SECTION XVIII
Torcello—S. Francesco del Deserto
THE poor and almost desolate island of Torcello lies N.E. of Murano and may be reached by steamer, or by gondola with two rowers.
The ride by gondola is a delightful experience. As we are urged along the channels by the stalwart gondoliers with rhythmic strokes, lagoons, islands and mainland villages unfold themselves to our sight. A little group of cottages amid some poplars to the N.W. is all that remains of the once great and rich Roman city of Altinum. To the N.E., among the islands and groups of trees that seem to float mysteriously poised in the soft grey vaporous atmosphere, is S. Francesco del Deserto, with its cypress groves and solitary stone pine, where St Francis bade his little sisters the birds keep silence while he prayed (p. [73]).
The tall, square campanile of Torcello has long been in view. We pass St James of the Marshes (S. Giacomo della Palude), now a powder magazine, then Burano, and at length enter a canal, pass under a decayed bridge,[119] and are landed at the edge of a sloping plot of grass, once the busy market-place of an important city. The cathedral of S. Maria has been twice restored or rebuilt (864 and 1088), but much of the material and probably the apse of the original basilica still survive in the actual fabric. Less than fifteen years since could be seen the old episcopal throne and semi-circular tiers of seats worn by generations of Christian pastors[120] as they sat amid their clergy facing the people. But the seats have been rebuilt and the throne partly restored with ill-fitting slabs of cheap Carrara marble. We remember visiting the cathedral shortly after the renewal with a young Italian architect, who, to our expression of pained surprise, replied, Ma signore, era in disordine (but, sir, it was so untidy). There is no disordine now in the scraped and restored interior. Many of the original marbles, with beautiful and virile designs, however, still remain in the chancel; and in the facings of the pulpit stairs, hewn into blocks and placed in position by the old builders with small regard for continuity of design, we may perhaps gaze on the very stones brought from the mainland at the time of the great migration under Bishop Paul. The restored thirteenth-century mosaic of the Last Judgment on the W. wall, with its ingenuous realism and grim humour, is unrelated in style to anything in St Mark’s, and is the analogue of many a sculptured Gothic west front in northern Europe. The mosaic in the apse, the Virgin and the Twelve Apostles, with an Annunciation on the spandrils, is Byzantine in style, and believed by Saccardo to be late seventh-century work.
We note the old stone shutters of the windows as we pass to the campanile, which lost one-third of its height by a lightning stroke in 1640. A magnificent view of the lagoons and the mainland is obtained from the summit. The remarkable little church of S. Fosca, with its picturesque portico round the apse, is Byzantine in plan, and was in existence before 1011. It was restored in 1247 and again later. The cupola has disappeared and is replaced by a low tiled roof, but the four arches which carried the old dome still remain. A rudely-carved font of alabaster is worth notice. On our way back we may touch at the island of S. Francesco del Deserto. The friars give a gracious welcome, but true followers of the poverello that they are, will accept no gifts in return save reverence and courtesy. A little church and monastery were built around the spot where St Francis prayed, and a small brotherhood have for seven centuries kept unbroken the traditions of their gentle father.
SECTION XIX
S. Nicolo del Lido
FROM the Riva degli Schiavoni, and from any pier on the Grand Canal, steamers at frequent intervals will carry the traveller to the Lido di Malamocco, popularly known as the lido, one of the narrow sandbanks which, aided by the wit and industry of man, have preserved Venice from destruction by the patiently eroding, and at times, fiercely aggressive waves of the Adriatic. In earliest times it was covered with pine forest, and many an ancient Doge went hawking there. The Adriatic side, a line of bare, desolate sand dunes, visited only by a few lone fishermen when Byron used to take his daily rides on horseback to and fro between the fort and Malamocco, is now the most frequented bathing-station in North Italy. Along the shore “more barren than the billows of the ocean,” Byron and Shelley rode one evening, and as the sun was sinking held that pregnant talk
“Concerning God, Freewill and Destiny,”
which is immortalised in Julian and Maddalo.
As the vessel steams along St Mark’s Channel, will be seen on the left the once fair island of S. Elena, where the ashes of the mother of Constantine, the discoverer of the True Cross, are reputed to rest, and where many famous scions of the Giustiniani and Loredano families lie buried. But Vulcan has now laid his sooty hand upon it. The old monastery walls with their romantic investure of the erba della Madonna and other mural plants, the cloister with its gardens and tangle of rose-bushes, are now demolished to give place to an iron-foundry; the church, once so magnificent within that it seemed a miracle of sumptuous decoration,[121] is now a machine-room (magazzino da macchine) and tall smoke-stacks smirch the sky.