The rooms which immortalize Pellico's captivity are lofty and airy; they command a splendid view; they are the prison for a poet; there would not be much to say about them, admitting the tyranny and absurdity: but the death sentence for a speculative opinion! The Moravian[102] dungeons! Ten years taken from life, youth and talent! And the gnats, those nasty animals by which I myself am being eaten up at the Hôtel de l'Europe, hardened though I be by the weather and the mosquitoes of Florida! For the rest, I have often been worse lodged than was Pellico in his belvedere in the Ducal Palace, notably in the prefecture of the doges of the French Police, where I was obliged to climb up on a table to enjoy the light.
The author of Francesca da Rimini thought of Zanze in his gaol; I, in mine, sang of a young girl whom I had just seen die. I was very anxious to know what became of Pellico's little guardian. I have set persons to make researches: if I find out anything, I will tell you.
Venice, September 1833.
A gondola landed me at the Frari, where we French, accustomed as we are to the Grecian or Gothic exteriors of our own churches, are not much struck by those outsides of basilicas in brick, ungrateful and common to the eye; but, in the inside, the harmony of the lines and the disposition of the masses produce a simplicity and a calmness of composition that enchant one.
The tombs in the Frari, placed in the lateral walls, decorate the building without obstructing it The magnificence of the marbles blazes forth on every side, charming foliage bears witness to the finish of the old Venetian sculpture. On one of the squares of the pavement in the nave are these words:
Here Lies Titian, the Rival of Zeuxis and Apelles
This stone is opposite one of the painter's master-pieces. Canova has his gorgeous sepulchre not far from Titian's flag-stone; this sepulchre is the replica of the monument which he had conceived for Titian himself and which he executed afterwards for the Archduchess Maria Christina[103]. The remains of the sculptor of the Hebe and the Magdalen are not all collected in this work: thus Canova inhabits the representation of a tomb made by himself, not for himself, which tomb is but his semi-cenotaph.
From the Frari, I proceeded to the Manfrini Gallery. The portrait of Ariosto is speaking. Titian painted his mother, an old matron of the people, squalid and ugly: the artist's pride shows itself in the exaggeration of this woman's years and poverty.
At the Academy of Fine Arts, I hurried fast to the picture of the Assumption, discovered by Cicognara[104]: ten large male figures at the bottom of the picture; observe the man rapt in ecstasy on the left, watching Mary. The Virgin, above this group, rises in the centre of a semicircle of cherubs; there is a multitude of admirable faces in that glory: a woman's head, on the right, at the point of the crescent, of unspeakable beauty; two or three heavenly spirits flung horizontally across the sky, in the bold, picturesque manner of Tintoretto. I am not sure that a standing angel does not experience some feeling of a too terrestrial love. The Virgin is largely proportioned; she is clad in a red drapery; her blue scarf floats in the air; her eyes are raised towards the Eternal Father, who appeared at the zenith. Four positive colours, brown, green, red and blue, cover the picture: the aspect of the whole is sombre, the character unideal, but of an incomparable truth and natural vivacity. Nevertheless, I prefer the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, by the same painter, which hangs in the same room.
Facing the Assumption and very cleverly lighted is Tintoretto's Miracle of St. Mark, a vigorous scene which seems dug out of the canvas with the chisel and mallet rather than the brush.