Walked princely shapes; some with an air

Like warriors; some like ladies fair

Listening ...

In supreme magnificence.’

This, which is a description of a dream of Babylon of old, by a living poet, is realized almost literally in modern Venice.

CHAPTER XXIII

I never saw palaces anywhere but at Venice. Those at Rome are dungeons compared to them. They generally come down to the water’s edge, and as there are canals on each side of them, you see them four-square. The views by Canaletti are very like, both for the effect of the buildings and the hue of the water. The principal are by Palladio, Longhena, and Sansovino. They are massy, elegant, well-proportioned, costly in materials, profuse of ornament. Perhaps if they were raised above the water’s edge on low terraces (as some of them are), the appearance of comfort and security would be greater, though the architectural daring, the poetical miracle would appear less. As it is, they seem literally to be suspended in the water.—The richest in interior decoration that I saw, was the Grimani Palace, which answered to all the imaginary conditions of this sort of thing. Aladdin might have exchanged his for it, and given his lamp into the bargain. The floors are of marble, the tables of precious stones, the chairs and curtains of rich silk, the walls covered with looking-glasses, and it contains a cabinet of invaluable antique sculpture, and some of Titian’s finest portraits. I never knew the practical amount to the poetical, or furniture seem to grow eloquent but in this instance. The rooms were not too large for comfort neither; for space is a consideration at Venice. All that it wanted of an Eastern Palace was light and air, with distant vistas of hill and grove. A genealogical tree of the family was hung up in one of the rooms, beginning with the founder in the ninth century, and ending with the present representative of it; and one of the portraits, by Titian, was of a Doge of the family, looking just like an ugly, spiteful old woman; but with a truth of nature, and a force of character that no one ever gave but he. I saw no other mansion equal to this. The Pisani is the next to it for elegance and splendour; and from its situation on the Grand Canal, it admits a flood of bright day through glittering curtains of pea-green silk, into a noble saloon, enriched with an admirable family-picture by Paul Veronese, with heads equal to Titian for all but the character of thought.

Close to this is the Barberigo Palace, in which Titian lived, and in which he died, with his painting-room just in the state in which he left it. It is hung round with pictures, some of his latest works, such as the Magdalen and the Salvator Mundi (which are common in prints), and with an unfinished sketch of St. Sebastian, on which he was employed at the time of his death. Titian was ninety-nine when he died, and was at last carried off by the plague. My guide who was enthusiastic on the subject of Venetian art, would not allow any falling-off in these latest efforts of his mighty pencil, but represented him as prematurely cut off in the height of his career. He knew, he said, an old man, who had died a year ago, at one hundred and twenty. The Venetians may still live to be old, but they do not paint like Titian! The Magdalen is imposing and expressive, but the colouring is tinted (quite different from Titian’s usual simplicity) and it has a flaccid, meretricious, affectedly lachrymose appearance, which I by no means like. There is a slabbery freedom or a stiff grandeur about most of these productions, which, I think, savoured of an infirm hand and eye, accompanied with a sense of it. Titian, it is said, thought he improved to the last, and wished to get possession of his former pictures, to paint them over again, upon broader and more scientific principles, as some authors have wished to re-write their works: there was a small model of him in wax, done by a contemporary artist in his extreme old age, shewn in London a year or two ago, with the black velvet cap, the green gown, and a white sleeve appearing from under it, against a pale, shrivelled hand. The arrangement of colouring was so truly characteristic, that it was probably dictated by himself. It may be interesting to artists to be told, that the room in the Barberigo Palace (said to be his painting-room) has nearly a southern aspect. There are some other indifferent pictures hanging in the room, by painters before his time, probably some that he had early in his possession, and kept longest for that reason. It is an event in one’s life to find one’s-self in Titian’s painting-room. Yet it did not quite answer to my expectations—a hot sun shone into the room, and the gondola in which we came was unusually close—neither did I stoop and kiss the stone which covers his dust, though I have worshipped him on this side of idolatry!

‘Ci giace il gran Titiano di Vecelli,

Emulator di Zeusi e di gl’Apelli.’