ARCHITECTURE AND ART
Venice is the finest city in the world. What could we wish for better than its Moorish architecture in white marble in the midst of the limpid waters, and under a sky truly magnificent; its people so gay, so heedless, so witty, and fond of its music; its gondolas, churches, and picture galleries; those good-looking and elegant women; the murmurs of the sea breaking upon the ear; the moonlights nowhere else to be seen; choruses of gondoliers, sometimes very correct, serenading under every window; cafés full of Turks and Armenians; fine and spacious theatres where you can hear Pasta and Donzelli; gorgeous palaces; a Punch and Judy show far above that of Gustave Malus; delicious oysters, which you can gather on the steps of every house; Cyprian wine at twenty-five sous a bottle; flowers in the heart of winter, and, in the month of February, a heat as great as that of our month of May?
GEORGE SAND.
Tintoretto, to be rightly understood, must be sought all over Venice—in the church as well as the Scuola di San Rocco; in the ‘Temptation of St. Anthony’ at St. Trovaso no less than in the Temptations of Eve and Christ; in the decorative pomp of the Scala del Senato, and in the Paradisal vision of the Scala del Gran Consiglio. Yet, after all, there is one of his most characteristic moods, to appreciate which fully we return to the Madonna dell’ Orto. I have called him ‘the painter of impossibilities.’ At rare moments he rendered them possible by sheer imaginative force.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
THE BIRTH OF VENETIAN ART
Venice ... rose from a lowly and troublous origin to heights of dazzling grandeur. When the barbarians of the North began their incursions and devastations into Italy in the fifth century, the inhabitants of that part of the Peninsula which was called Venetia fled from the peril to the islands rising in the lagoons of the Adriatic, where they found peace, safety, and liberty.... The inhospitable nature of their new home provided the refugees with but two elements only—and those the most indeterminate and universal—sky and sea. All the rest, all that we see to-day, has been artificially formed by the hand of man, who excluded vegetation, animals, every semblance of living things, and created for himself a world of stone, a landscape of architecture, and perspective. He has willed that this shall of itself be beautiful, not from any assistance from Nature, but by force of art and riches; not a collection of monuments, but one single monument in itself, and that so sublime and lasting as to admit of no comparison. The marvel which here strikes the spectator has no other example, for Venice is altogether the work of human art. An art, too, which is both poetry and history, and when we think of the history of those Venetians who became lords of a mighty commerce and conquerors of provinces, we see, as by an invincible law spreading out before our imagination, the marble mansions around the Piazza and along the Grand Canal; we see through the streets of the city a people proud of the wisdom of their statesmen and of the creations of their painters; we think of the golden Basilica, of the Palace of the Doges; we evoke the shapes of Titian, of Paolo Veronese, of Tintoretto.... The art of painting arose in Italy in the Trecento. This art, of slower growth than either architecture or sculpture in Venice, only flourished there well on in the fifteenth century. It must not, however, be concluded from this that painting was unknown in the early days of Venetian life, for leaving aside the question as to whether the first mosaicists were Byzantines or Venetians, it is certain that the art of colours was displayed with admirable feeling in the mosaics of St. Mark’s. In the Basilica, which lifts itself to heaven like a sublime hymn and blends in divine fulness Greek harmony with Eastern splendour, may be found the school of Venetian painters, the source of their inspiration, the golden book wherein is entered the pedigree of Venetian art. The colours sparkle, flash, and throw lightning gleams on to that building bright with matchless beauty. Mind and eye are alike filled with amazement and admiration at the sight of the many-hued marbles, the mosaics, and the gold flung round in regal profusion. Thus, in this atmosphere of light, like a serene flower, Venetian painting arose, warm and vivid in colour even when cold and lifeless in expression.
POMPEO MOLMENTI.
Translated by Alethea Wiel.