Venice and Its Story

by Thomas Okey

We pass through the Porta della Carta, enter the Cortile and turn to examine Riccio’s famous statues of Adam and Eve opposite the Giant’s Staircase. The inner façade was begun on the E. side by Riccio and continued by Pietro Lombardo and Scarpagnino. The two cisterns of bronze are fine Renaissance work of 1556-57.

We ascend the stately Scala dei Giganti and pass Sansovino’s statues of Mars and Neptune at the top. Here, between the two pagan deities, the later Doges were crowned. The Doge stood surrounded by the electors, and was acclaimed by the people below in the courtyard; a line of ducal guards kept the staircase.

We mount[94] the Scala d’ Oro to the chambers where the rulers of the Republic held their meetings. Nearly the whole of the architectural decorations and paintings we shall see are later than 1577, when the disastrous fire occurred which destroyed the priceless works of Gentile da Fabriano, Vittore Pisano and the Bellini. With few exceptions they are all by the later Venetian masters, characterised by vigour and breadth of treatment rather than careful execution and reverent feeling. It was a time when the rulers of Venice, their initiative and courage gone, lived on the traditions of a great past, for Lepanto was but a magnificent episode. In few cases was the artist contemporary with the events he depicted. The paintings do, however, enable us to realise the costumes and architecture of the declining Venice of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They have suffered much at the hands of the restorer. When Goethe was examining Titian’s Death of Peter Martyr in S. Zanipolo in 1790, a Dominican friar addressed him and asked if he would like to see the artists at work above. There in the monastery he found an academy of picture restorers established by the Republic working under a director on the paintings of the Ducal Palace. In 1846 Ruskin saw a picture by Paul Veronese, lying on the floor of a room in the palace, in process of restoration. The restorer was working on the head of a white horse, using a brush fixed at the end of a five-foot stick which he dipped into a common house-painter’s pot.

In the vestibule (Atrio Quadrato) is a fine ceiling-painting by Tintoretto, Doge Lorenzo Priuli receiving the Sword of State from the Hands of Justice, one of a series of allegorical and devotional pictures, the main feature being the portrait of the Doge, which we shall meet with again and again in the decoration of the palace. The walls are hung with portraits of Procurators of St Mark by the same master, who was their official portrait painter. To the R. is the Hall of the Four Doors (Sala delle Quattro Porte), designed by Palladio. On the R. wall is a late work by Titian, Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith, a beautiful creation: the figures on either side are by his nephew, Marco Vecelli. Historical and allegorical scenes cover the remaining walls.

The door opposite the entrance leads to a small ante-room (Anti-Collegio) containing some of the most charming pictures in the palace—Tintoretto’s Ariadne and Bacchus, Minerva repelling Mars, and Mercury with the Graces, painted 1578. Sensuous beauty and poetry of line are their main qualities. A famous painting by Veronese, The Rape of Europa, and Jacopo Bassano’s Return of Jacob are on the wall opposite the windows. A foreshadowing of modern naturalism in the treatment of the sheep and horse in the last picture is especially noteworthy. We now enter the room where the Signory received foreign ambassadors (Sala del Collegio). Over the entrance is a portrait of Doge Andrea Gritti kneeling before the Virgin; over the door of exit, the Marriage of St Catherine, with a ceremonial portrait of Doge Francesco Donà, elaborated with the usual accessories, the figure of the Doge’s name saint, in this case St Francis, is common to all these compositions; to the L. is a portrait of Doge Nicolo da Ponte, with the Virgin in glory; farther on, Doge Alvise Mocenigo adoring the Saviour. All these are by Tintoretto; the figures of the Virgin and of St Catherine in the second and third of these pictures are from his favourite model and in his most gracious manner. Over the throne, Doge Sebastiano Venier returning Thanks for the Victory of Lepanto, is by Veronese. The ceiling, designed by Ant. da Ponte and painted by Veronese in his grandiose style, is considered by Ruskin to be the finest in the palace. Parallel to the last two rooms is the Senate hall (Sala del Senato). The paintings here are of but secondary interest: ceremonial portraits of Doges by Palma Giovane, Marco Vecelli and Tintoretto. The central panel of the gorgeous ceiling—Venice, Queen of the Sea—is by Domenico Tintoretto, son of Jacopo. A door R. of the dais gives access to the vestibule of the Doge’s private chapel (Anti-Chiesetta). Here are the two pictures painted by Tintoretto for the Camerlenghi in 1552; over the entrance door, SS. Jerome and Andrew; opposite, St Louis of Toulouse and St George. Two early Madonnas in the chapel are doubtfully attributed to the schools of Boccacino and Bellini. Christ in Limbo and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea are attributed by Mr Berenson to Previtali. These and other paintings in the chapel afford fruitful themes for critical ingenuity.

