The tower of St. Mark, the cupolas of St. Mary, and little groves of pinnacles and minarets which rise from all quarters of the town, were defined like so many black points upon the vivid background of the horizon. The colour of the heavens changed through a wonderful gradation of softening tints, from crimson to blue; and the water, calm and limpid, faithfully reflected the rainbow tints of colour. Below the town, the waves looked exactly like a large mirror of red copper. Never had I seen Venice so beautiful, so fairy-like. This black shadow thrown between the sky and the glowing waters, as though in a lake of fire, seemed one of those sublime aberrations of architecture which the poet of the Apocalypse saw, in his visions, floating on the shores of Patmos, when he dreamed his new Jerusalem, and compared her to a bride.
Little by little the bright colours faded, the outlines became more massive, the depths more mysterious. Venice assumed the aspect of an immense fleet, then of a lofty wood of cypresses, into which the canals flowed like high roads of silver sand. At such moments I delight in contemplating the distance. When the outlines become vague, when every object is trembling in the mist, when my imagination may disport in an immense field of conjecture and caprice, when, by merely half closing the eyes, one can in fancy destroy a city, turn it into a forest, a camp, or a cemetery, when I can metamorphose the high roads, white with dust, into peaceful rivers, and the rivulets, winding so serpent-like down the dark verdure of the hills, into rapid torrents, then it is that I really enjoy Nature, I play with her, I reign over her, with one glance I possess her and people her with my own fantasies.
GEORGE SAND.
MAY IN VENICE
May 17th, 4 p.m.—Looking east the water is calm, and reflects the sky and vessels, with this peculiarity: the sky, which is pale blue, is in its reflection of the same kind of blue, only a little deeper; but the vessels’ hulls, which are black, are reflected in pale sea-green—i.e., the natural colour of the water under sunlight—while the orange masts of the vessels, wet with a recent shower, are reflected without change of colour, only not quite so bright as above. One ship has a white, another a red stripe (I ought to have said running horizontally along the gunwales), of these the water takes no notice.
What is curious, a boat passes across with white and dark figures, the water reflects the dark ones in green, and misses out all the white; this is chiefly owing to the dark images being opposed to the bright reflected sky.
A boat swinging near the quay casts an apparent shadow on the rippled water. This appearance I find to be owing altogether to the increased reflective power of the water in the shaded space; for the farther sides of the ripples therein take the deep pure blue of the sky, coming strongly dark on the pale green, and the nearer sides take the pale grey of the cloud, hardly darker than the green.
JOHN RUSKIN.
VENICE IN AUTUMN
To this black, shell-encrusted stake