Having visited every corner of the palace, and heard the name given for every apartment, we asked for the private rooms in which the Doge slept and ate, which his family occupied. There were none. A private covered way led from these rooms to an adjoining palace, assigned for the private residence of the Doge. The council were too jealous to allow him to occupy the palace of the republic, except for the purposes of the state.
At other times, turning to the right, when we leave our canal, we are rowed up the Canale Grande to the Accademia delle Belle Arti, to feast our eyes on the finest works of Titian. The picture usually considered the chef-d’œuvre of this artist, the Martyrdom of St. Peter the Hermit, has, for the purpose of being copied, been removed from the dark niche in which it is almost lost in the church of the Saints Giovanni and Paolo, and is here. The subject is painful, but conceived with great power. A deep forest, in which the holy man is overtaken by his pursuers, sheds its gloom over the picture; his attendant flies, the most living horror depicted on his face; the saint has fallen, cut down by the sword of the soldier; an angel is descending from above, and, opening heaven, sheds the only light that irradiates the scene. It is very fine; but in spite of the celestial messenger, there is wanting that connecting link with Heaven,—the rapture of faith in the sufferer’s countenance, which alone makes pictures of martyrdom tolerable.
I was struck by the last picture painted by the venerable artist—Mary visiting the Tomb of Jesus. I was told that I ought not to admire it; yet I could not help doing so: there was something impressive in the mingled awe and terror in Mary’s face, when she found the body of Jesus gone.
The Marriage at Cana, by Paul Veronese, adorns these walls, removed from the refectory of the suppressed Convent of San Giorgio Maggiore. It is the finest specimen of the feasts which this artist delighted to paint; bringing together, on a large scale, groups of high-born personages, accompanied by attendants, and surrounded by a prodigality of objects of architecture, dress, ornaments, and all the apparatus of Patrician luxury. It is filled, Lanzi tells us, with portraits of princes and illustrious men then living.
We turned from the splendour of the feast to the more noble beauty of Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin—a picture I look at much oftener, and with far greater pleasure, than at the more celebrated Martyrdom. The Virgin, in her simplicity and youth; in the mingled dignity and meekness of her mien, as she is about to ascend the steps towards the High Priest, is quite lovely; the group of women looking at her, are inimitably graceful: there is an old woman sitting at the foot of the steps, marvellous from the vivacity and truth of her look and attitude. In another large apartment is the Assumption of Titian. The upper part is indeed glorious. The Virgin is rapt in a paradisiacal ecstacy as she ascends, surrounded by a galaxy of radiant beings, whose faces are beaming with love and joy, to live among whom were in itself Elysium. Such a picture, and the “Paradiso” of Dante as a commentary, is the sublimest achievement of Catholicism. Not, indeed, as a commentary did Dante write, but as the originator of much we see. The Italian painters drank deep at the inspiration of his verses when they sought to give a visible image of Heaven and the beatitude of the saints, on their canvass.
There are other and other rooms, all filled with paintings of merit. One hall contains the earlier productions of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. The genius and the elevated piety of these painters give expression to the countenances; but the dry colouring, the want of foreshortening, the absence of grace everywhere except in the faces—which are often touchingly beautiful—all exhibit the infancy of the art.
The Academy contains also a hall for statues; in which the glossy marble of Canova’s Hebe looks, I am sorry to say, shrunk and artificial, beside the mere plaster casts of the nobler works of the Ancients.
LETTER VIII.
Chiesa de’ Frari.—San Giorgio Maggiore.—Santa Maria della Salute.—Lido.—The Giudecca.—The Fondamenti Nuovi.—The Islands.—The Armenian Convent.
Venice, September.
There are three churches here in particular, which we have visited several times, with interest; the most venerable, the Westminster Abbey of Venice, is the church of Santa Maria de’ Frari, built in the middle of the thirteenth century. Every portion of this vast and noble edifice is filled with tombs and pictures, exciting respect and admiration. Many a Doge is here buried; and many monuments, some mausoleums in size and magnificence, some equestrian, some mere urns, Gothic or of the middle ages, crowd the walls. With more veneration we looked on the unadorned stone, inscribed with the honoured name of Titian. He died on the 9th September, 1575, at the age of ninety-nine, of the plague, and the visitation of this calamity caused the citizens to consign him hastily to the grave, without thought of marking it by any monument or inscription, so that the spot was almost forgotten. The mortuary registers of the church of S. Tommaso prove that he then died, and was here buried, and his name with a few words conjoined have been chiselled in the pavement. The republic of Venice projected a monument, which the troubled times and invasion of Napoleon prevented their accomplishing. Canova made a model subsequently; but, dying before he could execute it, the marble was entrusted to various sculptors, and is erected in his own honour in this church on the side opposite to the spot where Titian lies. There is something very impressive in the idea of this monument—a procession of figures entering the half-opened door of a dark tomb.