Beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the
earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind
of awe, that we may see it far away; a multitude of pillars and white
domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of colored light; a treasure
heap, it seems, partly of gold and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl,
hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair
mosaic and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and
delicate as ivory--sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm-leaves
and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and
fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless
network of buds and plumes; and in the midst of it the solemn forms of
angels, sceptered, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other
across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the
golden ground through the leaves beside them--interrupted and dim,
like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden
when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago.
[Footnote 39: From "The Stones of Venice," Vol. II.]
And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated
stones--jasper and porphyry and deep-green serpentine spotted with
flakes of snow, and marbles that half refuse and half yield to the
sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow,
as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure
undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals
rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting
leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and
ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a
continuous chain of language and of life--angels, and the signs of
heaven, and the labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the
earth; and above these another range of glittering pinnacles, mixt
with white arches edged with scarlet flowers--a confusion of delight,
amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their
breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue
field covered with stars: until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests
of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into
the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the
breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and
the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst.
Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval!
There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for instead
of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the
bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle
among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their
living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less
lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years.
And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath it? You
may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St.
Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance
brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and
poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the
porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay,
the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats, not "of them
that sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the venders of toys and
caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is
almost a continuous line of cafés, where the idle Venetians of the
middle classes lounge and read empty journals; in its center the
Austrian bands play during the time of vespers their martial music
jarring with the organ notes--the march drowning the miserere and the
sullen crowd thickening round them--a crowd which if it had its will
would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of
the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes,
unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and
unregarded children--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of
desperation and stony depravity and their throats hoarse with
cursing--gamble and fight and snarl and sleep, hour after hour,
clashing their bruised _centesimi_ upon the marble ledges of the
church porch. And the images of Christ and his angels look down upon
it continually.
That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of
this, let us turn aside under the portico which looks toward the sea,
and passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean
d'Acre,[40] we shall find the gate of the baptistery: let us enter
there. The heavy door closes behind us instantly; and the light and
the turbulence of the Piazzetta are together shut out by it.
[Footnote 40: More commonly known as Acre, a seaport on the Palestine
coast, captured by Crusaders in 1104, by Saladin in 1187, and
recaptured by the Crusaders in 1191. It was thenceforth held by the
Christians for exactly one hundred years, when it became the last
Christian stronghold in Palestine to yield. In 1797 Acre was
successfully defended by Sir Sidney Smith against Napoleon.]
We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted not with arches, but with small
cupolas starred with gold and checkered with gloomy figures: in the
center is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs; a small figure
of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light, that
glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high
in the wall--and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing
that it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb
indeed: for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window,
low-roofed and curtained; so that it might seem, but that it has some
height above the pavement, to have been drawn toward the window, that
the sleeper might be wakened early--only there are two angels who have
drawn the curtain back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look
also and thank that gentle light that rests upon his forehead forever,
and dies away upon his breast.
The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows
right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a
tower; the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal
cap. The rest of the features are singularly small and delicate, the
lips sharp--perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the
natural lines; but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep
serenity upon the whole countenance. The roof of the canopy above has
been blue, filled with stars; beneath, in the center of the tomb on
which the figure rests, is a seated figure of the Virgin, and the
border of it all around is of flowers and soft leaves, growing rich
and deep as if in a field in summer.
It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo; a man early great among the great of
Venice, and early lost. She chose him for her king in his thirty-sixth
year; he died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to
which we owe half of what we know of her former fortunes.
Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it is of rich
mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble; and its walls are of
alabaster, but worn and shattered and darkly stained with age, almost
a ruin--in places the slabs of marble have fallen away altogether, and
the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents: but all beautiful--the
ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands and channeled
zones of the alabaster and the time stains on its translucent masses
darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the color of seaweed
when the sun strikes on it through deep sea....
Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his
rest, let us enter the church, itself. It is lost in still deeper
twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before
the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us
a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a cross, and divided into
shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light
enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and
there a ray or two from some far-away casement wanders into the
darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of
marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors along the floor. What
else there is of light is from torches, of silver lamps, burning
ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels: the roof sheeted with
gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at
every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the
glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as
we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head,
a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into
another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mixt together;
dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds
that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from
vases of crystal: the passions and the pleasures of human life
symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes
of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the
Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone;
sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with
doves beneath its arms and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet;
but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church
before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of the
apse. And altho in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when the
mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure
traced in faint lines upon their marble--a woman standing with her
eyes raised to heaven, and the inscription above her "Mother of
God"--she is not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is
first seen, and always, burning in the center of the temple; and every
dome and hollow of its room has the figure of Christ in the utmost
height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment.
Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people. At
every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various
shrines, and solitary worshipers scattered through the darker places
of the church--evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and for the
most part profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number of
the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed
prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures: but the step of
the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St.
Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in
which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian
porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and
then, rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate
kiss and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which
the lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church as if
comforted....
It was in the hearts of the old Venetian people far more than a place
of worship. It was at once a type of the redeemed Church of God, and
a scroll for the written Word of God. It was to be to them, both an
image of the Bride, all glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold;
and the actual Table of the Law and the Testimony, written within and
without. And whether honored as the Church or as the Bible, was it not
fitting that neither the gold nor the crystal should be spared in the
adornment of it; that, as the symbol of the Bride, the building of the
wall thereof should be of jasper, and the foundations of it garnished
with all manner of precious stones; and that, as the channel of the
Word, that triumphant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of
it--"I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all
riches?" And shall we not look with changed temper down the long
perspective of St. Mark's Place toward the sevenfold gates and glowing
domes of its temple, when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts
of it were lifted above the pavement of the populous square? Men met
there from all countries of the earth, for traffic or for pleasure;
but, above the crowd swaying forever to and fro in the restlessness of
avarice or thirst of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the
temple, attesting to them, whether they would hear or whether they
would forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchantman might
buy without a price, and one delight better than all others, in the
word and the statutes of God.