THE GRAND CANAL. VI: FROM THE MOCENIGO PALACE TO THE MOLO, LOOKING TO
THE LEFT
Mr. W.D. Howells--A gondoliers' quarrel--Mr. Sargent's Diploma
picture--The Barbarigo family--Ruskin's sherry--Palace hotels--The
Venetian balcony.
The next palace, with dark-blue posts, gold-topped, and mural
inscriptions, also belonged to the Mocenigo, and here Giordano Bruno was
staying as a guest when he was betrayed by his host and burned as a
heretic. Then comes the dark and narrow Calle Mocenigo Casa Vecchia.
Next is the great massive palace, with the square and round porphyry
medallions, of the Contarini dalle Figure; the next, with the little
inquisitive lions, is the Lezze. After three more, one of which is in a
superb position at the corner, opposite the Foscari, and the third has a
fondamenta and arcade, we come to the great Moro-Lin, now an antiquity
store. Another little modest place between narrow calli, and the plain
eighteenth-century Grassi confronts us. The Campo of S. Samuele, with
its traghetto, church, and charming campanile, now opens out. The church
has had an ugly brown house built against it. Then the Malipiero, with
its tropical garden, pretty marble rail and brown posts, and then two
more antiquity stores with hideous façades, the unfinished stonework on
the side of the second of which, with the steps and sottoportico, was
to have been a palace for the Duke of Milan, but was discontinued.
Next the Rio del Duca is the pretty little Palazzo Falier, from one of
whose windows Mr. Howells used to look when he was gathering material
for his _Venetian Life_. Mr. Howells lived there in the early
eighteen-sixties, when a member of the American Consulate in Venice. As
to how he performed his consular duties, such as they were, I have no
notion; but we cannot be too grateful to his country for appointing him
to the post, since it provided him with the experiences which make the
most attractive Anglo-Saxon book on Venice that has yet been written. It
is now almost half a century since _Venetian Life_ was published, and
the author is happily still hale.
[Illustration: MADONNA AND SLEEPING CHILD
FROM THE PAINTING BY GIOVANNI BELLINI
_In the Accademia_]
It was not at the Palazzo Falier that Mr. Howells enjoyed the
ministrations of that most entertaining hand-maiden Giovanna; but it was
from here that he heard that quarrel between two gondoliers which he
describes so vividly and which stands for every quarrel of every
gondolier for all time. I take the liberty of quoting it here, because
one gondolier's quarrel is essential to every book that hopes to suggest
Venice to its readers, and I have none of my own worth recording. "Two
large boats, attempting to enter the small canal opposite at the same
time, had struck together with a violence that shook the boatmen to
their inmost souls. One barge was laden with lime, and belonged to a
plasterer of the city; the other was full of fuel, and commanded by a
virulent rustic. These rival captains advanced toward the bows of their
boats, with murderous looks,
Con la test'alta e con rabbiosa fame.
Sì che parea che l'aer ne temesse,
and there stamped furiously, and beat the wind with hands of deathful
challenge, while I looked on with that noble interest which the
enlightened mind always feels in people about to punch each others'
heads.
"But the storm burst in words.
"'Figure of a pig!' shrieked the Venetian, 'you have ruined my boat for
ever!'
"'Thou liest, son of an ugly old dog!' returned the countryman, 'and it
was my right to enter the canal first.'
"They then, after this exchange of insult, abandoned the main subject of
dispute, and took up the quarrel laterally and in detail. Reciprocally
questioning the reputation of all their female relatives to the third
and fourth cousins, they defied each other as the offspring of assassins
and prostitutes. As the peace-making tide gradually drifted their boats
asunder, their anger rose, and they danced back and forth and hurled
opprobrium with a foamy volubility that quite left my powers of
comprehension behind. At last the townsman, executing a _pas seul_ of
uncommon violence, stooped and picked up a bit of stone lime, while the
countryman, taking shelter at the stern of his boat, there attended the
shot. To my infinite disappointment it was not fired. The Venetian
seemed to have touched the climax of his passion in the mere
demonstration of hostility, and gently gathering up his oar gave the
countryman the right of way. The courage of the latter rose as the
strange danger passed, and as far as he could be heard, he continued to
exult in the wildest excesses of insult: 'Ah-heigh! brutal executioner!
Ah, hideous headsman!' Da capo. I now know that these people never
intended to do more than quarrel, and no doubt they parted as well
pleased as if they had actually carried broken heads from the
encounter. But at the time I felt affronted and trifled with by the
result, for my disappointments arising out of the dramatic manner of the
Italians had not yet been frequent enough to teach me to expect nothing
from it."
I too have seen the beginning of many quarrels, chiefly on the water.
But I have seen only two Venetians use their fists--and they were
infants in arms. For the rest, except at traghetti and at the corners of
canals, the Venetians are good-humoured and blessed with an easy smiling
tolerance. Venice is the best place in the world, and they are in
Venice, and there you are! Why lose one's temper?
Next the Casa Falier is a calle, and then the great Giustinian Lolin
Palace with brown and yellow posts. Taglioni lived here for a while too.
Another calle, the Giustinian, a dull house with a garden and red and
white striped posts, and we are at the Iron Bridge and the Campo S.
Vitale, a small poor-people's church, with a Venetian-red house against
it, and inside, but difficult to see, yet worth seeing, a fine picture
by Carpaccio of a saint on horseback.