Returning through the Senate-hall we cross the Sala delle Quattro Porte, and traverse a small ante-room to the Hall of the Ten (Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci). The ceiling pictures are by Veronese and his pupils. An oval panel, The Elder and the Fair Lady, is a famous painting by the master. We enter next the ante-room of the three Inquisitors of State (Sala della Bussola), formerly a guardroom occupied by the captain of the police and by the guards of the Ten. An opening in the wall was formerly decorated with a lion’s head in marble (bocca del leone). Here secret denunciations were placed from the outside. The delators would ascend the Scala dei Censori and cast their accusations in the opening on the L. at the top of the staircase. The custom of receiving secret information was common in the Republic. To this day similar bocche di leoni remain in various parts of Venice—on the Zattere for denunciations of breaches of sanitary regulations with the inscription: D̃ÑCIE CONTRA LA SANITA PER IL SESTIERE DE OSSODVRO; another in front of St Martin’s Church near the arsenal invites secret denunciations against blasphemers and brawlers in churches.

To the R. of the Sala della Bussola is a small chamber (Stanza dei tre Capi del Consiglio) where sat the three chiefs of the Ten. The room contains a simple, refreshing picture by Catena, Doge Leonardo Loredano kneeling and presented by St Mark to the Virgin, a St Christopher by Bonifazio, a Pietà by Giovanni Bellini, hard and realistic in treatment, and portraits of three Senators, by Tintoretto. Returning to the Sala della Bussola (the Sala dei Inquisitori di Stato is not shown), we descend the Scala dei Censori to the lower floor. Here we enter the huge Hall of the Great Council (Sala del Maggior Consiglio), on which the later artists of the Republic lavished all their powers of sumptuous decoration. The entrance wall over the throne is covered by Tintoretto’s famous Paradiso—a tremendous conception which at first almost dazes the spectator by its daring, then leaves a profound impression of the master’s gigantic but unchastened power. After patient contemplation, groups and individuals stand out from the bewildering crowd of figures—Christ and the Virgin in glory; the Archangels; the Intelligences that preside over the heavenly spheres; the Evangelists with their symbols; prophets, saints and martyrs, an exultant host, treated with originality and force, sometimes even with tender grace. But the composition is too vast; it lacks symmetry, and Domenico’s feebler hand is all too evident in parts. The eye wearies of seeing, and none but admirers of the piu terribile cervello che abbia mai avuto la pittura[95] will care to read the canvas in all its details. Tintoretto was seventy-five years of age when commissioned to execute the work. Ruskin estimated the number of figures to be not less than 500. To L. and R. the walls are filled with scenes from the heroic times of Venetian history. Here again the crowded canvases, the conscious straining after effect weary the spectator, and few are they who do not soon turn from detailed examination of the pictures, to rest eye and brain on the beautiful scene that opens out from the loggia on the side of the hall—the island of S. Giorgio; the Giudecca; the waters laughing in the sun; the peaceful lagoon; the Lido far away with its line of trees. The series of paintings on the N. wall represent scenes, mainly legendary, in the story of Pope Alexander III. and the Emperor Barbarossa, mostly by inferior artists. The S. wall is decorated with scenes in the epic story of the conquest of Constantinople under Enrico Dandolo; a single canvas, at the end of the hall opposite the Paradiso, by Veronese, has for its subject the return of Doge Contarini after the defeat of the Genoese at Chioggia. The panels of the magnificent ceiling were painted by Veronese, Tintoretto, Palma Giovane and F. Bassano. Veronese’s Apotheosis of Venice and Tintoretto’s Doge Nic. da Ponte with the Senate and envoys from conquered cities paying homage to Venice are stupendous works of their kind. On the frieze are portraits, mostly imaginary, of seventy-six Doges, by Tintoretto and his assistants, the place of Marino Falier being filled by a black tablet with the inscription: Hic est locus Marini Faletri decapitati pro criminibus. A door to the R. leads to the Hall of the Scrutineers (Sala dello Scrutinio). This, which almost rivals the Hall of the Great Council for magnificence, was the chamber where the Doges and other officers of State were elected. The S. end is filled with an ambitious Last Judgment by Palma Giovane in which that very second-rate artist tried to emulate Tintoretto’s Paradise. The E. and W. walls are decorated with scenes in the history of Venice of small artistic merit. When Garibaldi was at the Ducal Palace his attention was arrested by the resemblance to himself of the figure of Admiral Sebastiano Venier in Vicentino’s Battle of Lepanto. Thirty-nine portraits of Doges complete the line from the Hall of the Great Council ending on the W. wall with Ludovico Manin. At the N. end is the monument to Doge Francesco Morosini.

We retrace our steps to the Scala dei Censori, beyond which is a suite of rooms, once the private apartments of the Doges, now used as an archæological museum. In the corridor are two fine allegorical pictures of St Mark’s Lion by Jacobello del Fiore and Carpaccio; and Bart. Buoni’s remarkable head of Francesco Foscari. The beautiful rooms with their gilded ceilings and fine chimney-pieces by the Lombardi, contain Greek, Roman and Venetian sculpture, Renaissance bronzes, coins, old maps and other objects, many of them of high merit but only of interest to the more leisured student. In the Stanza degli Stucchi are a voting urn from the Scuola della Carità, and another from the Great Council. Before he leaves this room the visitor should ask to be shown one of the most interesting paintings in the palace—an unrestored fresco by Titian of St Christopher, with a view of Venice in the bottom background, at the foot of the staircase leading up to the Doge’s chapel. The Piombi have long since disappeared owing to structural alterations; such of the Pozzi and other cells that are shown may well be left unvisited.