp and vigor. The foreground group of prostrate women is full of a tenderness. The rich pearly light, which floods the centre, glows with a solemn picturesqueness, and the great Christ, who hangs like a benediction over the whole, is vocal with a piety which no other picture in the world displays. And the Presentation of the Virgin, in Santa Maria dell’Orto, is the consummate presentation of that beautiful subject, its beauty not lost in its majesty.”
Of other pictures Dr. Brooks said:—
“In the Academia there is the sunshine of three hundred years ago. Paris Bordone’s glowing picture of the Fisherman who brings the Ring of St. Mark to the Doge, burned like a ray of sunlight on the wall. Carpaccio’s delightful story of St. Ursula brought the old false standards of other days back to one’s mind, but brought them back lustrous with the splendor of summers that seemed forever passed, but are perpetually here. Tintoretto’s Adam and Eve was, as it always is, the most delightful picture in the gallery, and Pordenone’s great St. Augustine seemed a very presence in the vast illuminated room.”
Tennyson loved best, of all the pictures in Venice, a Bellini,—a beautiful work, in the Church of Il Redentore; and he was deeply impressed by the “Presentation of the Virgin,” from Tintoretto, in the Church of the Madonna dell’Orto. “He was fascinated by St. Mark’s,” writes the poet’s son, “by the Doge’s Palace and the Piazza, and by the blaze of color in water and sky. He climbed the Campanile, and walked to the library where he could scarcely tear himself away from the Grimani Breviary.”
Venice, though not containing any single gallery comparable with the Pitti and the Uffizi, is still singularly rich in treasures of art, and rich in legend and story. The school of encrusted architecture is nowhere so wonderfully represented as here, and it is only in this architecture that a perfect scheme of color decoration is possible. In all the world there is no such example of encrusted architecture as that revealed in St. Mark’s. It is a gleaming mass of gold, opal, ruby, and pearl; with alabaster pillars carved in designs of palm and pomegranate and lily; with legions of sculptured angels looking down; with altars of gold ablaze with scarlet flowers and snowy lilies, while clouds of mystic incense fill the air. One most impressive place is the baptistery, where is the tomb of St. Mark and also that of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, who died at the age of forty-six, having been chosen Doge ten years before. His tomb is under a window in the baptistery, and the design is that of his statue in bronze, lying on a couch, while two angels at the head and the feet hold back the curtains.
The sarcophagus that is said to contain the body of St. Mark is of the richest description, encrusted with gold and jewels on polished ebony and marble. There is a legend that after St. Mark had seen the people of Aguilia well grounded in religion he was called to Rome by St. Peter; but before setting off he took with him in a boat the holy Bishop Hennagoras and sailed to the marshes of Venice. The boat was driven by wind to a small island called Rialto, on which were some houses, and St. Mark was suddenly snatched into ecstasy and heard the voice of an angel saying, “Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.”
There is also a legend that in the great conflagration which destroyed Venice in 976 A.D., the body of St. Mark was lost and no one knew where to find it. Then the pious Doge and the people gave themselves to fasting and prayer, and assembled in the church, asking that the place be revealed them. It was on the 25th of June that the assemblage took place. Suddenly one of the pillars of the church trembled, and opened to disclose the sarcophagus,—a chest of bronze. The legend goes on to say that St. Mark stretched his hand out through the side and that a noble, Dolfini by name, drew a gold ring off the finger.
The place where this miracle is said to have been wrought is now marked by the Altar of the Cross.
Ruskin declares that “a complete understanding of the sanctity of color is the key to European art.” Nowhere is this sanctity of color so felt as at San Marco. The church is like the temple of the New Jerusalem.