The magnificent palace in good repair that comes next is the Cavalli,
with a row of bronze dragons on the façade. This is the home of the
Franchetti family, who have done so much for modern Venice,
conspicuously, as we have seen, at the Cà d'Oro. Then the Rio dell'Orso
o Cavana, and the Palazzo Barbaro with its orange and red striped posts,
a beautiful room in which will be familiar to all visitors to the
Diploma Gallery at Burlington House, for it is the subject of one of Mr.
Sargent's most astounding feats of dexterity. It is now the Venetian
home of an American; and once no less a personage than Isabella d'Este
lived in it very shortly after America was discovered. The older of the
two Barbaro palaces is fourteenth century, the other, sixteenth. They
will have peculiar interest to anyone who has read _La Vie d'un
Patricien de Venise au XVI Siecle_, by Yriarte, for that fascinating
work deals with Marcantonio Barbaro, who married one of the Giustiniani
and lived here.
Nothing of importance--a palace with red and gold posts and an antiquity
store--before the next rio, the beautiful Rio del Santissimo o di
Stefano; nor after this, until the calle and traghetto: merely two
neglected houses, one with a fondamenta. And then a pension arises, next
to which is one of the most coveted abodes in the whole canal--the
little alluring house and garden that belong to Prince Hohenlohe. The
majestic palace now before us is one of Sansovino's buildings, the
Palazzo Corner della Cà Grande, now the prefecture of Venice. Opposite
it is the beautiful Dario palace and the Venier garden. Next is the Rio
S. Maurizio and then two dingy Barbarigo palaces, with shabby brown
posts, once the home of a family very famous in Venetian annals. Marco
Barbarigo was the first Doge to be crowned at the head of the Giants'
Stairs; it was while his brother Agostino was Doge (1486-1501) that
Venice acquired Cyprus, and its queen, Caterina Corner, visited this
city to abdicate her throne. Cardinal Barbarigo, famous not only for his
piety but for refusing to become Pope, was born in this house.
Then the Rio S. Maria Zobenigo o dei Furlani and a palace, opposite the
steamboat station. Another palace, and then a busy traghetto, with vine
leaves over its shelter, and looking up the campo we see the church of
S. Maria del Giglio with all its holy statues. Ruskin (who later moved
to the Zattre) did most of his work on _The Stones of Venice_ in the
house which is now the Palazzo Swift, an annexe of the Grand Hotel, a
little way up this campo. Here he lived happily with his young wife and
toiled at the minutiæ of his great book; here too he entertained David
Roberts and other artists with his father's excellent sherry, which they
described as "like the best painting, at once tender and expressive".
And now the hotels begin, almost all of them in houses built centuries
ago for noble families. Thus the first Grand Hotel block is fourteenth
century--the Palazzo Gritti. The next Grand Hotel block is the Palazzo
Fini and is seventeenth century, and the third is the Manolesso-Ferro,
built in the fourteenth century and restored in the nineteenth. Then
comes the charming fourteenth-century Contarini-Fasan Palace, known as
the house of Desdemona, which requires more attention. The upper part
seems to be as it was: the water floor, or sea storey, has evidently
been badly botched. Its glorious possession is, however, its balconies,
particularly the lower.
Of the Grand Canal balconies, the most beautiful of which is, I think,
that which belongs to this little palace, no one has written more
prettily than that early commentator, Coryat. "Again," he says, "I noted
another thing in these Venetian Palaces that I have very seldome seen in
England, and it is very little used in any other country that I could
perceive in my travels, saving only in Venice and other Italian cities.
Somewhere above the middle of the front of the building, or (as I have
observed in many of their Palaces) a little beneath the toppe of the
front they have right opposite to their windows, a very pleasant little
tarrasse, that jutteth or butteth out from the maine building, the edge
whereof is decked with many pretty little turned pillers, either of
marble or free stone to leane over. These kinds of tarrasses or little
galleries of pleasure Suetonius calleth Meniana. They give great grace
to the whole edifice, and serve only for this purpose, that people may
from that place as from a most delectable prospect contemplate and view
the parts of the City round about them in the coole evening."--No modern
description could improve on the thoroughness of that.
Next is the pretty Barozzi Wedmann Palace, with its pointed windows,
said to be designed by Longhena, who built the great Salute church
opposite, and then the Hotel Alexandra, once the Palazzo Michiel. For
the rest, I may say that the Britannia was the Palazzo Tiepolo; the
Grand Hotel de l'Europe was yet another Giustiniani palace; while the
Grand Canal Hotel was the Vallaresso. The last house of all before the
gardens is the office of the Harbour Master; the little pavilion at the
corner of the gardens belongs to the yacht club called the Bucintoro,
whose boats are to be seen moored between here and the Molo, and whose
members are, with those of sculling clubs on the Zattere and elsewhere,
the only adult Venetians to use their waters for pleasure. As for the
Royal Palace, it is quite unworthy and a blot on the Venetian panorama
as seen from the Customs House or S. Giorgio Maggiore, or as one sees it
from the little Zattere steamboat as the Riva opens up on rounding the
Punta di Dogana. Amid architecture that is almost or quite magical it is
just a common utilitarian façade. But that it was once better can be
seen in one of the Guardis at the National Gallery, No. 2099.
Finally we have Sansovino's mint, now S. Mark's Library, with the
steamboat bridge for passengers for the Giudecca and the Zattere in
front of it, and then the corner of the matchless Old Library, and the
Molo with all its life beneath the columns.
And now that we have completed the voyage of the Grand Canal, each way,
let me remind the reader that although the largest palaces were situated
there, they are not always the best. All over Venice are others as well
worth study.