We have strolled to-day through most of the narrow streets between the Rialto and the San Marc. They are, more properly, alleys. You wind through them at sharp angles, turning constantly, from the interruption of the canals, and crossing the small bridges at every twenty yards. They are dark and cool; and no hoof of any description ever passing through them, the marble flags are always smooth and clean; and with the singular silence, only broken by the shuffling of feet, they are pleasant places to loiter in at noon-day, when the canals are sunny.
We spent a half hour on the Rialto. This is the only bridge across the grand canal, and connects the two main parts of the city. It is, as you see by engravings, a noble span of a single arch, built of pure white marble. You pass it, ascending the arch by a long flight of steps to the apex, and descending again to the opposite side. It is very broad, the centre forming a street, with shops on each side, with alleys outside these, next the parapet, usually occupied by idlers or merchants, probably very much as in the time of Shylock. Here are exposed the cases of shell-work and jewelry for which Venice is famous. The variety and cheapness of these articles are surprising. The Rialto has always been to me, as it is probably to most others, quite the core of romantic locality. I stopped on the upper stair of the arch, and passed my hand across my eyes to recall my idea of it, and realize that I was there. One is disappointed, spite of all the common sense in the world, not to meet Shylock and Antonio and Pierre.
"Shylock and the Moor
And Pierre cannot be swept or worn away,"
says Childe Harold; and that, indeed, is the feeling everywhere in these romantic countries. You cannot separate them from the characters with which poetry or history once peopled them.
At sunset we mounted into the tower of San Marc, to get a general view of the city. The gold-dust atmosphere, so common in Italy at this hour, was all over the broad lagunes and the far stretching city; and she lay beneath us, in the midst of a sea of light, an island far out into the ocean, crowned with towers and churches, and heaped up with all the splendors of architecture. The Friuli mountains rose in the north with the deep blue dyes of distance, breaking up the else level horizon; the shore of Italy lay like a low line-cloud in the west; the spot where the Brenta empties into the sea glowing in the blaze of the sunset. About us lay the smaller islands, the suburbs of the sea-city, and all among them, and up and down the Giudecca, and away off in the lagunes, were sprinkled the thousand gondolas, meeting and crossing in one continued and silent panorama. The Lido, with its long wall hemmed in the bay, and beyond this lay the wide Adriatic. The floor of San Marc's vast square was beneath, dotted over its many-colored marbles with promenaders, its cafés swarmed by the sitters outside, and its long arcades thronged. One of my pleasantest hours in Venice was passed here.
LETTER XXXIII.
PALACES—PALAZZO GRIMANI—OLD STATUARY—MALE AND FEMALE CHERUBS—THE BATH OF CLEOPATRA—TITIAN'S PALACE—UNFINISHED PICTURE OF THE GREAT MASTER—HIS MAGDALEN AND BUST—HIS DAUGHTER IN THE ARMS OF A SATYR—BEAUTIFUL FEMALE HEADS—THE CHURCHES OF VENICE—BURIAL-PLACES OF THE DOGES—TOMB OF CANOVA—DEPARTURE FOR VERONA, ETC.
We have passed a day in visiting palaces. There are some eight or ten in Venice, whose galleries are still splendid. We landed first at the stairs of the Palazzo Grimani, and were received by an old family servant, who sat leaning on his knees, and gazing idly into the canal. The court and staircase were ornamented with statuary, that had not been moved for centuries. In the ante-room was a fresco painting by Georgione, in which there were two female cherubs, the first of that sex I ever saw represented. They were beautifully contrasted with the two male cherubs, who completed the picture, and reminded me strongly of Greenough's group in sculpture. After examining several rooms, tapestried and furnished in such a style as befitted the palace of a Venetian noble, when Venice was in her glory, we passed on to the gallery. The best picture in the first room was a large one by Cigoli, the bath of Cleopatra. The four attendants of the fair Egyptian are about her, and one is bathing her feet from a rich vase. Her figure is rather a voluptuous one, and her head is turned, but without alarm, to Antony, who is just putting aside the curtain and entering the room. It is a piece of fine coloring, rather of the Titian school, and one of the few good pictures left by the English, who have bought up almost all the private galleries of Venice.
We stopped next at the stairs of the noble old Barberigo Palace, in which Titian lived and died. We mounted the decaying staircases, imagining the choice spirits of the great painter's time, who had trodden them before us, and (as it was for ages the dwelling of one of the proudest races of Venice) the beauty and rank that had swept up and down those worn slabs of marble on nights of revel, in the days when Venice was a paradise of splendid pleasure. How thickly come romantic fancies in such a place as this. We passed through halls hung with neglected pictures to an inner room, occupied only with those of Titian. Here he painted, and here is a picture half finished, as he left it when he died. His famous Magdalen, hangs on the wall, covered with dirt; and so, indeed, is everything in the palace. The neglect is melancholy. On a marble table stood a plaster bust of Titian, moulded by himself in his old age. It is a most noble head, and it is difficult to look at it, and believe he could have painted a picture which hangs just against it—his own daughter in the arms of a satyr. There is an engraving from it in one of the souvenirs; but instead of a satyr's head, she holds a casket in her hands, which, though it does not sufficiently account for the delight of her countenance, is an improvement upon the original. Here, too, are several slight sketches of female heads, by the same master. Oh how beautiful they are! There is one, less than the size of life, which I would rather have than his Magdalen.